If Australia were folded in half like a book, the Smart Highway would be it

游客2023-11-08  25

问题      If Australia were folded in half like a book, the Smart Highway would be its spine, forging through emptiness for 2,000 miles. Driving half of it is plenty, so I’ve flown to the dead center: the desert town of Alice Springs. North of "the Alice" there’s barely a stoplight for 1,000 miles-a-bout the distance from Dallas to Chicago-until the asphalt meets Darwin, on the Timor Sea.
     Like Germany’s autobahn, the Smart has no speed limit; unlike the autobahn, it’s virtually barren. Every 45 minutes or so, a roadhouse appears mirage-like on the horizon, offering gas, beer, motel-style lodging, and a little "Where ya from, mate?" Aside from that, the land presents itself the way God made it. Hour by hour, sandy red earth gives way to spindly trees, brown escarpments, termite mounds as tall as kindergartners, and not much else. No cell phone coverage, no radio stations. There’s nowhere else on earth to be so isolated while on good roads in your aver-age rental car.
     The pleasure of a Stuart drive is partly in stumbling across artifacts from man’s attempts to make use of the bush. Beside the gas station in Barrow Creek ( kilometer 294), a wooden telegraph repeater station from the early 1870s stands abandoned but perfectly preserved by the dry desert air. There’s another in the expanse north of Tennant Creek (541). Barely rusted bits of telegraph wire and antique bottles still litter the grounds of both. The eerie ruins at Gorrie Airfield (1,103) once housed 6,500 personnel in World War II. Today, there are ghostly scraps of gray bitumen leading to an old fighter runway that’s over a mile long.
    The walls inside most of the bush pubs along the highway are stapled over with bras, under-wear, foreign currency, and business cards-a few of mine included-left by visitors from around the world. Basic rooms cost about $ 35; given the volume of cold Victoria Bitter on tap, by bed-time most customers aren’t in a state to quibble over thread counts. Just about every pit stop is run by someone who could pass as the main character in a novel. [br] In the third paragraph, by saying "The pleasure of a Smart drive is partly in stumbling across artifacts from man’s attempts to make use of the bush.", the author is suggesting that _______.

选项 A、man-made buildings are seen everywhere along the Stuart Highway.
B、human being has lived in the bush for a long time.
C、sometime drivers are surprised to find wooden houses or ruins that once housed many people in the barren land along the Smart Highway.
D、It is a pleasure to have a drink in one of the pubs along the Highway.

答案 C

解析 推理题。这句话中的artifact的意思是“人工制品(尤其指考古发现的武器、工具及装饰品)”。第三段介绍了几个这些所谓的artifacts。驾车时,看见这些遗迹,对司机来说无疑能带来一些乐趣。所以正确答案是C。
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