With a once in a lifetime opportunity arising to spend time with my sister Margaret from Hobart and daughter Pia from Brisbane in Alice Springs in June/July, two options were available to get there. More bitumen, or dirt. Having spent excessive weeks on bitumen in the past month, like thousands of kms of it, in Broome I began to seriously consider the Gibb River Road, challenging every sensible conclusion I’d previously entertained about the reality of gravel roads, the stamina it entailed, and the suffocating dust. Not to mention my relatively constant anxiety about the reliability of my rig and what the fuck happens if I bust a tyre or suspension, or shatter the windscreen with no mobile reception?
At the caravan park I approached a number of people with red dust on their vehicles. The first was a woman. Her husband was out of earshot! I often find women’s perspectives vary enormously from that of men. The road was shit, she offered with creased brow, the corrugation shit, the hours long, the tension to the body exhausting. We screwed the shockers on our 4 X 4 caravan, she said with raised eyebrows. Right, I thought, that’s that! No fucking way.
Some hours later I ventured out again. This time I spoke to a guy. Whilst he considered the road ‘poor’ he brought his map over to my site and together we studied the rivers and waterholes that traverse the road. I found my mindset shift. As a water sign in astrological terms, the enthusiasm he expressed for the gorges and waterfalls and swimming holes had a weighty and positive effect on me. My mind did a 180-degree pivot.
On the morning of my departure, unsure of correct tyre pressure I was directed to another camper, an engineer who’d also just completed the crossing. ‘Good strong rig you’ve got there’ he said, ‘you’ll be fine’. His assurances were medicine to my mind. Slow down, watch out for the sea of pointy rocks that jut out unexpectedly from the road, they’ll split your tyres, and have fun.
In the final analysis, the road was indeed shit! Your ability to enjoy the landscape on either side of the road is compromised as your gaze is continually fixed on the road five metres ahead, always on guard for those shitty sharp rocks. How can you enjoy the sights when your body's as rigid as said rocks? Travelling at between 20 to 50 kph, I could manage only a couple of hours driving a day, at most. If you can imagine those long white plastic tubes electricians have on their vehicles, and then imagine them coloured brown/red and lined up at right angles to the road, you’re on the way to visualising the experience. I was sometimes so exasperated by the hoons sitting on 80 kph, whose speed would send up great clouds of red dust, blinding the driver travelling in the opposite direction, I would pull over and curse loudly, and send them a retrospective finger! It came to me that the Gibb was their testosterone theme park, an adventure to be seized at maximum hormone levels. Carpe diem! Observing vehicles pulled over at the side of the road, ripped tyres, busted shockers, and a roll-over or two, often vehicles I recognised as having passed me at great speed, was cold comfort. I learnt to navigate the road with trepidation and caution.
The magnificence of course is in the pause that occurs when you reach your destination. The national parks and gorges and soaring ripe apricot coloured escarpments and quirky roadhouses and waterholes and characters on the path I’ll remember to the end. I’ve attained my Certificate 101 in Creek and River Crossings! The key is in gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, keeping revs up, and hoping for the best! The knowledge that I completed The Gibb without injury to body or machine is a mini triumph to my sense of adventure.
