Author/illustrator/snake handler, Peter Burleigh , continues his epic outback demolition derby on the Kununurra-Top Springs-Dunmarra-Daly Waters–Wollogorang-Hell’s Gate stretch.
My neighbour Harry flies in on the 15th and we leave on the 16th. The others head for the bright lights of Darwin (watch them flash red, amber and green) and subsequently to Brisbane. Three of us are left to brave the vicissitudes of the Outback, which is populated by people like Ivan Milat, the Snowtown killers and John Bradley Murdoch. We are aiming to cross through the Gulf country to Normanton.
Life is full of misunderstandings. Boonie proudly produces a new “Companion” brand camping stove in a vibrant lime-green colour. This iridescent hue is probably the South Korean or Taiwanese idea of Australian bush camouflage but to Boonie’s embarrassment it stands out like a white dress at a brothel wedding. Harry, our new team member and normally a diplomatic person, sees the box with the big “Companion” name printed on it (with its catch-phrase “you’re never alone”) and asks Boonie if it contains a blow-up sex doll.
I have complained about being woken up prematurely by slamming car doors, grunts, pots clanging, farting, and booming tenor voices. “I’m looking forward to waking up naturally,” I forcefully tell my two companions, who decide to stay quietly in bed the next morning so I can get my beauty sleep. This is a wonderful opportunity to "wake up naturally" and rest until the body and the mind call me to consciousness with calmness and sensitivity. Of course I wake up at 5.30am.
We speed over sealed roads, lulled by springs working with shock absorbers and eat up the distance. Harry comments on the Droughtmaster cattle: “Good looking cattle. Big shining eyes.” He’s only been in Northern Australian for two days and he’s already talking like a local. New Zealanders are not the only ones with unusual tastes.
Across the NT border we camp in Gregory National Park at Sullivan’s Creek ($3.30/head, with access to snakes, spiders and crocs free of charge). We discuss religion, philosophy, space and time...and alcohol. In fact, the third bottle of wine brings new intellectual revelations to our understanding of these subjects. The people camped nearby send an emissary next morning.“We really enjoyed overhearing your conversation last night,” she says. “Are you guys lawyers?”...“Were we loud?”...“Put it this way, you were quietly shouting.” Calling us lawyers could well be an insult, but we take it as a compliment. If we still made sense after the second bottle it must have been an unusual discussion.
Following his intellectual examination of the Universe’s navel, Harry decides to dissect a termite mound, or what you might call a termite universe, of which there are 35 million in the immediate vicinity. He delivers a karate kick and peers into the broken top of the mound. The termites have instantly evacuated in the face of this violence, or the destruction of their mound had been predicted by their version of Nostradamus. This makes Harry feel god-like for several moments until he realises there isn’t much glory in being the deity of termites.
SNAGS AND JULIA GILLARD'S LEGS
We return to the "town" of Top Springs after an absence of more than four weeks. The same sausages and pies lie comatose in the Bain Marie. They are aging gracefully and their wrinkles could tell a story, but they have been sworn to silence by the manager. They are certainly aging faster than the surrounding countryside. There is nothing new to say about this execrable place except this is where we must rejoin the jokingly-titled "Buchanan Highway" which compared with the Gibb River Road is only a little less dramatically corrugated, probably no more than Julia Gillard’s legs.
We return to the "town" of Top Springs after an absence of more than four weeks. The same sausages and pies lie comatose in the Bain Marie. They are aging gracefully and their wrinkles could tell a story, but they have been sworn to silence by the manager. They are certainly aging faster than the surrounding countryside. There is nothing new to say about this execrable place except this is where we must rejoin the jokingly-titled "Buchanan Highway" which compared with the Gibb River Road is only a little less dramatically corrugated, probably no more than Julia Gillard’s legs.
Two hundred and fifty jolting kilometres later we reach the Daly Waters Hotel, situated at the end of its own side road off the Stuart Highway. We’re packed cheek-to-buttock with bikies from McKay, Queensland. They drive huge Harleys and Victorys; their exhausts rumble like multiple Krakatoa eruptions. Boonie decides to pitch his tent in the bikie’s enclosure, insisting that they are all “nice, normal people”. They warn him not to. During the night we fear he will be attacked by drug-crazed outlaws and tattooed to within an inch of his life. They run a movie from their support truck and judging by the soundtrack of screams, explosions and orgasmic grunting it wasn’t Mary Poppins. Boonie apparently escapes tattoo-free, but vetoes a full body inspection.
The bar is full and so are the customers. Every night they serve Beef n’ Barra dinners; a big slice of Barra and a piece of rare Scotch Fillet crammed onto a plate. Hey, who’s complaining? And every night a grinning idiot gets up to tell jokes about poofters, foreigners, lefties and tree-huggers and sings a few C&W favourites dealing with minorities and dusky people.
From Daly Waters the Carpentaria Highway staggers across to the Savannah Way and the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria, dipping, bridging, fording and bumping though an extraordinary network of wet and dry creeks which drain into the Gulf itself.
There are three famous towns in the vast 1200km width of flat, creek-cut once-tidal plain. The country is utterly flat. The first legendary place we reach is Borroloola. It’s a mess, and not a charming mess; the legend seems to have left town. The Tourist Office is impossible to find because of apocalyptic roadworks, a sudden disappearance of signs and general ignorance of its existence. When we do find it, it’s closed. We must go to the Shire office. Like many places in the region Borroloola claims to be a Barramundi-catching centre, but the girl at the office doesn’t know anybody who can take us out fishing or where to catch a barra.
We push on into 500km of red dust on the road toward Burketown. There’s a camping symbol on the map at a place named Wollogorang. We aim for that. The road is rough as guts and full of hazards. I spot a dingo at a creek crossing, sitting high on the bank and waiting for us to break down so it can eat us. The pre-sunset shadows slant over the road so you can’t spot the worst of the rocks and holes. A rear tyre whacks a stone with heavy force but the wheel doesn’t fall off. At another river crossing a road train literally has broken in half on its way out of the water; a prime mover towing three tanks of diesel fuel has snapped its linkages. It blocks the road but we get by. The driver says he’s waiting for help, which is expected as soon as tomorrow night. The crunched tanks leak diesel into the dust. The fumes overwhelm everything.
At last we reach Wollogorang. Camping Services Withdrawn, reads a sign. "No Entry. Business closed. Private Property. Keep Out." It’s nearly dark, no time to be driving in your kangaroo magnet on this shit road through impenetrable clouds of dust into holes and crossing creeks you can’t see the bottom of.
Appropriately the next – and only – feature marked on the map is a place called Hell’s Gate, 50km across the Queensland border. We make it after dark. The entirety of the place is a house with a petrol pump outside, surrounded by the rusting hulks of cars and trucks. In the front room looms a hunched woman wearing a beanie . The room is also a store. This is a stocktake of the goods on her shelves: 2 cans of Black and Gold sweet corn, $4 each; Banana Boat Waikiki suntan lotion, one tube, $15.50; 3 cans of Black and Gold beetroot, $4.75 each, one souvenir hat from a Darwin truck stop, $20, and a cat. They call the place a roadhouse. Their rules allow you to camp in a dusty clearing and use a toilet (or is it a shower?) for $20 per car. Faded posters warn of snakes, cane toads and encephalitis. And I thought anarchy put an end to rules.
A TOUCH OF INTERNATIONAL RESCUE
In the morning I notice a large blister on the side of one of my tyres, the one that hit the rock yesterday. I drove 50km on it on the roughest of roads and am lucky it didn’t blow. Now, of course, I can’t get the damn wheel nuts off. I go to the house and ask a mechanic for help. He brings a heavy steel spanner down to the noble Pajero, puts it on my recalcitrant wheel nuts and whacks the shit out of it with a hammer. The nuts give in. He is friendly and talkative.
In the morning I notice a large blister on the side of one of my tyres, the one that hit the rock yesterday. I drove 50km on it on the roughest of roads and am lucky it didn’t blow. Now, of course, I can’t get the damn wheel nuts off. I go to the house and ask a mechanic for help. He brings a heavy steel spanner down to the noble Pajero, puts it on my recalcitrant wheel nuts and whacks the shit out of it with a hammer. The nuts give in. He is friendly and talkative.
“Me Thunderbirds didn’t keep youse awake?”he asks.“Say again?”...“Me Thunderbirds. Had ‘em on. Got ‘em all. Watched ‘em last night. Too loud?”...“No, no,” I say diplomatically, not knowing what to expect from this guy, “I love the Thunderbirds.” Remember the Thunderbirds, the so-bad-it-was-good sci-fi program using puppets? That was the roaring noise I heard last night.
After jabbing the blister on my tyre he says: “Yer Dunlops aren’t too bad - fuckin’ weak walls though. Weak walls are shit. Ya know so far this year I fixed 23 punctures, 21 of ‘em Coober Tyres? They’re shit, mate, fuckin’ shit.”
Boonie and Harry stare at him in amused disbelief. Making new friends is one of the rewards of travelling in Australia. The bush would be colourless without this guy and others like him.“Other day fuckin’ bloke lost his whole wheel and brake drum. Drum came right off, shot away into the bush, pah-wingg! I come out to help him look fer it but his dickhead mates tramped all up ‘n down the road tryin’ ter find it and messed up the dirt. I mean, when your wheel or brakedrum comes off yer can’t see where it fuckin’ went – yer gotta follow its ‘snail trail’ in the dust, like a frisbee’d make flyin off along the ground. Fuck.”
“You ever find it?”... “Nah. Made up a wheel for ‘im, used bits and pieces from an old Toyota and a few extra washers and sent the fucker off to Brisbane.”
IN THE HEART OF BARRA COUNTRY ?
"Burketown – in the heart of Barra Country." The first time you see a sign like that you believe you’ve arrived somewhere special. After the fifth time you start putting it to the test. The girl at the tourist office gives us a mud map of fishing spots around town. With a bright yellow marker she indicates the two best.
“This creek corner here by the bottle dump, and this one at the Meat Works.”-“For Barra?”...“Um...well, there’s a lotta crocs at the Meat Works, prob’ly fish too.”Can we rent a boat? we ask, with no intention of doing anything of the sort. We’ve done all this before.“No...no, no one does that."No charter operators?“Nah.”..“But...’the heart of Barra Country’?”
She gives us a pitying look. OK, to hell with her. We’ll ask at the pub and get a straight answer. Harry goes into the Burketown Hotel ("Australia’s Greatest Outback Hotel" shouts the sign). Several patrons are breakfasting on Light Beer. Harry comes back shaking his head. “Nothing.”
In the Morning Glory coffee shop, the Filipina woman asks a local fisherman if he’d take us out in his tinny for a price.He answers instantly: “Nup.”The country on the road to Normanton is fuggly; flatter than Audrey Hepburn’s chest and dotted with sparse stubbly grass, spindly trees and cracked soil like grey ash. To my surprise beautiful grey Brolgas with red faces regularly wander across the road. I thought Brolgas were white; maybe these are Brolga Nomads.
Normanton itself is smaller than expected - 1500 people – and also claims to be the Epicentre of the Barramundi Universe. A brochure says "Fishing is one of the most popular activities in town." We see no supporting evidence of this. No boats in driveways, no ads for fishing charters in the local rag, and so on. Obviously all Normanton’s entrepreneurs have gone east or there’s been a purge.
Several well-preserved buildings line the street. The place has charm in abundance but no bloody Barra. The Gulflander Train is housed here at a cute station covered in old advertising signs and pot plants. We go to see it, but the train’s out on a picnic run. Today’s Friday. Every Wednesday it goes 150km to the end of its line at Croydon and back again, no doubt taking excited Grey Nomads to see Croydon’s main attraction, described as "the remnants of the Southern Hemisphere’s second-largest pig."
A young mother wheels her child around in a stroller and pauses to pick up a dropped toy. It’s a full size, accurate rubber replica of a snake, so lifelike my trigger finger itches. The child hugs it. What is this kid learning?
Our final destination on the coast is Karumba, a tiny town tucked hard into the south-east corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York. An acquaintance phoned me from there many months ago. He said Mexicans must have named it. He said it is a terrific little fishing village. We decide to ignore any signs with the words "Gateway", "Centre of ...", "Heart of..." and "Genuine Outback..." and go for it, not stopping until we get there. NEXT : Quaint Gulf towns , more Grey Nomads and elusive barramundi .
