Fury road: a forlorn hope that, for once, Australia would choose the hard path on climate

‘As if the evidence [on global heating] wasn’t in a thousand times over. As if we weren’t, through decades of inaction, possibly already too late. We’re going to have this stupid bloody fight again.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

There is an element of time travel to driving a road you once knew well. The route along the Olympic Highway, which turns off the Hume Freeway just north of Albury and runs through Wagga Wagga to Cowra and then becomes a series of single-lane roads all the way to Cassilis, is etched into the back of my mind.

We drove it once or twice a year to see my grandparents. I remember when the McDonald’s opened at Cowra – an exciting day for my parents, because Cowra was exactly the halfway point of our drive and an ideal spot for lunch. But it was a devastating day for my sister and me, who had previously been able to wrangle two fast food stops (one at Wagga, before 10.30am to get the breakfast menu, and a second at Wellington for a fried afternoon tea).