Key to the Highway—with Richard Andrews
In the days when you could, I made a Faustian pact. As the years pass, I may have blown my end and the Accounts Payable date is looming. But what if the magic had actually happened and I pursued it fully? The answer lies with Key to the Highway, a wild, musical hero’s journey through the Australian Outback to Perth, India, Bangkok, Borneo, and Rio. Discovery of a mysterious blues harp/harmonica by a bayside creek, outside Melbourne, takes the main character, Chris Hunter, on a mystical journey to self-discovery, in which his reality morphs with mythological gods, heroes and villains, manifested as bikers, prophets, gun runners, shady businessmen, neo-Nazis and miners. The quest is disrupted when Chris abandons his Orphic gift, as a cynical journalist and is spirited back to the bland suburbia he tried to evade. Redemption comes when he pursues Canberra’s suppressed esoteric secret in a fight against the Alt Right. We can discuss parallels with epic heroes including Odysseus, King Arthur, and Rama or their modern equivalents in Mad Max, Star Wars and The Matrix.