WHEN DOES
THE ROUGH
STUFF START?
How The Gibb River Road Made Us Laugh
L
aughter filled the still, hot,
dusty air. We sat trackside, the
occasional 4x4 passed by, some
with trailers, some without. A
flat front tyre had brought us to
a halt somewhere on the road
between Winjana Gorge and Tunnel
Creek. We laughed.
We were nearing the end of the
dreaded Gibb River Road and were
laughing that the road often de-
scribed to us as a breaker of both bike
and body hadn’t lived up to expec-
tations. Weeks earlier numerous
‘travellers’; road users and tourists
had said that we were crazy to at-
tempt such a road. We now laughed
as we thought back to those days.
Was this what we were warned about?
Almost 600 kilometres earlier we’d
left the bitumen and took to the true
Gibb River Road, one of Australia’s
iconic outback tracks. Like most of
these tracks, the Gibb is spoken of
in hushed tones, an air of reverence
descends upon the many conversa-
TRAVERSE 85
tions. The Gibb strikes fear into most
travellers; apparently remote, deso-
late, dangerous and devoid of life.
We laughed again as I refitted the
front wheel to the 800GS.
“This road is shit,” I smirked.
“It’s about bloody time,” laughed
the reply.
Since crossing the feared Pente-
cost River crossing near the El Ques-
tro tourist resort we’d had no other
problems. A rear flat didn’t count,
it seems the tube had been pinched
… operator error. We’d laughed at
the time and more so the next day
when we realised I’d waded halfway
across the river, to push the stricken
bike from the water, while apparently
crocodiles were keeping a watch of
what was on the menu within that wa-
ter. Salties. Big ones. The sort that
kill, we were told. We’d laughed.
The flat had forced a two night
stay at Home Valley Station. Another
tourist resort, not as commercial as
El Questro, just as luxurious. It was