15 Jul 10 – Great Central Hwy (Warburton-Yulara)

By Lou:
I had been curious to see Warburton as Len Beadell had spoken fondly of it in his books.
Mind you, his experience was at the mission which has since been abolished and now Warburton is actually a closed town of aboriginal residents. So we rocked up to the mesh cage-enclosed petrol bowsers at the roadhouse beyond the settlement and an Irish attendant filled the car with diesel. What is striking in these remote and predominantly aboriginal communities is that you rarely see an aboriginal employee but you will find a European backpacker working to fulfill their requirements for a work/travel visa. This chirpy fellow was coping okay with the dust and heat but found the alcohol-free situation testing.
You can’t buy unleaded petrol in these parts in an effort to reduce petrol sniffing and there are signs everywhere advising to keep supplies on trailers etc under close watch. We had hoped to pick up a few fresh grocery supplies too and although I knew things would be expensive, I hadn’t expected exorbitant. Fruit and veg and meat supplies were low as they were expecting their fortnightly delivery the next day (non perishables are delivered in every off fortnight.). We grabbed a bag of frozen chops and thought they’d do for a bbq on the campfire, along with half a dozen grocery items, and grabbed burgers for lunch. A group of local, very dark skinned, aboriginal kids came into the shop and were livewires. They were quite interested in Sam (they were pointing at his blonde hair) and wanted to know his name. Sam was quite intimidated and put off by the snot running down their noses but we gently encouraged him to interact. He was quite bamboozled by all their names but I loved their cheeky grins and the shopkeeper was obviously quite fond of them. (Postscript: I marinated the chops for hours but they were as tough as the soles of my boots. We think they neglected to write "10 year old camel" before "chops".)

We wanted to get a statutory declaration signed by a police officer so first had to go to the shire office to get permission to enter the township (it's a closed community).
Whilst on that shire office mission we stumbled across an art gallery and had a great discussion with the curator and another worker. No exhibition was being held as they were in the middle of classifying several hundred original artworks by local indigenous women, and selecting 70 of them to be exhibited in an overseas exhibition. I found it surreal that work of a quality to gain international recognition could originate from this dustbowl called Warburton. Again, I was reminded how easy it is to drive through a town and discredit it based on the brief glimpses from the car. I am so intrigued by the two worlds aboriginal people appear to occupy: one of beauty, wisdom and talent, as seen in the art work; and one of squalor, neglect and lack of pride as evidenced in their neighbourhoods. I’m keen to get a handle on this whole disenfranchised aborigine predicament and love an opportunity to talk to non indigenous people who live amongst aboriginal people to get their perspective and the common theme so far is a sigh followed by “it’s complicated”. I would love the chance to get an Aboriginal’s perspective however opportunities to interact have been limited so far.

After Warburton we pushed on for a few hours and at about 5pm pulled into a roadside stop and joined a convey of 3 families (lots of kids!) for a campfire dinner and bunked down for the night.


Next morning we were away by 8am and headed to Giles Meteorological Station, the reason for which part of the Gunbarrel Highway had been made. We looked around the visitors' centre (well, room) which was dominated by Len Beadell memorabilia and then headed to the roadhouse to fuel up and get a drink only to find it was closed till noon due to a funeral. By the time we flitted around chatting to fellow travellers, scored a much needed spare trailer part from a complete stranger and gained 1 1/2 hours (although on WA turf they go by NT time), noon came by pretty quickly. The owners looked pretty morose and we acknowledged that it must have been a rough morning but it turns out they weren't invited to attend the funeral and had to close the shop out of respect. Craig and I both attempted conversation with them but struggled to get 2 grunts out of either of them and certainly no smiles. We had been told they'd only been there 6 weeks so either they were still shell shocked about what they'd got themselves into or they were already done in.

We continued on our way east but not at a cracking pace as the road had deteriorated since its grading several weeks earlier. It was very exciting to get to the WA/NT border as none of us had been to NT before. Despite the quality of the road deteriorating noticeably upon crossing the border, the scenery was actually the prettiest it had been so far along this route.
Just short of the border we came upon a solo cyclist from Poland who was doing it tough over the corrugations but was in great spirits.


We pulled into the first 'town' over the border, Docker River, just to sus it out and came upon a typical scene: lots of locals sitting around, with dogs and kids running around through the rubbish scattered everywhere. We did a lap and then pulled out onto the highway again only to come across some more locals.



We continued on our way until trailer woes pulled us up about 80 kms short of Yulara (Craig will elaborate). What I found curious was that the only 2 vehicles which passed by and offered help were women who had neither the tools nor the expertise to do so. I'm glad I had my bush mechanic with me and after x hours we were back on our way. It was a weary family that pulled into Yulara caravan park at 10pm.


By Craig: The Great Central HWY well never again, one very long, very bumpy and extremely boring trip.

Some exceptions were our visit to Giles weather station







and of course another brush with Len Beadell memorabilia.








Of course some of the towns we ventured into, missions or as they call them these days communities, were not so desirable. Docker River was an example of such a community.

Well I’ll leave the deep cultural discussion and learning to Louise as I am from a time and place that leaves me with a very blunt point of view. Work hard and you tend to have more respect for the material items you own. Some of the places we have seen and the way they are managed and kept are disgraceful and there only the places we are allowed into.
I don’t enjoy pulling into towns where the petrol bowser is caged up, the litter starts 1km out of town and the houses you can see are run down with old car bodies on properties outnumbering unbroken windows in the government provided houses.
It is unfair to comment further as our travelling has only briefly ventured into aboriginal communities however an observation suggests that if I was to act, live & present myself in a similar fashion I’d be fined, run out of town or locked up.

One place of interest was Lasseter’s Cave, poor bugger and what a task being an Australian explorer in the 1930’s. Lasseter attempted to walk 140km in desert conditions with less than 2 litres of water, what was he thinking. The cave in which he stayed in retrospect would have been the better place to recover and await others to arrive. A friendly aboriginal family assisted him in his attempt to walk but he only made it 55km and died.












Now I know ‘Shit happens’ but the trailer has had it’s fair share of happenings and yes I know we haven’t backed off putting it places it most likely shouldn’t be but fair shake of the old stork, enough is enough!
Well that’s at least what I was thinking when I was ratchet strapping the axle forward so that it wouldn’t disappear backwards out from under the trailer.
A quick assessment of the blue smoke pouring out from the drivers side trailer wheel was the locating pin which centralises the 9 leaf springs appeared to be broken allowing the axle to slide along the top spring. Not happy at all with the quality of the new springs, I will be having a discussion in the near future with the salesperson.


In the meantime the best we could do was to slowly drive into Yulara and after spending the night at the caravan park take the trailer to the one and only mechanic in Yulara. The bill? Well I could have bought a new spring but from whom??