TRAVEL FEATURE - AUSTRALIA
RICHARD REED
OUTBACK ROADHOUSE OUTBACK ROADKILL
“
Guys ! Something must have died ! It smells so bad I can taste it !”
A few hundred kilometres from Uluru , in the frigid night air after a long afternoon of slipping and sliding on sweltering sand and bulldust , we had all pulled over to put on extra clothing , wondering at the source of an almighty stench kicking up a row in the bush .
As layers went on , we took turns shining torches into the outback , expecting a festering kangaroo to be noisily rotting .
“ Some maggot ridden corpse must be right by us !”, yelled Dave .
More torches , more searching , yet still nothing . Dave eagerly chucked on his inner layers from his panniers , then jumped back into his adventure jacket . On three headsets we heard a collective “ ohhhhh … shhheeee …”.
Turns out pickled herrings don ’ t much belong in the great outdoors , even less so in a sweaty pannier , sloshing around the entire compartment , deep into warm linings of adventure jackets . For the remainder of the evening , Dave was forced to travel at the back , as the pong was staggering . To quote the man , it was like climbing inside a dead cow .
The four of us had set off from Melbourne only a few days previously , destined for sunnier climes in Darwin . If only we ’ d realised how damned sunny , we ’ d have stayed indoors !
Our route north lay through Mildura , west to Burra then north via the Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park where our tour split : one , on a road-bike , would head south back towards Port Augusta and Cooper Pedy ; and three would head north along the adventurous Oodnadatta Track from Maree to Marla , where we would all join forces once again and saunter smoothly up the Big Red
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