The last 50 kilometres of the day before I lock Percy up behind the Bundaberg Grand Hotel and book in, provide some great riding. And a couple of quiet beers (Queenslanders couldn’t give a XXXX for any other beer) at the almost empty Club Hotel followed by a stroll along the river ends my day.
In the morning I get an email from my brother Malcolm in London, who asks, if I ever get lonely on these long rides? I take the smaller roads heading north towards Rockhampton where I plan to leave the coast and head inland. As I ride, I think about my brother’s question. And I realise that for someone used to and comfortable in their own company, solitude becomes something of a drug – a thing to cherish. So, the answer Malcolm, is “no.”
Through vast stands of sugar cane, the small towns of Rosedale and Lowmead, the Mount Colosseum National Park and past my first dead kangaroo, a big grey, I emerge onto the Bruce Highway for coffee at the Big Crab Café in Miriam Vale. At a road works red light I see my first live ‘roos, half a dozen or so of them grazing on a hillside in the distance.
I stop for lunch in Rockhampton, parking my bike on the footpath where I can sit alongside. An Aboriginal family, mum and three kids wander by. The eldest boy, wearing a rugby jersey and a cheeky grin says, “Nice bike mister,” before skateboarding off.
Chapter Three.
Into the Outback
“Into the great wide open
Under them skies of blue”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
It gives me a little thrill to leave the populated east coast, for this afternoon I’m heading into the outback. I’m not sure where the ‘outback’ starts but this certainly looks like it and each revolution of Percy’s wheels takes me deeper into it. The Capricorn Highway stretches on ahead, disappearing into the distance, spinifex and saltbush on either side while the winter sunshine dances on the tarmac. The land is as flat as a pancake, as though it’s been levelled by a giant steam roller. Is it warmer already or is it just me? I feel a bit guilty for not riding up to Cairns before heading west but I’ve arranged a couple of interviews in Longreach and don’t want to be late.
The Highway runs alongside a major rail link which carries enormous coal trains from Central Queensland to Gladstone and other east coast ports. Along with the black stuff, this is also cattle country and signs warn of unfenced areas.
My body is getting acclimatised to riding now. My highway pegs are a godsend, enabling me to move my butt around in the saddle as I stretch my legs in various positions. I felt a bit of a twat with them back home in Christchurch but out here they are very fitting. I can also lift one foot (or both) and rest them on the top of my engine crash bars. High above me an eagle hawk wheels, probably looking for fresh road kill.
I’m now in the Bowen Basin which is home to several large coal mines of which the modern little town of Blackwater, ‘Coal Capital of Queensland’ is the service centre. Some 15 million tons are transported to Gladstone annually. With 500 kilometres on the clock I decide to call it a day and end up in a well-appointed cabin, surrounded by high-viz-clad miners.
You won’t be surprised to learn that Blackwater, discovered by Ludwig Leichardt in 1845, is so named because of the dark water in nearby creeks believed to have been caused by coal deposits, Its population has halved from a high of 10,000 in the mid 1970’s.
Back on the road, after an “oh shit” moment when Percy refused to start, I’m contemplating my naval, figuratively speaking, brooding on the relativity of time and wondering how far my tank of fuel will last in this headwind, when I swerve around a dead ‘roo and a whistling kite launches itself in my direction, twisting away at the last second. I sometimes get a bit of a warning of road kill ahead by the smell of meat putrefying in the sun.
The light out here has an intensity that gives the most mundane things a startling clarity. I wish I was a painter and could whip out my easel and water colours, to capture it but make do with another digital photo. The landscape looks a lot like Texas, minus the nodding oil derricks.
When I first came to this magnificent country a lifetime ago on a working holiday visa in 1980, full of Vim and invincible, I clearly remember my first trip into the bush. How, used to the watery sunlight of England, I found the red dirt, brilliant sunlight and gum trees as alien a landscape as I’d seen in my young life.
As my bike eats up the miles, I pass the occasional dirt road and mail box indicating some kind of human presence. Emerald is buzzing with well-turned-out travellers (I’m guessing they must be the owners of all the white 4-wheel-drives towing caravans and campervans I’ve been sharing the road with) and an Italian-themed coffee shop seems a million miles away from the awesome emptiness that lurks on the edge of town.
About 200 kilometers from Longreach I cross the Great Dividing Range at 444 metres. I’m now in the Lake Aire Basin and if there was any water around, it would flow westward with me. I’m suddenly amongst a forest of smallish red ant hills that extend away from the road as far as I can see.
In a run-down pub in Jericho I forsake my usual coffee for a cold beer – it would probably have been instant anyway. I ask the portly owner how long it should take me to get to Darwin. “I could do it in three days,” he replies. “But on your bike, youz should piss it in a week. Youz going right round, are yuz?”
I nod as he hands me my beer in a stubby holder, “On ya mate!” he says, before serving the only other customer.
Road trains thunder past heading east, hauling cattle to ships, abattoirs or greener pastures as I carry on to Longreach, which emerges in the late afternoon. On the way I pass two emus on the road side of a stock fence behind some stunted trees. One swivels its head as I ride past, a brief vignette in my peripheral vision.
Friend of a friend Lisa kindly puts me up at the Pastoral College where she works and has arranged for me to chat with a couple of colourful locals. She’s a great lady and incredibly helpful. I’ve barely unloaded the bike before John arrives, looking like he’s just stepped out of a Western movie. After a firm handshake I hop into his ute and we’re off in a cloud of dust to his place of work.
Rural Trainer John Arnold
As we drive, we get to know each other. John still has his wide-brimmed hat on and with his boots, jeans and steely gaze, he looks every inch the cowboy. He’s a tall and rangy 62, but looks younger. He was born in the outback, in a little town on the Queensland/NSW border where his father managed sheep and cattle properties. It’s the only life he’s ever known, and his earliest memories are of being a tiny boy, following old stockmen around, riding a worn-out old stock horse.
“I came here when I was two, so I’ve been around Longreach pretty much most of my life; I guess that make me a local,” he says laconically.