bars, some peanuts and a solitary orange.
Betraying my goal of simplicity, I revelled that night in a heater, a bar fridge, a hot shower and a TV. I remember watching the barbaric end of Silent Witness and ringing my ex-husband and waking up my daughters. Words and love tumbled out; we laughed, I strained to hear each hushed breath of my girls. Finally, we cried a little. Their voices carried the wisdom of children; the courage I needed to keep going.
I then watched a late night movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. I couldn’t think of any greater symmetry than watching this parable here, where I was, on the edge of something big. Something as indefinable as the vast deserts to my north, the Southern Ocean to my south, and the Nullarbor to my west. An absence of sense in my life had compelled me here, to this random place. But it was an abundance of sensibility, which would see me through. Awaking late and stocking up at the motel kiosk, kindness followed me into the day and as I explored the town in daylight, I could sense Iron Knob softening under her eerie mantle. People were restrained, but friendly. Dogs were happy. Sprinklers were watering the civic lawns and filigree peppercorn trees shaded picnic tables. It was the kind of place I would like to go back to.
The long straight stretches of the Eyre Highway are, I discovered, simply long straight stretches of highway. Until I reach the Nullarbor Plain and then what motorists call ‘boredom’ becomes my euphoria. Rhythmic silence…. or sprinting rapture… as Iggy Pop’s The Passenger propels me on an endorphin high…. then settling into the bush for the night…. humping my bike on my shoulder… the distant drone of the road trains…. the manifesto of stars…. the hard red ground awake under my sleeping mat…. the regret of no sleeping bag…. water bottles frozen in the arid cold…. the immeasurable pleasure of gathering dry sticks and burning off my toilet paper in the morning. The intoxicating fear that this lump of land upon which I rest has a shark-bite out of its side. And that if you go too close to the edge, the desire for that blue will pull you under.
Scrub sky sand sun scrub sky sand sun scrub sky sand.
Smells became acute. Small things become big.
The road signs signalling ‘Five kilometres to Kimba’, for example, are an event of disproportionate importance in my days. Each town duly informs me when I only have five kilometres to go. In a car, that would barely give me time to ask and decide ‘A Magnum or an Iced Coffee?’ On a bike, I have time to savour the dark skin of chocolate; letting it first crack at random, not forcing the melt, high on the aroma of dark cacao and white creamy vanilla, before its edges give in to my tongue.
When I had first dreamed my trip, maps spread wide across the floor in our forest home, I was determined to follow in the seminal footsteps of Robyn Davidson, her troop of camels and Diggity dog. Determined to escape from tall trees and lush ferns; to seek open space, which I imagined teeming with the sound of emptiness. However, as I lapped up every step of Davidson’s ‘Tracks’, I had to concede that being a mother of two young daughters was more pressing than traversing the centre of the continent alone by mountain bike. That was an expedition that even I, irresponsible though I was, realized needed meticulous planning and most of all, time. Months of time, which I did not have.
So, as a compromise, I chose East to West, riding into the sun, into a headwind, into oblivion. I chanted the towns on the map in my head; my song lines, as I ran along the fern-dense trails of our valley town. Funnily enough, the first two towns after one daughter and her best friend…Clare and Laura, followed by Wilmington, Iron Knob, Kimba, Wudinna, Poochera, and then, Streaky Bay. One of my many detours; turning south off the endless Eyre, turning left towards the broken Bight. I could not have imagined a crescent of sea and sand more perfect. Even the buildings were perfect; history and charm and nature in honeymooners’ harmony.
But my trip was not supposed to be a joyride… I had left my bathers behind. Not a restriction I resented, rather the simple task that I had set myself. I must gain an average of 100 kilometres each day; otherwise I would miss my plane home. And as much as I fell for the beauty here by the sea, I knew there were more obscure places to discover. So I left Streaky Bay late in the afternoon, pushing on to its lesser neighbour, Smoky Bay. I thought covering seventy-five kilometres would be a pleasant ride before nightfall. I thought wrong. The first half was uneventful, simply more of the quiet, scrappy bush which had become my habitat. But then the bush thickened, the trees loomed larger, and the sun slid down behind them. In the shadows, the road itself grew cold and I stopped to put on my leggings, fleece and hooded vest. I removed my earphones, saving Nick Cave for a bad day, for when I needed him most. Now that the light was leaving, I needed to hear what might be coming behind.
I was not prepared for what I heard.
Out of nowhere, roared two hotted-up cars, weapons more than cars: screeching and wheeling and swerving up beside me, pushing me into the gravel. Young men leered out of the windows, yelling abuse and hurling things. Then, with a flash of operatic bravado, the cars burned-out; tore off on two wheels, bucking up over the hill, and I thought I was safe. But no, within minutes the hoons hurtled back down towards me, and then I thought I was dead.
Miraculously, I managed to not fall off my bike; I kept riding with my head down, eyes fixated on steering through the gravel. My tactic was to pretend I was a guy: I could not let them see my face, smell my fear, or give away that I had wet my pants and was about to vomit. But after their last onslaught of obscenities, the cars just as quickly vanished; their twin exhausts spewing out stink into the tea-tree, roaring back to where they had come from. Perhaps the boys realised I was in fact a girl, and their Lutheran farm upbringings reigned in their rampage.
Push pedal pray push pedal pray push pedal pray
An hour and a half later, when I arrived at Smoky Bay, I was a wreck. All of my implicit belief in the rightness and therefore safety of my endeavour had eroded away with every lurch of those cars. I locked myself in an on-site van, until I realized I was being ridiculous, and so wandered around watching families gut the fish they’d spent all day catching.
Corner of Flinders Highway and Eyre Highway, Ceduna.
A riding-Frenchman and a running-Englishman are not the kinds of people you expect to meet in an Australian caravan park tilting between the desert and the sea. Actually I had no expectations of meeting anyone, certainly no more men. After recovering my faith overnight at Smoky Bay, I continued riding, but the idea of a rest day was taking hold. Today would be day eight, and by the time I arrived in Ceduna, I would have pedalled eight hundred and fifteen kilometres.
The western sun is relentless, and despite wearing sunglasses, my eyes are under siege; pelted by grit from passing road-trains, piss from veering cattle trucks, stinging-salt-sweat from my own brow and flies, fucking flies, which stick inside my eyelids and make me blind with fury. So blind in fact, that just as the minor road I am on merges into the larger Eyre Highway, one of those high-rise cattle trucks thunders past and I brake suddenly to avoid another shower of piss and shit. My worst manoeuvre yet: my wheels jack-knife in the bull-dust, I’m propelled over the handlebars, my panniers and I all landing in a cursing heap, maps and sunglasses and Walkman and eye drops splayed amongst bits of flattened kangaroos, eyeless birds and discarded coke bottles full of truck-driver urine.
Fucking truck muck fucking truck muck
Brushing myself off, rescuing my things, plucking the bits of gravel out of my bloody knees, elbows and palms; bizarrely glad to have this childlike reminder of grazed flesh, I decide I shall take that rest day.
So I head straight for the first caravan park.
‘Blimey
