ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
An elderly home-owning Betoota Ponds couple set out on the trip of a lifetime earlier this month with no set destination.
Norm and Beryl Funk sold their pool cleaning and stationery business and traded a life of stress and pay rates for a life spent on the road, chasing dreams.
But before setting out, the sexagenarians were thoughtful enough to put their UHF channel on the back of their late model caravan so truck drivers and everyday Interior Australians can abuse them for their driving.
While most truck drivers use channel 40 as a default when moving between towns and cities, the Funks said that they’d be staying on channel the whole time as to not miss any expletive-riddle criticism.
“It’s all part of the journey,” said Norm.
“We plan on driving about 10kph slower than the speed limit, meaning trucks can overtake us but when they do, we’ll speed up so they can’t. We don’t want to get stuck behind six decks of dehydrated steers,”
“And when we do, we want the person driving the truck to be able to call us horrible names and threaten to run us off the road. Even the jackaroos, they should be able to do it when we cut them off when they’ve got a gooseneck full of camp horses behind them. So much culture.”
The Advocate reached out to a number of local truck drivers for comment on the Funk’s open-mic policy and the feedback our reporters received was unanimously positive.
One truck driver said he relishes in the opportunity to abuse grey nomads for almost killing him and the stock he’s hauling.
“Can’t wait to call Norm a, ‘gibbering old cunt’ somewhere out on the open road,” said the trucker.
“Or Beryl a, ‘a blind old lunatic’. It will be nice to finally get it off your chest rather than taking to them with a tyre iron in the next town,”
“It’s a good policy, it should be a legal requirement.”
More to come.
