rienced the real aboriginal culture of
Warburton and one that isn’t a com-
bination of forced racism and fear.
The Warburton Roadhouse wasn’t an
experience I’d choose to remember.
We’d all known that this day, with-
out doubt, the road ahead would get
worse. Closer to the border with the
Northern Territory, the roads aren’t
maintained by local councils or a
state government. The Great Central
Road essentially ends at the North-
ern Territory border and becomes a
series of federal government admin-
istrated tracks, with little significance
to major transport routes these tracks
are often neglected.
With 100 kilometres between us
and Warburton we’d pulled over to
take a break. Finally, the weather was
warming, sunny and dry. A strong
crosswind blew from the north-west
yet riding was comfortable, 80kph
easily averaged.
Constantly changing, the land-
scape was starting to feel more like
traditional desert, although still very
green. Evidence of apparent human
interaction was diminishing. Dere-
lict cars had become almost non-ex-
istent. Amazingly the road had still
been in very good condition.
We’d knocked the distance off
very quickly and by the time we’d
stop for lunch we were only 30
kilometres from our next destination
of Warrakurna. Aboriginal travellers
passed us from both directions, en-
thusiastically waving support. I’d felt
that we were being welcomed to their
land and they appreciated the effort
we’d made to come to them.
Well-fed, we’d moved on and dis-
covered the road quickly deteriorat-
ing. The relative smooth hard packed
surface was replaced with deep grav-
elly sand made ever more treacher-
ous by the numerous wheel ruts of
passing vehicles. There’d been no
easy way to ride these, ploughing
through seemed to the be the only
option. We’d been encouraged to
TRAVERSE
24
continue by a large group of aborigi-
nal women and children sat roadside.
Not wanting to disrupt their business
we’d continued, as they’d waved and
cheered us forward.
Exhausted, we’d finally pulled into
Warrakurna Roadhouse. In many
ways, the most secluded of all the
roadside stops, funnily enough here
camped the most travellers. Dis-
cussions with the ‘locals’ and fellow
travellers soon highlighted that to-
morrow would be a tough ride. Ac-
cording to one traveller, in a well-
equipped 4x4, it took him 9 hours to
do 280km, but he was adamant that
we’d be alright, “you’re on bikes”. I’d
walked away questioning that wis-
dom.
Warrakurna brought a loss of one
and a half hours. Travelling east
meant we’d entered a new time zone,
a massive jump forward in time, an
earlier the normal bed time. Over
dinner we’d discussed what lay ahead,
the plan of attack, the contingencies.