The Oodnadatta Track, legendary outback road! Or so I'm told. It's the old track that follows the old northern railway and the roadhouses that are now there are where the engineers were able to find water , as there were the watering holes of the aboriginal people. You need water for people, but you need a lot of water for a steam engine. The track is entirely dirt for its 680km length and officially starts at the town of Marree. I say town because that's what it's called, the reality is it barely a settlement, not even a village. Once when the train came through I'm sure it had something, but now it's a hot dusty collection of buildings, a gas station, a pub, a campsite and well......fuck all else to be frank.
So it does have everything you need after a long hot ride, so I set up the tent, kick back for awhile, then head to the pub to talk shit with the other travellers that have stopped for the night. It is only travellers there , as the population of 8 either works at the pub, gas station or campsite, sometimes all three.
I get up well before the sun and pack up camp, breakfast and the other things you have to do in the morning and am on the road for 7am, hitch gives me just enough light to be able to see any large jumping rats or 5ft chickens that happen to be loose on the road.
This part of Australia is desolate in the extreme, it's not that it doesn't rain, it does, a lot at times, it just soaks away in to the sandy depths, the soil unable to retain the moisture. Around all you see is scrub and rock and vast, vast vistas, the land seem to stretch until the end of the world, it looks and feels like it has no ending, then all of a sudden , lake Eyre appears. I say lake, it's a salt lake, but it's a lake, Australia's largest in fact, 10,000 sq km when full, which it rarely is. It's drainage area covers almost 22% of the Australian continent, filling from as far afield as Queensland. Many due to the fact it is 12 metres below sea level. I can only see the smaller section, the southern, but in such a dry and barren place, any moisture seems out of place.
The ride is interesting because of its shear remoteness, but the road is not exciting, there is fuck all to look at apart from more desert, more rocks and more sand and after the first two hours I hit the corrugations, I hate, hate , hate corrugation! I cannot stress enough what a ball arch this shite is. Now a workman should never blame his tool, however in this case and as much as I love my BMW, the front suspension just can't cope with the oscillation that these formations create, the retirement totally unsettles the front end making it feel like there is no suspension at all.
There comes a point in anything you do in life where a challenge if it becomes a chore, then becomes uninteresting and dull. So after arriving at Williams Creek Roadhouse at the 202km after 5 hours of drudgery, I have to take stock of what I'm trying to achieve here, as at the moment, this ain't it!
I ponder over a very large burger as to the direction I want this trip to take, both geographically and style. My intention had always ride up the Stuart Hwy and turn left for Aires Rock heading west on the Great Central Road, which is likely to be 1400km of what I've just done and the problem with getting information from drivers, they have no idea what it's like to ride a bike, only a Landcruiser.
With a pounding head arch I decide that I'm altering the trip completely and head west 169km from Williams Creek to the mining town of Coober Pidy. The road is worse that the Oodnadatta, mainly as it get little traffic, it also get little maintance. It's corrugated and very sandy and remote. For the four hours I'm on there I see two other vehicles.
I arrive in to Coober Pidy at around 5pm and opted for the unusual option of camping underground. Folks around here have learnt to build houses in to the soft sandstone, firstly because they were and still are , all miners , second it's a lot cooler and third the billions of flies that inundated every orifice as soon as its exposed, or any other object with the slightest moisture. It's quite amazing to walk through a door and all the flies simply vanish, but I'm not complaining. I set my tent up in my allotted alcove and relax in it's cool air. This of course sounds great and at dirt I thing it's bloody marvellous, however as people get in to their own night time rhythm, you of course get the snorers, which is compounded by the cave, ear plugs in!
The following day I head out on to the Stuart Hwy and encounter my first road train, the legendary Ozzy trucks that are now only three trailers long, they used to be up to five apparently. With a length of approx 150 they are true monsters of the road. Heading down the Stuart is to say the least dull, it's a more of less straight road from Port Augusta , South Australia to Darwin in the Northern Territories . The scenery at times is beautiful in its bleakness, but with little to occupy the mind and the constant heavy down pours of rain, it's a tedious but necessary 560km journey to Port Augusta where I have booked a hotel for the next couple of nights. And there is nothing like a warm hotel room and a soft bed to welcome you on a pissy dark night.
Everyone told me that Port Augusta had nothing going for it, I beg to differ, but sometimes when your on the road the simplest of things are what you are after. All with in walking distance; a laundromat, a pizza restaurant, a motorcycle shop and a bottle shop, perfect!The day off is filled with a lazy breakfast, laundry, jet was the bike, check the bike, then most importantly, fuck all.
On the morning of Saturday 22nd April I leave Port Augusta as 7.30am, the sun is shining, but there's a nip in the air, perfect for biking. I'm straight out on to the Eyre Hwy which crosses the bottom of Australia, all the way to Norseman, nearly 1200 miles to the west. The ride is easy, just long, very long. I lose count of the distance I cover in the first day, but I arrive at the small town of Penong home to Australia's biggest wind will (fuck me) , but get advised to take a turn off to the beach where there is a lovely little campsite and there is! It's 20km off the main road, but well worth the effort, passing pristine sand dunes and pink salt lakes. I get there in time to set up camp and watch the sun set over the ocean, what more does a man need. Well three local lads are having a fire and invite me down for a glass or two of red wine. Good banter, wine and a fire, I'll take that.
I'm early the next day and ready to do some miles, there's not much else to do to be honest other than ride over the Nallobor Plain , other than crossing this dull piece of landscape, I can't honestly remember the day, it was not exciting, I just remember pulling in to a dull road house somewhere , but nowhere and setting up tent, eating and going to bed and there was some weird time change of 45 mins, who the fuck does that.
I'm now counting the kms down as the end of the road, well this road count down, which is only 528 today. Somewhere on this stretch I encounter the "longest straight road in Australia" which as I don't actually remember seeing a bend, well not as I know it, in the past two days , does slightly confuse me. It's a 146km stretch of road that is arrow straight, but it all just blends in to the scenery of other straight roads in this country.
Finally I reach Norseman, a pleasant enough small town that has a camp site with shade, a drive through bottle shop that will only sell me one bottle or a case of beer, a supermarket and all importantly they are having a ANZAC day remembrance the following day, 25th April.
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