15 Aug 05
Look down the Australian album charts and there, in amongst the likes of Coldplay and Delta Goodrem is a uniquely Aussie compilation album called Songs for My Ute, Volume 3. The fact that this is the third edition shows not only that Aussies like hard-charging rock'n'roll but they also love utes, what the rest of us call pick-up trucks.
"The ute is as Australian as Vegemite or Kylie," says a ringer (cowboy) named 'Grinner', who is holed up at the Burke and Wills Roadhouse in Queensland for a season of mustering (driving cattle). "Good to see a Pom like you has got himself a ute. It's a bit shiny though, mate. You need to get it looking a bit more used. Look at mine, it's got half of the Outback in it."
Grinner's temporary home, a remote watering hole and fuel station named after Australia's most famous but also ill-fated explorers, sits on the crossroads of the Matilda Highway and the mammoth 2500-mile Savannah Way that links Cairns and Broome across the Top End of Australia. Almost anyone travelling through the north-eastern quarter of the Outback will most likely stop on Grinner's doorstep.
