There's something wonderful about getting out of town. Escaping the city. It's a cliché for a reason. Getting out and amongst nature. The Japanese have a name for something similar, shinrin yoku, or forest bathing, which is essentially standing under trees and feeling better about your life. You don’t need to buy a tie dyed t-shirt and a crystal to get the point. You just need to leave.
As Australians, packing up the car and heading somewhere remote along the coast is almost part of our DNA. Generations have been doing it for as long as we've had cars. Leaving the city behind, chasing empty beaches and a little peace and quiet.
So when a message landed about catching up with a group of old school mates, some of whom I’ve known since primary school, I didn’t need to think about it. They were heading up to a friend’s place outside Bellingen for a week. The agenda was surf, fish, sit around a fire, tell lies and do very little. Nobody had a schedule. Nobody had a plan. It sounded like therapy without the invoice, and I said yes before the message finished loading.
Image taken by Simon Davidson
My ride was an Isuzu 2.2L D-MAX X-RIDER in Wolfram Grey, which is a very fancy name for a very handsome grey. Add a week of supplies, a pile of surfboards and the general clutter of men who’ve never learned to travel light, and it was the right tool for the job. The crew rolled in from all over the eastern seaboard, some from Queensland, some from just up the road, and the first afternoon was a reunion in the truest sense.
Handshakes became hugs, hugs became insults, and we’d barely dumped our bags before we were in the water.
Here’s the thing about being nearly sixty. Upstairs, you’re thinking thirty. Downstairs, you’re moving like sixty. Any shoulder surgeon would look at us and start planning their next European sojourn. In our heads, we were surfing the way we always had. In reality, we were paddling like men wading through custard. The reflexes had slowed, but the stoke was still there, and that’s what counts.
Back at the house, the plan was to wet a line in the river. Then I watched Geoff, doubled over with laughter, failing to tie a hook onto his line, and I understood fishing was a theoretical concept for the day. We got to the river eventually. The rods stayed in the ute. We sat there with a few cold beers and watched the sun go down, and honestly, I’ve paid good money for worse experiences. The river was still, the sky turned a deep burnt orange, and nobody said anything clever. It was perfect.
Image taken by Simon Davidson
Over the week, the D-MAX became another one of the boys. Reliable, unfussy, always ready, never once complaining about the jokes. We ran it along empty beaches and sandy bush tracks, and as long as we respected the tides and let the tyres down for the sand, it never missed a beat.
That’s the appeal of the thing. It isn’t trying to impress you. There’s enough technology and safety gear to keep you comfortable and keep your insurer calm, but it doesn’t make a song and dance about it. Some days four of us would squeeze in, boards thrown in the back, with no destination other than the vague hope of an empty beach and a decent wave around the next headland. If there wasn’t one, nobody minded. Being out there was the point.
Twenty years ago, I owned a 1961 Holden EK ute. Gunmetal grey, funnily enough, nearly the same shade as the Isuzu. She was my daily driver and I adored her. The chrome gleamed, the paint was show quality, and she started conversations with strangers. A ute with better social skills than most people I know.
I spent years on her. The old Holden straight six, the interior, and more hours than I’ll admit trying to get the suspension right. One day a suspension specialist asked me what I was after.
“How do you want this ute to drive?”
“As good as I can get it,” I said. “Do you reckon she’ll ever drive like a car?”
“Nah, mate. She’s a ute. She’ll always be agricultural.”
I laughed, and twenty years later I’m still thinking about what he said. You can throw all the money and love in the world at a ute, and she’ll still be a ute. I find that oddly comforting.
Which is why the D-MAX stirred it all up again. There’s a bit of that old-school ute DNA in the Isuzu, maybe because the company has been building trucks forever. It feels honest and practical, built to do a job without a lecture.
Image taken by Simon Davidson
Of course, it was a world away from my old EK. On the highway, there was nothing agricultural about it. The dual cab was comfortable, the adaptive cruise control took the sting out of the long stretches, and the air conditioning and stereo were luxuries the EK never dreamed of. But once we left the bitumen, the D-MAX came alive. Bush trails, soft sand, empty beaches: it handled them all with a calm confidence and no drama. I’d have taken the Holden down a bush track, slowly, with prayers. Taking her onto a beach would have been a cry for help.
By midweek I started noticing other D-MAXs everywhere. It’s the old trick of the brain. Spend a few days with something and suddenly the whole country has one. On an empty country road, one passed me, and I lifted a finger off the wheel in the obligatory country wave. Then it hit me that I wasn’t only waving to the driver. Part of me was waving to the ute.
It made me laugh. Then it made me think.
I’ve spent my whole life around cars. Photographing them, driving them, travelling to events and hanging out with people who feel the same way. It’s an Australian condition, I reckon. Our cars are woven into our history and our wide open spaces. We need them, we love them, and every cliché about us and our cars is true.
I’ve long wondered what the perfect car might be, and I’ve decided there isn’t one. But some come close. They take you anywhere and cope with whatever life throws at you. If I had to pick one vehicle to do nearly everything, an Isuzu dual cab ute would be hard to beat. Something happy on a Monday morning commute, and just as happy loaded with boards and mates, heading up the coast. After a week with the Isuzu, I can say without hesitation that the D-MAX makes that very short list.
Image taken by Simon Davidson
