Australian Penthouse

IS THAT THING DIESEL?

PAUL CARTER
ALLEN & UNWIN

CARTER’S previous autobiographical efforts—2005’s Don’t Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs… She Thinks I’m a Piano Player in a Whorehouse and the 2007 follow-up, This is Not a Drill (Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield)—are two-fisted tales about wild men in wilder locations, sometimes outright warzones, that should be compulsory reading for any young Aussies thirsting for adventure.

Is That Thing Diesel? (One Man, One Bike and the First Lap Around Australia on Used Cooking Oil), while possessing an equally beaut and self-explanatory title, isn’t quite as rollicking. It starts out all domestic, with Carter and his amazingly tolerant missus having their first kid and ‘nesting’ in Perth, then after taking a little too long to get going, it rushes to its conclusion.

To be fair, though, the author’s attempts to settle into domestic life are amusing and the guts of the book—the quest to do the ‘Big Lap’ of Oz on an environmentally friendly bio-diesel motorbike created by the boffins at Adelaide Uni—is as good as any of his prior work, with larger-than-life characters, ill-advised piss-ups and tricky situations, not to mention a major bingle.

If you enjoy stuff like Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s TV series Long Way Round (which crops up throughout Is That Thing Diesel?) and 2005 tome Not All Ringers and Cowboys by Drew Radford, you’ll eat up the journey component like bio-bike ‘Black Betty’ eats up the kays… when she’s not breaking a non-standard part or pulling over to avoid a road train doing 130.

While the motorcycle proves its worth as a possible cheaper, cleaner alternative for everyone from farmers to city commuters, the star of the show is Carter himself, who could go to the servo for bread and milk and end up in an adventure (it’s no surprise he was considered to host the local version of Top Gear). Book number four, whose central challenge seems to have been set up during this one, can’t come soon enough!

Is That Thing Diesel? is in bookstores now.