Kingoonya , Oodnadatta , Innamincka , … are exotic sounding little places accessed only by adventurous travel over “dirt highways” by adventurous travelers determined to go absolutely…. nowhere.
One night one hundred and twenty pounds of kangaroo rolled over the left fender of the VW Beetle to leave the windshield a spider web of shattered glass and two occupants startled shitless. Obviously unable to hop faster than the Beetles 65 mph the poor beast paid the ultimate price for the poor decision that my oncoming headlights must have been the mornings rising sun …….and Skippy wasn’t the only road hazard out there.
In his “The Last Frontier” famous Australian musician John Schumann described in song the Australian Outback roads as corrugated highways in reference to the endless series of horizontal ruts they tend to develop. These ruts ….or corrugations… force a driving speed of 15mph or less….or 60 mph or more . Anything in between will just plain shake the vehicle to pieces and this creates some very intense hairiness when coming up behind a “road train” that’s doing only 40 mph…..
Road trains are tractor trailers with three or four trailers in tow supplying the Australian Outback its commercial needs. Seemingly often while at passing speed and halfway past the third trailer I would face the realization that I’d likely meet the oncoming traffic before reaching the front end of the road train thus creating some very heavy, heart in throat, braking action. And there is something else out there ……
There is dust ….I don’t mean Lemon Pledge it away type dust….I mean your clothes tied up in a plastic bag in the trunk will need a wash even if you’ve let the previous car get a three mile jump ahead to let it settle so as not to choke your air filter so quickly type dust. Its called bull dust and apart from its ability to choke any autos air filter it settles into those large and periodical craters in the road giving a false image of smoothness. At 65mph + it’s suddenly an abrupt, almost imperceptible smoothness that tells the experienced his front wheels are about to slam the opposite rim of an unseen crater with force. And while we’re here I might offer yet another tip should you head out for a road trip into the Simpson or Nullabor deserts……
Never, ever run over a wombat…..the size of an extremely large ground hog this animal is one very solid ball of muscle. You will undoubtedly send the poor bugger to his grave….but he’ll likely take your car’s oil pan with him.
and bring food and water…..AAA is days away
