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On My Own - Australia and New Zealand 2002 Emmalee Tarry |
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The Red CenterStuart Highway Coober Pedy Ayres Rock Alice Spring MacDonnell Range Long Road North Katherine Gorge Aboriginal Rock Art |
 Author and Willy at Ayres Rock sunset viewing area. |
Ocean to Ocean on the Stuart Highway
At the end of the first week of August, I arrived in Port Augusta. I am a little tired of the cold nights and looking forward to the warm desert. It is time to head for Darwin and Kakadu National Park. I plan to be in Queensland by September in time to enjoy the migration of shorebirds from the northern hemisphere.
Port Augusta does not offer much other than a good jumping off point for the drive north. I filled up with gas and spent the night at a Big Four campground where everyone is poised for the long trip north. Most of the campers are retirees and old hands at this trip. Australians love their country are out to see as much of it as possible. Some just want to avoid the cold winter in Melbourne and Adelaide.
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I am a little apprehensive about the long drive through the desert. A birding friend who has been to Australia was horrified that I would even consider making this drive alone. There are stories about people running out of gas or dying of heat stroke in the desert. There is the still unsolved murder of a tourist two years ago on the Stuart Highway. My usual reaction to such fears is to minimize the risks and then to go for it. I resolved to always keep the gas tank at least half full. I would not drive at night or drive off the sealed road. And I always spent the night in a campground rather than camping out along the highway in the rest parks.
I bought a cellular phone at K-Mart for emergencies. That turned out to be a mistake. If you are going to buy a cellular phone buy one serviced by the largest telephone company in Australia called Telcom. Their phones work in more places that the others. Even their phones don't work most of the time in the Red Center.
I loved driving the Stuart Highway and now that the trip is over I look back on this part of the trip as one of the most satisfying. The Stuart Highway is a straight, level, two lane road with very light traffic. Most of the time I was the only vehicle in sight in either direction. I drove at a leisurely 90 and 100 km per hour. I could see a vehicle coming toward me for miles and had to remind myself to check the rear view mirror for vehicles catching up to me. On rare occasions I passed a car dragging a heavy caravan. .
There is plenty of petrol along the Stuart Highway. While there are few real cities along the road there is a roadhouse every 200km or so. The roadhouses are carefully marked on the map. Small cryptic signs along the road indicate the distance to the next roadhouse or small town once you learn to read them. A sign to Coober Pedy for example would say "CP 150". The next "CP 140". Petrol is expensive because it has to be hauled long distances from the port cities and there is not much produced to haul out on the return trip.
Car repairs and auto parts are not readily available except in the larger towns like Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, or Katherine. . The radio rarely had a viable station and when it did work all I could get was farm news or country music.
Look out for the road trains, sixteen wheelers pulling up to 3 trailers. They drive fast always exceeding 110km and expect you to stay out of their way. Every time one passed in either direction I would have to hold on to the wheel as Willy's high profile proved unstable in high winds or drafts from passing trucks. I read somewhere that in the outback the convention is to wave to every passing motorist. Tourists follow this to the letter. The truckers seem to ignore it.
One afternoon I noticed a caravan following me very closely. Irritated I slowed down hoping they would pass. The other driver slowed down with me. At the next petrol station, the car followed me right up to the pump. The woman then explained that her husband had refused to buy petrol at the last stop because he thought it too expensive and they were running low. Their reason for sticking so close to me was that if they ran out they figured I would help. Lost in my own thoughts I probably would not have noticed their car slowing to a stop. I am glad they made the station.
A motorcyclist flagged me down a long way from anywhere. He was out of petrol and wanted to know if I was carrying a spare can. From my days as a volunteer firefighter, I know that carrying a can of gasoline inside a car or van is a very dangerous thing to do. Spare gas cans should only be carried outside the passenger compartment so that if an accident ruptures the can it explodes out of the vehicle and not into the passenger area. This guy was heading south and had passed up Coober Pedy hoping to get to the cheaper petrol in Port Augusta. I offered bottled water, but he said he had plenty.
I also looked for the famous dog fence mentioned on the map. The fence was built to keep Dingoes from moving south into South Australia. It was a foolish idea that didn't work. I never saw any remnant or even a monument mentioning the dog fence. Nor did I see a Dingo in all of Australia or at least I didn't recognize it as such. The Dingo is a domestic dog introduced between 3,500 and 11,000 years ago and derived from the Indian Wolf. The Dingo was adopted by the Aborigines for the same reasons that man has used domestic dogs all over the world. This was well before the arrival of the Europeans. Dingoes live as wild animals in loose packs but also interbreed with feral domestic dogs. Feral dogs and cats are a big problem to wildlife in Australia because the climate is mild and they easily survive the winter.
Back in the 1980s a Dingo stole a nine week old baby from a camper's tent in Ayres Rock campground. The baby's body was never recovered and it most probably was fed to the Dingo's own pups. The authorities refused to accept the mother's story despite witnesses to the incident and prosecuted both parents for killing the baby. The mother, Lindy Chamberlain spent two years in jail before being exonerated. The bizarre story still raises strong emotions in many Australians some of whom still think she is guilty. I read Lindy's autobiography and think she had a poor defense attorney. Most Australians can't believe that Dingoes are dangerous to humans and I also think that Lindy's strong religious beliefs irritated people.
Many of the campground have free libraries of used paperback books. I enjoyed reading both novels and non-fiction about Australia as I traveled. The best free book was one written by a Queensland goldminer picked up at the Kingfisher Lodge in Queensland. .
Mostly I was alone to enjoy the beautiful desert. Desert is perhaps too harsh a word for these arid lands support lots of vegetation. Trees with blackened trucks contrast with the red soil. Here and there a shrubs bloom profusely. I got my first look at the Desert Pea a small ground hugging forb with bright red flowers.
There are very few places to stop along the highway as the shoulders are very narrow. Every now and then there is a picnic area and early in the morning there would always be several campers spending the night. It is legal to camp in these areas and some people spend days in these free areas. If the stop has water and toilets, some people seem to be living in them. These stopping places were always barren so I learned to avoid them.
A Gibberbird flew across the highway shortly outside Port Augusta. I saw a flocks of little green parrots several times. Emus and Kanagaroos are seen every now and then. Kangaroos and other desert mammals are most active at night which leads to their slaughter by the road trains. There were lots of dead kangaroos every day.
The Stuart Highway is Raptor Alley. Flocks of Ravens and Little Crows surround the carcass of every freshly killed kangaroo. If one of the birds looked bigger from a distance I knew it was a Wedge-tailed Eagle. Black Kites, one of the most common raptors in Australia were seen everywhere.
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