Alice to Top Springs
Moon and I left Alice Springs on Thursday morning, heading north to Dunmara — the last petrol station before the Buchanan Highway. There are three possible routes into the Tanami desert from Alice Springs, the Tanami Track, Buchanan Highway, or Victoria Highway south of Katherine. All three lead to Lajamanu Road, a treacherous unmaintained track over Aboriginal protected land. The Tanami Track was closed due to flood damage and I’d been told in Alice Springs that the Buchanan Highway was also closed. My plan was to drive to the Buchanan and see if I could get through — saving myself the extra 600km transit through Katherine.
We breathed a sigh of relief, passing through Ti-Tree without losing a tyre. It’s an easy ride on the Stuart Highway, but we stopped often to get out of the furnace-like conditions. The central desert is in a heat wave and my bike is running so hot it’s burning my leg. We pulled into the ‘Devil’s Marbles Hotel’ (its real name is Karlu-Karlu) and, to our delight, found the place is run my dog-lovers! Moon was allowed into the air-conditioned pub for cold water and bacon before we hit the road again.
We’d planned to camp between Tennant Creek and Elliott, but as the day wore on I felt more and more impatient to get off the road and out into the desert — so we pushed on. We got to Dunmara, 1000km north of Alice Springs, late that night— on the last of my fuel reserves. We’d been on the road for fourteen hours, ten of them on the bike, and were dusty and exhausted. The roadhouse owner looked sympathetic but told us ‘Sorry, no dogs’. It’s fair enough. Many dogs up this way have mange or tick-borne diseases, so I said I totally understood and would camp along the highway. Buying more water for the night, I started putting the dog back on the bike… to Moon’s utter dismay. He threw his head back and started howling. The roadhouse owner, secretly a dog lover, relented and gave us the key to an airconditioned dongas for the night.
Next morning, I swapped out the 15-tooth sprocket for a 14-tooth, maintained the chain, reduced my tyre pressure to 18psi front and back, and headed to the Buchanan. Like an idiot I forgot to put pre-filters on my air filter so I’ll have to try to find air filter oil out in the desert!
The Buchanan Highway is 392km of heavily corrugated dirt road between Dunmara and Timber Creek, in the northern Tanami desert. It’s usually deep sand but because of the recent floods it was just mud — slippery bulldust mud. Trucks had gone through, carving deep ruts and trenches into the track. The surface had been utterly washed away in sections and until that morning the Buchanan had been closed to all traffic. Some Warlpiri Countrymen at Dunmara told me the road was passable, so we thought ‘fuck it’ — and went.
In good conditions in a Toyota Hilux I have driven the Buchanan highway in 3 hours. On the bike it took me five. For the first hour I rode at 40kph. The intense corrugations were effecting my steering and I was very aware that if I crashed it might be days before anyone found me. Moon and I stopped in the shade of a low eucalypt for water and I assessed our situation. With temperatures in the high 40s, heat from the bike, and only 10 litres of water, our progress was putting us in danger. Heat exhaustion is an ever-present concern out here and, after an hour on the bike, I was finding it difficult to open and close my hands. My muscles were weak and my thinking cloudy. Every time the wheel landed on a corrugation the steering would twist and unless something changed I’d have twisted forks to worry about.
I remembered my friend Vince telling me the best way to ride corrugations is at between 60 and 80kph, letting the bike float over them. The danger of crashing would be reduced but, of course, if the bike did go down it would be at a higher speed… But the heat was beginning to pose an even greater danger so I put Moon back on the bike and hit the throttle. Vince was right. At 70kph the corrugations were not so jarring (we didn’t ‘float’ but it was better). Staying out of the ruts was very difficult and once trapped in a rut, I was committed to remaining there until it ran out. These ruts were so deep that any attempt to get out of them caused the bike to tip.
Coming around a blind corner I was confronted with a dry river crossing — a wall of stones stood in front of it, boulders and shale around half a meter high… and I channeled my friend Vince again. “Momentum will get you out of most situations”. I was absolutely certain we would crash, but I threw my weight back, fixed my gaze on the clear ground beyond the rocks, twisted the throttle and prayed. The front tyre hit the stones and we were air-borne for a moment, then came down on the other side. How we remained upright I will never know.
We pulled over so I could reevaluate my life choices. I’m certain the only reason we made it this far was the 14-tooth sprocket. At times the bike felt like a tractor (the nickname for DR650s), clawing its way along surfaces that would have defeated it with the bigger sprocket.
Just halfway across the Buchanan, I was overwhelmed — terrified by the track conditions and unable to gather my thoughts because of the heat. We’d come too far to turn back — and I couldn’t risk jumping those rocks again, so we had to go on. Suddenly a huge flock of red-tailed black cockatoos swirled around us screeching. Anyone who’s spent time out here knows the black cockatoos herald the coming rain — and, sure enough, clouds began to appear. A few minutes later the temperature dropped a few degrees as a huge shelf cloud covered the sun. Moon and I ran back to the bike, thinking we’d get 5 or 10 minutes of cooler air to ride in. It lasted 45 mins!
After five hours of pretty terrifying riding, dodging ruts, racing over corrugations, jumping stones, we arrived at Top Springs Roadhouse and set up to camp.
Shelf clouds cooled the air but brought no rain. A group of contractors pulled into the roadhouse on their way to Delamere Air Weapons Range. Most of them were motorcycle lovers so all evening I received offerings of fruit and soup. “I’ve just brought you some apples… can I look at the motorbike?”. This entire trip I have been blessed by the kindness of strangers, and this night was no different.
As I fell asleep I thought to myself, “If Buchanan Highway was this hard, there’s no way I can ride Lajamanu Road. I’m beaten.” In the morning I would call my friends in Lajamanu and ask them to meet me here at Top Springs. I was done.
But, of course, things always look better in the morning…
