Fear and Loathing in New South Wales

September 23, 2015 12:08 PM

What’s Rangoon To You Is Grafton To Me is a forty-five minute long radio play about a long, strange road trip from Brisbane to Sydney. (transcript) First broadcast in 1978 on Double Jay (now Triple J), it was written by Russell Guy (link) and starred news reader James Dibble (MBE) as its “whacked-out road warrior protagonist”. The piece has gone on to become something of a cult classic, and inspired a recent homage by broadcaster Mike Williams: A Kangaroo Has Three Ears
posted by Going To Maine (8 comments total)

1978 must have been a good year for long-form Commonwealth radio nonsense because this feels so much like Vivian Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlinson End was teleported to the Gonzo Dimension
posted by theodolite at 12:23 PM on September 23, 2015

My eyes followed the curve in my neck, and in the back window I saw the Southern Cross neatly intercepted by the Grafton sign post. "Grafton?" I screamed twice: "Europe was never like this." Grafton and Rangoon don't mix, even with a limp. It might be a nice place for acid casualties to retire, but getting through Grafton at night is like chasing the min-min lights through the cross-roads of crediblity.

Luckily I was travelling with my cat as, every good traveller knows, cats contribute to the psycic kitty. Dogs are useful travelling companions when you want advanced waring of natural disasters, like volcanic eruptions, floating boat sheds, and second commings, but cats work the other way:

From the inside out.

Oh, this is delightful. Memories, mushrooms and madness.

Which reminds me, anyone have an audio recording of Brunswick Heads Revisited?
posted by Thella at 1:04 PM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I saw the name Grafton, all I could think of was "R Is for Road Trip"? I try, but I am still WAY too U.S.-centric and book-centric (and I don't even read mysteries). Triple J? With all American radio stations having call letters starting with either W or K, that would never work here.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:28 PM on September 23, 2015

I, too, thought of Sue Grafton and Crab Rangoon when I learned that this existed.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:03 PM on September 23, 2015

Grafton is just down the road from me. It's near the coast on a big river; on a similar latitude to New Orleans. When you look at a radar weather map of that part of NSW, it always seems to be raining. It is most well known for two things. It's (now defunct) jail and the high bridge. The bridge is just off the #1 national highway. It is long, with two lean lanes and worst of all, it has a fuckin' corner on it. Just as you are rising high over the river's edge, the bridge turns a corner. It freaks me out every time I cross it.

Triple J?
We in Australia are blessed, truly blessed, with arguably the world's premier (and advertising free) public broadcaster, the ABC. One of its offspring, Double/Triple J (a bandwidth change, I think) began as a 'youth network' and is responsible for so much cultural content over the past four decades that it would have raised many millions of export dollars from they way it has supported young musicians to reach success.

/didacticism

Why only W or K for radio station names?
posted by Thella at 3:42 PM on September 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

"… but getting through Grafton at night is like chasing the min-min lights through the cross-roads of crediblity."

That's just what getting through Grafton is like - acid, 'shrooms, or straight makes no difference.

"With all American radio stations having call letters starting with either W or K, that would never work here."

Australian radio stations are (nominally) prefixed by a state number designation - strictly speaking it's 2JJJ in NSW, 3JJJ in Victoria, 4JJJ in Qld, etc. That all sort of fell apart with aggregation of the original local commercial stations & the rise of networked content, and the ABC's TripleJ and Classic FM spreading beyond the capital cities, so referring to stations by their licenced names is now honoured more in the breach than the observance.

Even though I think it's still a licence requirement that they broadcast their individual station ID (e.g. 4JJJ) regularly, the networked stations seem to get a free pass on it.
posted by Pinback at 5:44 PM on September 23, 2015

(Ah, looks like I'm 20+ years out-of-date - they're only required to broadcast a nominated Station ID e.g. 'TripleJ', 'NovaFM' etc., not the actual callsign e.g. '2JJJ', '2SYD', etc…)
posted by Pinback at 6:07 PM on September 23, 2015

Link to original recording, plus intro blurb, on the ABC site.

Get it while you can.

Original recording starts at 8:40.
posted by Pouteria at 4:38 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]