Confessions of a Bondi Blonde

I’m gonna go to Gunnedah.

What, you may ask, does this probably fly blown fly speck of a place in Northern NSW have to offer an Eastern Suburbs maven like me?

According to its website, Gunnedah is an exciting place to visit. Well, that’s nice, considering it’ll take me six and a half hours of travelling on 450kms of crappy underfunded highways to get there.

Gunnedah is only 30 kilometres from Keepit Dam, one of the earliest water storage dams in Australia and described as a great place “to stay a day, or even longer”. And I’m sure it will take me at least a day to absorb the delights of the Watertown Museum, temptingly described in the top notch Gunnedah tourist website (visitors – 156) as “a fine example of using a feature no longer required”.

Back in town, I’ll be spoilt for choice. Should I seek out the large koala population for a toke on some gum leaves, refresh with a few laps at the Gunnedah swimming complex or climb up the not very steep Porcupine Lookout to take in some of the other 34 sights handily signposted by the local council? A photocopied brochure detailing each delight is available from a friendly local volunteer at the Visitor Information Centre, just next to the railway bridge.

If I get a little bored in this undoubtedly interesting country town, I can always hop back in my topsoil covered car and use up $150 of petrol to sample the delights of the nearby tourist drawcards, the delightfully named Boggabri, Baan Baa or venture further afield to Wee Wa. These are probably all meaningful local Kamilaroi Aboriginal names for water or river or some such, but to me they sound like diseases sheep get if they aren’t mulesed.

After a meal in one of Gunnedah’s three Chinese restaurants, it’ll be time to rest my weary head. The accommodation sounds fit for a princess. Will I choose the Imperial or Regal Hotel? Since I am on a budget, perhaps I’ll just pitch my tent in the imaginatively named Tourist Caravan Park.

You may have worked out that a need to sample the undoubted delights of Gunnedah is not my prime motivation in wanting to sacrifice $300 in fuel to get there.  Rather, I want to become a local. I’ll enrol to vote in the council elections, join the CWA, barrack for the Gunnedah Bulldogs and do whatever I have to do to become a Gunnedah girl in as short a time as possible. And then I’ll leave in a flurry of dirt and dust, hotfooting it back to bright lights, big city Sydney.

You see, I’ve done the math. Gunnedah has a population of 7,500 with around 2,000 women between 15-65 years old. It probably has less than .001% of the single, fertile female population of NSW. But from this shallow pool, two little female fishies have swum away into wonderful lives. Erica Baxter, second wife of Australia’s second richest man, the lantern-jawed James Packer hails from Gunnedah; as does David Jones’ latest darling, international model Miranda Kerr.

Now, I am not in any way comparing myself to these two freaks of beauty. I’m way older (probably closer to their combined age than a single figure). And my figure, while not bad for a Bondi Blonde of a certain age, will not stop traffic. I pay David Jones to wear nice clothes, not the other way around.

But the pickings for a single woman in Sydney are slim. Bondi Blondes like me usually have to don a bikini and compete in jelly wrestling competitions to awaken interest from jug-jaded local men.   

When facing level 3 restrictions in the Sydney man-drought, it makes sense to increase my odds and the chance of it raining men in my direction. And I figure that the investment into becoming a rare Gunnedah gem, rather than a common Bondi Blonde, is similar to my previous escapade to improve my life’s competitive advantage.

I saw somewhere (source: probably A Current Affair, after a wonder diet segment) that Coolum, Qld had the luckiest newsagency in Australia, selling the highest number of winning lottery tickets by a big, big margin. So when the $58 million dollar Powerball jackpot was up for grabs, off I flew on a $90 Jet Star flight to Maroochydore. After a side journey to the Hyatt Coolum on a Henry’s coach, I jostled with sunburnt happy tourists, buying the most expensive quick-pick before heading back to the airport and dreaming about how to spend the loot on the return flight. The freakishly statistically unlikely jackpot winner – a syndicate of first time quick-pickers from bleakville, Victoria, failed to dampen my enthusiasm to exploit any competitive advantage available to me. Hey, I did recoup $32 on my investment, a return of 7% of the sum outlaid.

Becoming a Gunnedah girl is simply another way to improve my competitive advantage in the
Sydney scene.

So, I better get to bed. Tomorrow I’m going on a road trip. I’ll be off, in the words of Dorothea Mackellar (another Gunnedah girl) “at the dawning of the day; on the road to Gunnedah.”