Heading South - Broome to Coral Bay

It should not go unremarked that the cattle in the great unfenced outback display so much more attitude than their southern and eastern counterparts. To drive past a paddock full of beef cattle in Victoria is to see resignation, despair, and general lack of spirit. They could use some counselling, or better still, a few Gary Larson cartoons.

They contrast with some of the magnificent specimens I have seen in the NT and WA. I recall them emerging defiantly from the bush late in the day on the side of the road like the wild creatures they were, heads held high, horns untrimmed, their coat a lustrous reddish brown or shiny grey. The golden late afternoon light showed their condition in sharp relief as they strutted and propped, and snorted contemptuously in my direction. The dust they kicked up hung suspended in the afternoon light in a cloud around their hooves, adding to the show. They had a turn of speed and an agility which was improbable given their size. Their eyes were dark and intelligent, and untamed.

These cattle spoke to me and they said; ‘We know we have been released into these tens of thousands of hectares of mostly unfenced scrub to fatten ourselves for market. But we in fact prefer to view ourselves as unwittingly released back into the wild. We know that like the cattle dog the mustering helicopter’s bark is worse than its bite, and we do not fear them.  We will not be herded by them.  We fear not the horse encumbered with leather and rider. We have learned to jump the metal grid. Contrary to the plan for us we will grow fit not fat. We will only allow ourselves to be sighted when we seek excitement. We will stay in small groups and move fast. We intend to die of natural causes in this land we love, after long and exciting lives. Those who thought they owned us have underestimated us.’

At least I think that’s what they said, or maybe that's just what I read in their faces.  Anyway, I couldn’t help but wish them long and free lives, and a peaceful death many years hence in the mellow glow of late afternoon beside a waterhole never seen by white man.

The emu on the other hand is somewhat challenged in the magnificence department. This afternoon I was riding on a secondary sealed road towards the coast that boasts the wonderful Ningaloo Reef. The landscape had a gentle wavy profile of large red sand dunes covered in thick scrub. The dense scrub was 6 to 8 feet high and at times quite close to the road. So I was going a little slower than usual. With all the time in the world at its disposal, and with every piece of scrub for as far as the eye could see in any direction looking exactly like every other piece, lurking in the scrub to my left was a large emu with a sudden and important mission. I do not know what it was, but part of it entailed crossing the narrow ribbon of road at full gallop, head down and frantic legs and feet describing unnatural and irregular arcs which called for a silent movie piano score.

The sum of the events of the emu’s life and the sum of the events of my life had conspired to place us at the same geographic coordinates at the same time on this day. Given that my mission had a little more flexibility and that I was the only one of us equipped with ABS brakes, I decided to play with the gods a little and delay my arrival at the predetermined coordinates just long enough to let the emu (and me) have safe passage. It worked. I’m in Coral Bay relaxing as I write this, and the emu, extrapolating from the observed performance, is probably approaching the outskirts of Broome some 1300kms north of here, albeit a little puffed, going a little slower and with feathers in disarray, but with the wild look in its eyes unabated.

If only I had been going faster, the emu and I would never have encountered each other.   Is there food for thought in this proposition....?

Leaving the Sanctuary Resort donga complex in Broome on Thursday morning. Liz kindly took some of my excess equipment back to Melbourne with her, reducing my payload to more reasonable proportions.

The drive from Broome to Port Hedland is the most boring 605kms I have yet encountered on this ride. Unrelenting scrub-covered plains, no hills, curves or geographic features, and only the Sandfire Roadhouse at the 323km mark to remind you (somewhat equivocally) that the world has not ended.

Morning tea break.

This mightn’t have all the attractions of coffee in one of my Lonsdale Street haunts, but there was no waiting, the weather was entirely suited to being outdoors, there was no carbon monoxide, it was perfectly quiet, and those nasty fattening little Portuguese custard tarts were not available. Nor was an espresso.

But sipping the cool water from the snazzy blue flask Jess had given me, sitting on the picnic furniture so thoughtfully provided, the sun finally thawing the morning cool, not another soul around – I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to change at that moment.

 
The Kimberley and the Pilbara, a bit like Parkville and Brunswick, take nothing from each other despite their adjacence. The Kimberley is all outback romance and tourist delights, whereas the Pilbara to the south of it is all dust, dirt and work. So it is not surprising that well into the Pilbara, those in search of the tourist dollar continue to mischievously invoke the brand from the north.


But Port Hedland engages in no such pretence. It is a mining town pure and simple. Its residents like to call the area the engine room of the economy. Tourists do not come here, and they are not wanted. What is wanted is more iron ore, more ships to load it, and more people to perform the non-stop tasks of, unearthing, transporting and exporting.  Port Hedland is proud to be part of the Pilbara.

So all you blokes from the eastern states who in your youth headed west with a few mates piled into the old Holden to 'work in the mines', if you don't like unrelenting hard dirty work, be grateful that you never got any further than that pub in Scarborough.

The town of Port Hedland is essentially covered in red dust. Ships line up out to sea waiting to be lowered to their plimsoll lines with our mineral bounty. All plant in and around Port Hedland has variations on the MCG lighting to ensure that production never stops. Everywhere are new-looking white 4WD vehicles with orange lights, and luminous green-clad OH&S-compliant drivers and passengers. White safety helmets are universally de rigueur. Road trains with triple and quad trailers dominate the highways carrying large and expensive looking machinery. More have ‘wide load’ signs and escorts than not. Railway trains carrying ore stretch for 3-4kms, and require 3 or 4 locomotives to propel them. Powerlines criss-cross the landscape, making a mockery of remoteness.

The excessively cashed up iron and steel industry spares nothing when it comes to accommodating workers from all tiers in the hierarchy. Houses, civic amenities, executive residences, and spreading dormitory suburbs for those who get their hands dirty – this overcooked mini-economy that is Port Hedland the town produces bizarre results such as this:

This old house has a view of the bay, for which read large piers with large noisy and dirty machinery loading ore onto a never-ending queue of large ships. This town will only ever be populated by iron ore workers and those who provide support services to them.

This house sold at auction recently for $2.4m.

 I had planned to refuel at Port Hedland (of necessity) and keep riding. But on passing the airport, I spotted a large new blue hangar and office complex with the name of a former client of mine in large letters. On a whim I turned left into the airport and asked if Clark was around. He was surprised and pleased to see me. Some years ago the civil aviation regulator sought to close this business, on spurious grounds unrelated to any safety issue. In fact at that point, the business had operated accident-free for over 20 years and more than 80,000 flying hours, in the difficult arena that is the northwest of Australia.  It has improved on even that record since.  A trip to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Perth, and a bit of negotiation thereafter saw the regulator back right off, and the business continue. To say it has gone from strength to strength since then would be an understatement. Clark operates a fleet of very tidy Barons, as well as a Cessna Caravan and a Cessna 172 for the flying school. They proudly service the Pilbara and the heavy industry in it.


Clark gave me the Cooks' tour of the town, then went to the hangar and threw me the keys of his Cessna 172 and suggested I take him for a fly. With the sun only half an hour or so from the horizon, we taxied out for take-off on runway 36 in increasingly golden light. This Cessna has only flown 350 hours since new. Very nice.

 
 
 

 
 
 
Pilots, sunset, aeroplanes and a Nikon. The following photos were inevitable given that combination.
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
Thanks for your generous hospitality Clark.






The white gum tree is a wondrous thing. They appear to favour growing in and near water courses which can be identified in the distance by winding lines of ghost gums (as I shall call them, being unburdened by any knowledge whatsoever as to their actual name).


 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
A horde of motorbike gang members who style themselves as the Coffin Cheaters were heading north on
Highway 1 after a trip to Perth to attend the funeral of one of their number who apparently fell a little short of the standards embodied in the aspirational name of the club. They had a police escort as far as Nanutarra Roadhouse, which is where I caught up with the police.
 
 

I found a good spot to hide from the police, but only for a short time. When it was their turn to hide, they just drove off back to Perth.  Bad sports.

 
 

What you would see if you were tailgating me...and I wasn’t on the bike...and the bike wasn’t moving...and you weren’t in your car but were standing behind the bike....which wasn’t on the road, but beside it.

 
 

I took a slight diversion this afternoon to Coral Bay, instead of continuing down Highway 1 to Carnarvon. For no particular reason I had a good feeling about Coral Bay as I drove through barren scrub with termite mounds (easily mistaken for anthills) stationed at sensible spacing for as far as the eye could see (see picture above).  Was I prescient or had I just read ads about the place and forgotten about them?  Either way, the good feeling was vindicated upon arrival.
 

Coral Bay. The view from just in front of my motel room.

 
 

That’s my room, number 7, with the GS parked on the front verandah.  Excellent.

 

Coral Bay. 
I took a shine to this place, and intend to return with Liz. The whale shark season is over, so diving with them will have to wait until next winter. Ningaloo Reef is a coral reef which extends some hundreds of kilometres from this region to north of Exmouth

 

Well Hunto, a tourist finally asked to take my photo (unflatteringly, only with my camera) and so I acquiesced.

 
 
 
P.S. My Garmin Zumo 550 GPS died in Broome. I thought, what would Ewan and Charley do? Then it came to me – they would ring Garmin and ask them to sponsor them with a new one. So I did this, and the Garmin supplier readily agree to give me a new one (provided I gave them $900, which is approximately, well...exactly, the retail price without discount). So now I am (sort of) a sponsored rider, and my new Garmin 660 GPS is waiting for me in Perth.

[Remember, a left click on any photo in the blog should see a large high resolution version of it appear.]