This ride was a search for something else as well, besides the landscape and its profound ways of holding things. It was a search for what it was that I saw when I looked up as a young child, out the back of Grandma's in the dirt at Woorineen. Horizons and skies, things we might record with a camera, but something more. There was something deep and hidden in that vision which has made it dwell in me ever since. My life has been guided and centers around this unspoken something. A longing, a mystery, a promise, never close enough for words to give it literal content, and far away from any doctrines I have met. It is something which is always in things: in that horizon, in a particular afternoon's sky, in the sun on a WWII shrine, in a moment of great dense clouds behind rusting iron, in the aliveness of the air on a clear morning, or in the build-up of a storm. To be vulnerable in my flesh to all things on a motorcycle in this place, is to be throw myself at - into! - this something. Something deep and alive even if impersonal. Existence. But personal too: gathering so many lives and all their intimacy. So many lives and little things that matter and yet dissolve and get forgotten.
...
On Sunday morning I arose at 7am to find myself quite warm in my $39 tent until I opened the flap and discovered how cold the day was. I spent an hour working on the bike – checking the fuel tap, draining the carburettors and so forth. The fuel flowed well from the fuel tap on Prime, but was red with rust from the float bowls. Perhaps I had picked up some rubbish in some fuel, or rust had made its way from the fuel tank (I foolishly I have never fitted a fuel filter to this bike). Because the plaugs were white and the bike could be damaged from running too hot, I replaced the sparkplugs with an old set I had which were colder, and the bike ran terribly – I think one of those plugs was defective, so I returned to the hotter ones and went into town for breakfast and to look, unsuccessfully, for new colder plugs. It was 9am before I left town.
I had intended to take the highway to Bordertown and then head north, to explore every sealed road I could as close to Big Desert and Wyperfeld National Park. But instead I began this journey from Nhill heading north to Yanac.
Along the way there were friends to be made.
The roads out here expressed the true essence of multi-strada riding: the work of a group of artists known for their swearing and high-vis jackets, this road challenges the assumed boundaries between sealed and dirt road. Tarmac and Dirt, 2009.
As I entered Netherby – a town composed of a few churches and halls – I noted two cars and thought, “Well, the population of Netherby is present!” Throughout this ride, when I came to a small town I would ride up and down its streets to get a feel for the backside of the place. I did so here and as I came around the back of the town to my surprise I came across a large crowd, Honda banners, and dirt track motorcycle racing!
After the big boys had finished knocking themselves around, the Pee-wee 50s came out
With the prettiest of all in second-last place
I pushed on, taking short detours onto dirt roads here and there, amidst splendid country
There were naturally many wheat silos out here
And constant reminders of Spring
As well as frequent plaques commemorating schools which were no longer.
These now vacant spaces are no doubt peopled with ghosts for some older locals; I would love to see what they see when they stand at these spots.
I rode up the western side of Lake Hindmarsh, attempting to access the lake but finding the roads too slippery, until I entered at a better spot, only to be halted by a sand dune
Here is the lake
There is not much fishing to be had
I will come back here with a good supply of water and some way of marking my route, and do a hike out into the centre of the lake. I was quite tempted to do so now, however it was impractical and dangerous without proper preparation, and there was no phone reception out here.
Even on this cool day I was quite thirsty by the time I returned to the bike. I had filled up a bottle of water from a tap in Nhill, and now swallowed a mouthful. Salt! It was salty water! I had the sensation of having eaten potato chips. At this point I decided not to stop at other entrances of the lake, but to make straight for the town of Rainbow to get a drink.
I did however get a photo of one of the old-style power poles
And made it to Rainbow for lunch at the local servo
After lunch I went north out of Rainbow to visit Lake Albacutya. The road curved across the west of it and rose to a peak from which I could look out over the refreshing waters
I then road out onto the lake bed and stood for a while, taking in the silence
The entrance to the lake bed is also the site of an entrance, in the opposite direction, to Wyperfeld National Park, and so for the first time today, after choosing roads that extended as closely as possible to it, I finally made it to the park.
Taking the road back I made a friend
Here are the remains of the bridge over the river that connects Albacutya and Hindmarsh
I now took the road to Yaapeet and west into Wyperfeld. The road through this edge of the park, to the campgrounds, is about 5 kilometres long and slow and winding, but amidst open forest of grassy floor, which shifts between pine and gums
Along the way I met with a flock of emus. I took a look around the camp grounds, climbing the sand dune behind them
And made my way out again
On the road back to the towns I made another friend
The road now led to Hopetoun, and afternoon tea. Along all the roads are abandoned homes and buildings, something I always find in the more out-of-the-way roads. They fascinate me, with their suggestiveness of some story combined with their silence on the matter….
At Hopetoun I had coffee and a long conversation with the children and one intellectually disabled adult who surrounded me to ask questions about the bike. I tried to get petrol but the stores were closed.
My destination was Ouyen for the night and, rather than take the main highway I decided to take the roads north to Patchewollock and then a back road just north of there across to Ouyen. I had been riding at no more than 80kph all day due to the white plugs, and at this speed the bike had presented no problems, however the plugs were still white and I didn’t want to push it on the highway. Moreso, I always prefer to take the least used sealed roads in order to meander.
Heading north from Hopetoun the sky was glorious at the end of the day
One of the children in Hopetoun had told me to keep an eye out for a motorcycle that he and his dad had made out of old bits and pieces
The road north was good, with wide perfect sweepers, and a cold Spring air that was dense with the heavy scent of grass.
This final part of the journey was taking longer than I expected. The world dissolved into darkness rather quickly, and I reached Patchewollock on a chilled Sunday night to find a town with nothing for the traveller, its only illumination coming through an open door of a private house in the main street. So I continued north in the night on a lonely road, making for the intersection to turn right into the denser scrub toward Ouyen. I was cruising at 80kph. Suddenly there was a kangaroo at my left, and within an instant he had bounded in front of me! I grabbed my brakes hard and he passed in front just centimetres from me. Had I hit him I would have lain there in the cold and dark with no help, for I was to see no other traffic on this road. Given that things would be worse if were I to strike a kangaroo on the much more lonely road onto which I had intended to turn, and the fact that there would also be more kangaroos out there in that dense scrub, I resolved to instead go all the way north to Walpeup, and take the road east from there to Ouyen, a longer route involving a highway busy with road trains, where I would at least have help should I need it. So I cruised north at 60kph, constantly scanning the road-side.
Walpeup first appeared as a few lights floating in the night, and it took a long time to arrive, so much so that I thought I had been mistaken and was still in the empty darkness of the nothing. As I got close my bike hit reserve on the fuel tank – I had been unable to get fuel at Hopetoun – and it occurred to me that if there was not fuel in Walpeup then I might be stranded.
I arrived in Walpeup and everything was closed.
I found a campsite and considered camping there for the night, without any dinner, though I felt uncomfortable with my vulnerability alone in this place in my tent, with the only other human movement being a party of older teenagers nearby who sounded as though they were preparing for a wild night. I did not want that bored wildness to spill my way at 2am. I pulled out my phone but it was out of charge. I had to make a decision.
Riding at slow speed to Walpeup I still had to sit in the appropriate rev range such that I used up as much fuel riding at 60kph as when riding at 80kph in top gear. I calculated that, cruising at 80kph, I should – all things going well – have just enough fuel to get to Ouyen. If not, I would be stranded and vulnerable on a black empty highway far from anybody I knew, with no phone. Of course, riding at 80kph meant risking kangaroos, moreso because when another vehicle approached me in the distance – and the distances are very long and straight out here – I would have to drop to low beam, radically shortening the distance of my vision and thus riding blindly at speed toward any large kangaroos. The most rational thing to do might have been to camp in Walpeup, but I went with my gut-feeling, saddled up, gritted my teeth, opened up the throttle, and set my face to Ouyen and whatever would come next.
When I was five kilometres from Ouyen I no longer cared if the bike ran out of fuel, so relieved was I. I pulled into the service station with about 400mls of petrol left. I got myself set up at Ouyen caravan park, and returned to the servo for a hot meal.
Day Three, next post….
No comments:
Post a Comment