The transformation from the lush pastoral and cropping fields of South Australia to the edge of arid desert is as dramatic as it is sudden. It occurs as one leaves the Clarevale and Barossa and comes over the Flinders to Port Augusta.
Port Augusta - on the edge of the 'other' Australia - goodbye fields of barley, hello desert barren; goodbye homogenous Euro society, hello aborigine human waste. Drunk or drugged in the middle of the day fighting each other, or yelling and punching out at personal demons, and if too exhausted from that, lying comatose on the town's main beach, It is a disgraceful testimonial to the Welfare State gone mad - handouts designed to keep the recipient out of sight and out of mind of mainstream Australia.
So they congregate on or close to their traditional homelands, many miles from Collins or Pitt St, a forgotten people tapped on the boundary between the Stone Age and the brewery. How ironic it is that an economy screaming out for labour to the extent that it is subsidising skilled, white South Africans to come on over, has meanwhile entombed so many in its deserts , lying idle, incapable of filling those needs. Whether it be the swill of Aborigines free only to walkabout in a grogged haze, or the incarcerated boat people of Woomera, the desert is apparently the prison for the Australia's unwanted.
It would be hard to find more stark a labour market mismatch than that the "lucky country" boasts. I'm reminded of the comment of the ex-Taranaki farmer who moved to Worrnambool citing as one reason, the "Maori problem" at home. I found that incongruous until realising that the "Aboriginal problem" is confined to such remote parts of Australia as to be irrelevant to almost everyone. In no way is it any less of a "problem" by being swept under the desert carpet - but it certainly has lower profile as a result.
Flies, flies and more bloody flies. Welcome to Outback Australia where no orifice is safe from the intrusion of Australia's desert scourge. And those living on the fringe understand the commercial opportunity this presents They sell head nets to the sensitive for $8. We were to find that this was but one example of the opportunities desert scarcity offers the enterprising. Drinking water, of which readily parched city folks crave between 3 and 9 litres a day of when subjected to the heat of the Outback, is available - but at $6 per litre only. Visa welcome.
It's quite a large area really. When you ride all day along sand and gravel tracks and have to do 350kms or more to make it to the next roadhouse, and what's more you don't see another vehicle all day, then you start to appreciate the enormity of the country. Of course you already knew that from peering out the window of you plane en route to London, having a sleep, and peering out again only to find you were still over Australia.
But on the ground it's an altogether different sensation. And when you get separated from your mates and are alone in Outback Australia with the heat and the mirages and the criss-crossing of tracks all to yourself, you very quickly get a glimpse of how people go mad and walk off into the nothingness and perish.
The roadhouses are where you get a glimpse of the life of the locals. They too descend on these air-conditioned oases in the evening to sip their beers, catch up on the day's local news and restore their batteries for another day of baking solitude. Some then drive 50km home. Out here where leasehold land is available for $1 per acre but in minimum parcels of 1 million acres, and carry only 4,000 head of cattle, the stations are homes for the jackaroos, ringers and drovers - at least when there's work for them.
And of course the Roadhouse bar is the entertainment centre for the district and the 200 locals who live within a 500 km radius of it. Thursday nights see topless waitresses flown in to spice up the evening, the sign behind the bar in the Birdsville pub reminds tourists they're in Australia and anyone wearing their cap backwards will be required to shout the bar.
Without doubt it is a unique culture and as you ride past the Burke and Wills tree where those explorers perished you naturally think whether this was what they were foraging for. But the mining and the pastoral farming requires very little labour, so it’s hard to see this vast territory ever attracting more than 50-100 people to its major settlements. The cutest town we stayed at had a permanent population of 7.
But the energy resources are vast. We rode past one thermal field that is large enough to supply all of Australia's energy needs. That's a lot of Project Aqua's rolled into one!
They have drilled so deep in one prototype field that they've approached the heated core of the earth. By pouring water down the hole they produce steam that then drives turbines and creates electricity. A clean, infinite supply - maybe a technology for New Zealand to exploit too.
Side by side with the marvels of Outback Australia's energy sector there exist some more curious innovations of somewhat less impressive magnificence. For example the 5500 km dog fence that theoretically keeps the dingoes west of the sheep stations of New South Wales. But it doesn't work. Just 70km from shutting the gate as I came across from South Australia's eastern border, a sprightly dingo ran across in front of the bike. Having failed to spot the elusive dog over thousands of desert where it is allowed to be, I had to come to where it's banned to see one!
Having recently seen the kangaroo bounced from Jim Richard's racing car we were a little more nervous to have a couple bounce across between the bikes on. Give me New Zealand's road-traversing possums as the preferable challenge any day.
It's a great country, we are lucky to have it so close, the similarities of the people make the prospect of economic and even political integration one that New Zealanders shouldn't find too hard to accept should that pop up at some stage. Right now we might get attractive terms given the story a couple of biking Aussies told us. They'd replaced the koala mascots on their bikes with kiwis when recently traversing Muslim countries!
| 
FEATURES
Printable version
PDF version