blah blah … “
I took off, the speed building. Thir-
ty, forty, fifty kilometres per hour. The
track dipped down toward the water,
here it comes. An explosion of water
erupted around me, a wave crested and
dumped its load all over me. The bike
bounced from one rock to another. I
was out of control as the bike bucked
and kicked, my hand slipped on the
throttle and the speed increased. Shit!
If I could just hang on for eight sec-
onds, I’d surely be crowned the rodeo
world champion.
The bike continued its path toward
the right, as the crossing kinked to the
left, I couldn’t get it back on track, I
was heading towards the larger rocks
marking the edge of the crossing; go
over those and the ride would be over.
“There’s crocs in these crossings,”
someone had told me at some point.
It was as if the rocks had taken pity
on me, the front wheel hit one, and
kicked slightly to the left, guiding the
bike in the right direction. I was still
out of control but now headed in the
right direction.
The bike continued to buck, to kick
and with one last massive flick to the
side I was thrown, bike and all onto
dry land. I’d made it across without
dropping my beloved GS.
“Ha ha ha … blah blah, blah blah,
blah blah … “, the voice came back to
me.
“She was 100% out of control,” my
partner, Leigh, was laughing with
someone. Another 4x4 had stopped
and remarked that they wish they
had filmed the whole crossing, they
thought it was impressive. “It did look
it, but it was unintentional.”
An hour and a couple of beers later
I was still shaking, the adrenalin re-
fused to subside. How could we go on
if this was going to happen every day?
This is the Kimberley, there were doz-
ens more crossing to come. Sleep did
not come easy that night.
The following day we reached the
granddaddy of all the river crossings
along the Gibb River Road; the wid-
est, perhaps rockiest and often most
TRAVERSE 49