Another Roadside Attraction

On Barbie Beach, Big Bananas and Roadtrippin'

Hitting the road is one of life’s great pleasures. The simple thrill of listening to loud music in that enclosed metallic time and space capsule, singing along badly, getting the words wrong without a care in the world, eating greasy highway food and above all, keeping one eye out for local roadside attractions, ready to screech to a halt, jump out and explore whats on offer, never gets old. Its been on my mind cos I’m plotting out a little tour with my band and found myself thinking about The Big Submarine in Holbrook, which pretty much marks the halfway point between Sydney and Melbourne, and always provides a welcome distraction, whether travelling with small children or fellow musicians.

Sam heading down the highway going to a show

The Big Submarine in Holbrook, Victoria

Australia has an unending passion for BIG roadhouse attractions; we have the Big Merino, the Big Prawn, The Big Potato (which looks oddly similar to the Big Submarine) and The Big Banana, among numerous other large installations. There’s nothing quite the feeling of jumping out of your car, roadworn and dusty, and posing for a picture you’ll probably never look at again dwarfed by an obscenely large banana.

The Big Banana

The Big Prawn

Holbrook is also notable as the home of Australia’s very first cryonics facility, a huge warehouse on the edge of town where you can freeze your body or brain until such time as science is advanced enough to bring you back.

Here’s a little excerpt from my book Lovers Dreamers Fighters about a long ago roadtrip from Sydney to Melbourne.

Getting out of Australia and touring the world was always what

I wanted to do, what I worked towards. Without a cash flow or a

support network of bookers and labels, these kinds of things are

difficult to achieve – but not impossible. In 2006, I had just enough

money to buy a round-the-world ticket and managed to secure myself

a few gigs in New York, where Aden was doing a play, and then a tour

through Europe, where I was going to be like Chuck Berry, picking up

bands where I could and playing solo the rest of the time.

My tour manager friend Leesa called a couple of mornings

before I was leaving to see if I wanted to earn three hundred dollars cash,

driving the English–Irish pop band Girls Aloud’s suitcases of

clothing from Sydney to Melbourne that day. They had worked out it

was cheaper for them to rent a car with a driver to transport it all than

to pay the excess baggage costs of flying it down. They really did have

a lot of luggage, and I needed every cent I could earn, so I was grateful

for the opportunity.

Somewhere in the floorboards of my completely unrenovated

Depression-era Darlinghurst terrace were rats that I could hear all

night, so I wasn’t sleeping, was incredibly uptight and thought nine

straight hours of blasting Dylan while driving down a highway

would be the perfect stress-releasing activity. I’d also never driven a

car younger than a 1984 model, so it was rather exciting and a little

nerve-racking to have a large, deluxe modern silver four-wheel drive

in my hot little hands. Though I had often been accused of being a

‘nanna driver’ in the past, the smooth, easy action of the accelerator

meant I kept finding myself slightly over the speed limit and had to

pull back. Within four hours of starting my journey, I’d been pulled

over by the cops and issued a two hundred and ninety-eight dollar

speeding fine. My trip was for naught – or two dollars and a soothing

listening session with Uncle Bob.

Sam, who plays guitar with me, jumped in for the long haul back

from Melbourne to Sydney, having just finished touring with his main

band Holy Soul. Windows up, we were just taking a short palate cleansing

break from non-stop Dylan by pumping Outkast’s ‘We Luv Deez Hoez’,

when we both saw her at the same time: a dark-haired

young girl, maybe Greek or Italian, with an only-half-there, faraway

look on her face, barefoot in what looked like a wedding dress, just

standing in the driveway next to the dead grass in front of a faded

red-brick suburban house, like an invitation. Save me, she seemed

to be saying. Take me anywhere but here. It’s an indelible mind’s-eye

photograph. It made me glad I was getting on a plane the next day.

Not much later we pulled in for lunch in Holbrook, home of the

Big Submarine. The girl behind the counter said ‘Here you go, love’

to Sam as she passed him his sandwich, like she was sixty years old

rather than sweet sixteen. Probably felt like she was. Country-town-on-

the-highway years are kind of similar to dog years. Without

movement, it’s so easy to atrophy. Rock’n’roll keeps you young.

When we packed our bags for Georgia, USA a few years later, I had a good feeling about homemade roadside attractions and I was not disappointed. Most of them were peach, hot boiled peanut or BBQ themed.

Me & a Hot Boiled Peanut stand

But one day driving aimlessly with the kids trying ourselves entertained, around the backroads near picturesque Senoia GA, home of The Walking Dead, where the entire town is a roadside attraction, and where houses are sold cheap with the understanding that filming can take place anytime, I did a double take and slammed on the brakes as we passed a hand painted sign for Barbie Parking and caught a glimpse of some kind of installation.

Barbie Beach was undoubtedly the weirdest thing I ever saw on Hwy 16.

‘Three more beers and your imagination gets crazy, you start thinking, we could do this, we could do this…’ Barbie Beach creator Steve Quick

The eye-popping display begun with ‘six nekk-ed Barbies, a ping pong ball and a ping pong net’, inspired by an event where women won the beachball competition in the other Turin, Italy. Its now an ever-changing, always thriving, always nude Barbie Beach Party, where the fun never ends and they all hang out at Mort’s Bar.

According to a YouTube interview with creators Steve and Lynda Quick, Mort is an intergalactic galactic mercenary who was blindsided in battle and lost a hand, hit the drugs, hit the booze, and found himself a new and more fulfilling life when he became a Barbie bodyguard then chauffeur and finally opened Mort’s Bar and all the Barbies fell for his charms. ‘Here’s a guy that was at the bottom of the barrel so to speak and so now he hangs out with nekk-ed Barbies’ laughs Steve.

The goings on at Barbie Beach are dictated by whatever’s going on in the world, limited only by the imagination of its creators, which they reveal gets wilder after a few beers. They’ve had alien invasions, dragons and mermaids drop by as well as more prosaic events like Pride (‘…it gives our detractors something to think about’), Hurricane Katrina (‘we evacuated the whole beach, there was nothin down there, absolutely nothin’) or the Pink Posse Walk, to raise dollars for breast cancer charities. They have helped fundraise over $200,000. To the Quicks, Barbie Beach is a way to have fun, express themselves, ‘stir the pot’, and a form of freedom of speech. The explanation for the nakedness of the barbies is simple - because ‘The first thing a child does when they get a new Barbie is take the clothes off’. Uh huh.

Not knowing the back story, and still trying to work out if it was terrifying or fantastic, we got spooked when we saw the owner appear in doorway of the house and ran back to the car, worried we might end out our days in Mort’s Bar.

Country musican Elvis L. Carden apparently spent 16 years designing and building the amazing Guitar House in nearby Fayetteville, intended to inspire his music. It was featured on the cover of his 1999 album Living in an Old Guitar. In 2012, it sold for a mere $55,000 but unbelievably has been on the market again for years. It’s spruiked as being ‘in need of a tuneup’ and covered in so much overgrowth you can really only see it with the help of a drone. A review I found on the internet describes it as a ‘Rundown house that nobody lives in now. I would not recommend this place.’ I reckon I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

My favourite odd display tale (from this great 1991 Vanity Fair article) is the one where Willie Nelson lost all the contents of his home and studio when the IRS seized them for taxes owed due to shady tax shelters his accounting firm had used, and sold them to the highest bidder. Some enterprising fans who ran a tiny Willie themed museum bought a bunch of it and created Willie’s World, recreating his studio exactly, and when Willie and his band were on tour they stopped by to check it out, jumped behind the velvet ropes and sat themselves down to play a round of dominoes at the table set up to appear as if it was mid game and got so into it they stayed for hours, much to the shock and awe of the visiting tourists. Life imitates art or art imitates life.

I’d love to open an exotic themed roadside attraction somewhere someday. Til then, I’m happy exploring.

Inspire me by sharing your favourite weird roadside attractions in the comments.

And come along to a show if you’re in Canberra, Beechworth, Melbourne or Adelaide!