By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (44 page)

Dave had been in touch with his daughter Danielle, who knew a guy called Alan who drove a road train. Today Alan was carting sand, but he’d carried everything from pigs and sheep to cars and railway sleepers and he was happy to give us a lift. His rig had two trailers, and the tractor unit was an International S Line from the States. He told me that driving anything as big as this you had to keep your wits about you. It was incredibly long, and looking in the door mirror all I could see was trailer. It was four hundred and twenty horsepower, and with a twenty-speed splicer gearbox it was easy to forget what gear you were in.

Sitting behind the wheel with the window rolled down, driving a road train, an Australian icon . . . now I really was in my element. I was only a few days away from my family and we were eating up the miles now, tarmac and desert slipping by as we rumbled down the road. You’re up so high you feel invincible. I’d ridden motorbikes and lots of different cars, I’d raced a few bikes and cars at Goodwood but nothing compared to this. I imagined what it would be like to haul one right across Australia and it was easy to see how this kind of life could get deep into your blood. There was something about the vastness of this landscape, about the way the road just went on and on . . . There was a real purpose to the journey, and it took the road and that landscape to a completely different level.

Alan dropped us off further south and we stopped for the night in William Creek, a stockman’s town. The local blokes wore felt cowboy hats and body warmers with nothing underneath. We headed into a busy pub, with guys sitting at metal stools at the bar drinking from cans - the classic Aussie outback bar. I was introduced to a bush pilot, another mate of Dave’s. I asked him what kind of planes he flew.

‘None when I’m drinking,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Planes and beer don’t mix, Charley.’

‘And when you’re not drinking?’

‘Whichever one we haven’t crashed at the time.’

28

Look Out for Motorcycles

I woke up the next morning thinking about Valencia, where we’d scribbled our plans for the expedition on the back of a boarding pass. The last three and a half months had gone by in a heartbeat, and now we had just seven days to go before we reached Sydney. We headed back into William Creek where we bumped into Neville, the pub landlord. He explained that the people we’d met last night weren’t local stockmen as we’d first thought; they were just passing through. Because of the drought the cattle ranch, which was the only local employer, had as few as three hands working. If not for the pub, William Creek wouldn’t exist at all. According to Neville it was the smallest, driest and most remote town in all Australia, with a population of about six.

Once south of town we found ourselves in a desert of sage brush and red sand - the most arid place I’d ever been. Dave showed us the way to Coward Springs. This tiny oasis, dotted with palm trees, is the only water in the area - camel trains used to stop here on the way to Alice. It has a naturally hot pool, which bubbles up from the ground, and is home to a colony of birds. The waterhole has been reinforced with railway sleepers and a fence, and as we walked over we met a family coming out.

‘Have you been in the water?’ I asked the little boy. ‘Was it warm?’

He nodded.

‘Was it worth it?’

‘Ah yeah, maybe.’

Pushing open the gate I stripped to my shorts and stepped into the warmish water, natural jets bubbling up beneath me.

‘This water’s very wet,’ Dave stated. ‘It takes much longer to dry.’ Then he jumped in, fully clothed, hat and all. ‘That’ll get the washing done.’

Further down the road we stopped at the ruins of an old house - just a couple of walls and a fireplace, really. Collecting some wood and brush we got a fire going and cooked hotdogs for lunch. From there we drove into absolute nothingness. We were on the lip of a salt lake that stretched as far as the eye could see. At fourteen metres below sea level this was the lowest point on the entire continent and the mud beneath was tidal.

Further south we came across the Dingo Fence - a wire mesh construction that cuts across the horizon. Like a fox in a henhouse, dingoes are indiscriminate killers, and if they get among the sheep they can cause carnage. The fence starts on the east coast at Surfer’s Paradise and runs inland for five thousand kilometres. It’s not that high but dingoes don’t jump, and the bars on the cattle grid truck crossings are wide enough to discourage them.

Making it to Marree before the sun went down, we set up camp just out of town and I dragged over a fallen tree for firewood. Dave bent a length of corrugated iron into a three-sided windshield, and taking the axe I threw a couple of swings but the blade just kept bouncing off the branches. Ken brought out a chainsaw which ought to have made life easier but the bloody thing wouldn’t start and it was dark before we managed to get the fire going.

The town of Marree is at the junction of the Oodnadatta Track (the aboriginal trading route across the Tirari Desert) and the infamous Birdsville Track that runs all the way to Queensland. It’s here that the standard-gauge railway line from Adelaide joins the narrow-gauge line that goes on to Alice Springs. When Dave first left school he worked on this stretch of railway, and he told us that the trains would leave Adelaide on Tuesday morning and get here about midnight. Then everyone and everything would be transferred across the platform to another train on the narrower line for the remainder of the journey.

After dinner we had a few beers and some wine. Ken decided we didn’t have enough alcohol so he went into town to pick up some more. When he came back he told us there was a hooley going on at the pub. We could hear the raucous singing from across the road - a bunch of Caterpillar drivers were celebrating the end of a refresher course and the grog was flowing, the sing-song gathering pace. What could we do? We joined in. Ollie, who had joined us in Darwin, Mungo and I bailed out a little earlier than the others but we were still completely out of it. For some reason, right in the middle of the street, I decided to take Mungo’s legs from under him and he went down like a tree. Demob happy, I suppose. Ollie piled into me and for the next ten minutes we wrestled in the dust like schoolboys, almost breaking our Nikon camera.

 

At first light with pounding heads and dodgy stomachs we regretted it bitterly. Ollie was convinced he’d broken his little finger so I had to strap it to his ring finger. I knew then it would be a delicate day.

Driving very gently, we headed towards a town called Quorn, stopping for a cup of tea at Gordon Litchfield’s sheep station. Gordon was a mate of Dave’s, a thoughtful soul with a cowboy hat and bushy moustache, who had a team of shearers working on his flock. Never mind four years of drought - in this part of the country it had barely rained in ten.

‘It must be a hard life,’ I observed.

‘Hard, yeah right.’ He rolled his eyes at Dave. ‘Try whatever they call two steps down from hard, mate, and you might be getting close.’

Further south we came across a clutch of old buildings and a broken-down Land Rover half buried in sand. This was home to Talc Alf, a stone carver and philosopher who had interesting ideas on the alphabet and particularly Barack Obama. From the letters in Obama’s surname Alf had worked out that he might just be the saviour of Western civilisation. I suppose if Obama gets elected we’ll find out if he’s right. Alf had converted an old washing machine with belts and pulleys so he could power it by riding a stationary bicycle. Jumping on, I pedalled for a while, giving the old man’s clothes a bit of a stir. If nothing else, the bike would set me up nicely for the solar-powered car.

We’d heard about the car back in England and had contacted the people involved to see if it was possible for me to drive it. We were due to meet up with them the next morning, but by chance we were staying at the same campsite, so we got our first glimpse of ‘Kelly’ that same night. Shaped like a bullet, it arrived in a black-and-yellow trailer, towed by a coach with a V8 engine that ran on LPG. The team - known as the RAA Kelly Gang - were electronics specialists from the University of South Australia. The ‘Kelly’ car was the Mk II version - an improvement on the original, which had, naturally, been called ‘Ned’. Kelly had taken part in the three-thousand-kilometre race from Darwin to Adelaide, specifically designed for these kinds of concept vehicles. The Kelly Gang used the tow-coach as a mobile classroom, travelling around the schools in South Australia trying to get students interested in learning about electronic engineering.

Looking like a cross between a road-going stealth bomber and a cockroach, Kelly was inched out of the trailer on hydraulics. Almost black, she sat very low and streamlined, with four wheels on struts like the undercarriage of the aforementioned bomber. The bodywork was made from hundreds of individual panels that reminded me of scales on a reptile. I know, I’m mixing metaphors, but this was one weird-looking motor car, believe me. The team were going to give Kelly a run out and had promised to let me drive a few miles. First, though, we were leaving town on a steam train and would hook up with them further down the road.

 

The next morning Dave’s nephew Duane showed up in a 1954 Holden to take us to the station. The Holden is the archetypal Australian motor car. Duane had restored the car himself - an FJ six-cylinder with a column gear change. He told me that most people in Oz had a story to tell about this little beauty, and it often involved the back seat. Ours had seen back-seat action of the handcuff variety and I don’t mean the pink and fluffy kind. Formerly a police car, it had a rail where the cops cuffed crooks before taking them down to the station. I had a little trouble with the gears - so much so that Duane had to lift the bonnet and do something to the gearbox. After that I drove across town with no further trouble to some old siding sheds.

We were travelling on a steam locomotive on part of the old Ghan Railway that ran from Port Augusta to Alice Springs. Originally it only went as far as Marree and from there the passengers transferred to a camel train. The camels came from Afghanistan and the train was originally called the ‘Afghan Express’ - later shortened to The Ghan. This was only a small section and, a bit like the Watercress Line in England, it is a self-funding operation where the drivers and firemen give their time voluntarily.

For a laugh I lay down on the tracks, my impression of a Buster Keaton movie. It was just a bit of fun but seeing my antics the driver slammed on the brakes and the locomotive came to a sudden, screeching stop, belching smoke as if they’d missed me by just a few inches.

‘Please don’t do that again.’ He was pretty terse. ‘Mate, you have no idea how long it takes to stop one of these.’

It wasn’t the best of starts.

Russ was in seventh heaven. He’d wanted to find a steam train ever since we decided on the route. The engine had been built in England back in 1951; a W-class 4-8-2: the numbers denoting the number of wheels, four, eight and two. I’d driven the sister engine to the
Mallard
which had been built much earlier and this was a different layout. But on the footplate, shunting backwards towards the platform it was just the same: the feel of the thing, the heat, the hiss, the incredible clanking noise. I remembered Bob (the driver at the Watercress Line) telling us that there was nothing as dead as a cold steam engine and nothing more alive than one with a fire in the box. He was right; even if you’re not particularly into them, steam trains have a way of attaching themselves to your soul. It was very atmospheric - the smell of sulphur, the rushing sound from the boiler like a massive pair of bellows.

As with all steam locomotives, the water level in the boiler was critical. Fired by burning coal, the boiler fuels the steam chest that in turn fuels the pistons. It is fed by injectors and regulated by a pair of safety gauges - too much water creates its own problems but if there is too little the engine becomes a time bomb. The most important job for the fireman is to keep a check on the water levels and that was my responsibility. As we rolled through the Australian countryside I kept one eye on the gauges, especially going up and down hill. Every now and then I would open the injectors to suck water from the tender into the steam chest and when the levels were back to what they should be I’d shut them off again. The pressure was measured by two gauges: one for the steam we had available and one for the steam we’d actually use. The massive pistons that kept the wheels rolling operated on a bed of steam and the more pressure they were under the faster they pumped.

It was a great way of chewing up some miles but it was a complete contrast to the solar car, which we joined a little further up the road. Kelly really did look like a cockroach, especially from the back. In order to drive you had to lie in the cockpit, and when the roof was on you were completely enclosed, which was quite claustrophobic. There were dials and gauges telling you the wattage available, and a screen to use for reversing because you couldn’t look behind.