There is now a T-shirt that reads Grand Theft Albo – a play on a popular video game title.

I believe the Albanese government is ruining the lives of ordinary Australians for no reason other than socialist nonsense. It took Labor less than five years to prove that socialism is no different this time. With our money.

People are looking for relief from the endless experiment that keeps being repeated by useful idiots and at our expense. You’d think that repeatable results from social experiments would be sufficient proof that socialism doesn’t work. It’s ‘the science’. Good luck with that.

So, what can you do about it?

Stoicism became more prominent in the later Roman Empire, when people looked for a way to keep their heads while everything around them fell apart. Stoic philosophy offered Romans a sense of individual control when all about them was out of control.

When the politics is this bleak, however, you still need a physical outlet. After fifty, I’ve found the physical activity I used to do particularly difficult. My motorbikes have given me the ability to exercise in a way that works without killing my back and knees. Mostly.

My cafe racer is for sunny days. This morning it was wet, so I opted for my scrambler. It’s a road bike built for gravel roads. Not a trail bike, but certainly capable of leaving a trail bike in the dust of my local gravel back roads.

If the revolution is only a T-shirt away, it’s not because of Joy Division. It’s because of Grand Theft Albo. This is how it went this morning. Kind of like my ‘motorcycle diaries’ but about the oppression of the Albo socialists who are ‘waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’.

I text my mate Ty to see if he wants to come for a blat through the gravel back roads of the Lachlan. I feel like I’m a kid back in the 80s asking if my mate is allowed to come out and play. I need to wake up early so I can go to bed at 5pm. Tomorrow I’m back in Central NSW in the truck. I spend a few minutes cleaning the chain and adding some new Union Jack knee pads to my scrambler. I’ll check my phone once I stop in Biala.

Up Crookwell Road and I’m behind a flat-top rigid Kenworth. It’s a beauty, so I tuck in behind. I’ll turn into Sapphire Road shortly. The Kenworth turns into Sapphire Road, so I push on to Biala Road. It’ll be something different. I stop on Biala Road and see if Ty has responded. No luck. It looks like it’s just me.

I don’t even know whether there’s a church service this morning. I’ve had a bit of time to myself in the truck and I don’t mind being alone on my bike. I decide I’ll listen to The Superjesus song ‘Down Again’ on repeat.

The words of the song are apt.

‘I was alone till I thought it was

Better that way.’

The Superjesus are an Australian band. The song is a bit like Stoicism in a can. I reflect on Benjamin Franklin. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. Faith and reason. Superjesus and Stoicism. Nice.

I listen to the song on repeat as I reflect on Stoic thought and how difficult life has become under the Albanese government. Not just for me, but for the people around me. As I gather speed on the wet gravel roads, I notice the ‘For Sale’ signs are multiplying like weeds.

It’s foggy. My mind wanders to the scenes unfolding in front of me. Then I notice the road is not there anymore, it’s veered off to the left. Idiot. Concentrate! Lucky I’m not wearing my Converse. I drag my left motorcycle boot over the gravel as I swing the rear out. Back on track and ‘Phew!’ that was close.

My next daydream is interrupted by Angus cattle on the road. They look at me while chewing, wondering what this bloke is doing. Until I approach. Now they’re scattering like elephant ballerinas and I twist and turn to dodge.

Straight after there’s sheep. They don’t mess around and they’re off. This lot are still waiting to be shorn and I laugh as the Queen song ‘Fat-bottomed Girls’ plays in my head.

A magpie thinks I’m a Messerschmitt and flings his Spitfire into a half-barrel roll that steps through the quarters, wing-tip dropping point by point until it is almost vertical. I slow. He flicks away. I wonder if six magpie .303s will decorate my number plate.

I laugh and give a left-hand salute as I pass two Australian flags on a gate. As I’m laughing, three kangaroos are in my face. I thank God for ABS brakes. Then I hit a puddle and the handlebars wrestle with me like an uncooperative sheep with a shearer.

I get cranky until the bike fishtails up the hill and I remember the last time I crested a hill and stared straight into the headlights of a Landcruiser on the wrong side of the road. For a second I was convinced that was it. Then the moment passed and I was still upright.

Eventually I’m back on the bitumen and heading towards Boorowa. There’s a church and I do a hairpin turn onto a gravel road that is overgrown in parts and rarely visited except by locals and usually only during shearing season. Ty asks when I’m heading off. I say I didn’t know I was going until I went and now I’m an hour away. He says, ‘Bugger, lol!’

I feel like I’m Steve McQueen in the 1971 documentary ‘On Any Sunday’ except he dropped his bike a few times and laughed. The last time I dropped my desert sled, it cost about $500 to replace the handlebars and I don’t want to go through that again. I wonder what my boot looks like. I don’t have the steel skid shoe Dick ‘Bugsy’ Mann forced his broken leg into after cutting off the cast. (Mind you, I didn’t have to manually cut out the tread on my tyres with a razor blade, either. So there’s that.)

I ride like the wind. A few close calls crossing the Lachlan River, bunny tails flashing away like I’ve ridden through the middle of a greyhound race. Sheep, cattle, space, a 360-degree horizon. Bliss.

As I approach Dalton, Pete and the boys are going for a walk. I slow down regretfully, they all wave. The servo is closed so I’ll ride home. No sign of Ty as I ride past, around the corner, up the dunny lane and into my yard. No rest for the wicked. There’s aphids on the roses and two tomato plants need to be separated.

I didn’t think of Albo for at least 90 minutes. Only when I realised I’d need to buy some more potting mix and mulch did he return to my thoughts. That’s because the price of everything has gone up, and it’s all his fault.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you’d like to support his writing, please shout him a drink over at Donorbox.