We're on the Nullabor, the longest straight road in the world, driving along, completely unaware that 10 litres of top quality premium unleaded are swirling around in the back of the van. Our Jerry Can had leaked. Ironically, its quite difficult to drive a car while on petrol.

 

Its my first ever holiday away from my parents. Im 17 and there are three of us in this fumigated tin can, Kingy, Dillon and myself. We were heading to “Splendour in the Grass”. We’ve been constantly inhaling premium unleaded since we’d hit the straight, unknown to us. The conversation has derailed from witty scenic observations to an intense argument revealing the financial struggle wizards would face in Australia, opposes to Norway. Because “everybody knows, all of the good-wizarding schools are in the northern hemisphere. I mean think about it. Imagine having to ship your spell books, the travel expenses, magical animal quarantine. Huge burdens than don’t need to be there, especially for a young person who has only just figured out their a wizard.” 

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It didn’t get too dangerous, there was a moment where Kingy, whilst driving at 127kmph tried to put his head into the gaps in the steering wheel. But don’t worry, like good friends we held the wheel while he pulled it back out. 

 

People always say… get fucked, you would be able to smell all that petrol. Well, you’d think so, but the leak was so gradual we didn’t realise at the beginning. Throughout the drive we did spell petrol. But only when other cars drove passed us. The wind created from their car passing ours blew out all the smelly petrol smells from our car and replaced it with fresh air. Then, obviously, the petrol smell came back… So, seeing as we could only smell petrol when other cars drove passed, we assumed everyone else was leaking petrol, not us. 

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It was cartoonish. We were flicking cigarette embers out of the window probably inches away from blowing ourselves up. In my mind there was a 100 mile long petrol trail, ablaze, hunting us down, missing us only by inches as it fails to catch up with the van. Eventually all the petrol had leaked out of the Jerry can and out of the back of the van. But don’t worry all of our clothes had absorbed enough liquid to be saturated.

 

Long story short, as much as LCD Soundsystem were beautifully emotionally exhausting, it was the smell of British Petroleums liquid gold on my polo that made my eyes water.