Truck Driver

Hitch a ride with Bev on his 18-wheeler, as the highway philosopher whisks you through outback beauty and expounds on an Australia that’s changing faster than he can accelerate. His drily witty yarns might be salty, funny, and more than a little crude, but you’ll find it hard not to love this isolated, opinionated Baudrillard of the bitumen.

Actor-director duo Jonny Hawkins and Nell Ranney were last on Sydney Festival stages with their hit Maureen: Harbinger of Death (2021), a tribute to women elders told through an eccentric Kings Cross veteran bohemian. Now Hawkins has turned their eye to spotlighting a no less under-seen and underestimated group – the working class truckies who keep our nation supplied through long, lonely hours on the road.

Hawkins interviewed around 30 Aussie truck drivers for this piece, which empathetically weaves their stories with Jonny’s own reminiscences of being a “limp wristed gay kid from the Central Coast”. Changing social ideas of masculinity, echo-chambers and the isolation of life as a truckie all get a laconic serving on this long-haul journey into the heart of the Australian dream.

Stick around for a post-show talk following the 6.30pm show on 21 January.