by Paul Carter
I’m not sure where the outback begins and ends in Australia. We passed signs now and again telling us we had just arrived in the outback, but I preferred to gauge this based on when road signs started warning me about getting clobbered by kangaroos, cattle, sheep and camels—and let’s not forget the local armed outback Queenslanders; I definitely knew I was in the outback when I saw signs peppered with bullet holes. That, and my body was slowly cooking. This was the first of our long, dry and painfully slow stages into the red heart of the country. Matt hung back about a kilometre behind me, occasionally giving me a heads-up via the radio on a fast-approaching road train. This gave me enough warning to stop the bike and get off the road. Without Matty’s warnings, I would have been in trouble; with all the vibrations my mirrors were effectively useless. The alternative was a road train—a massive thing that looks like a building with wheels—barrelling up behind my back wheel doing 130 kph and with no intention of stopping. Even pulling over had to be done with great care, as the shoulder was soft, and littered with dry sun-bleached animal bones that could puncture a tyre.
Roma was the goal; Roma was a place to rest for the night. I focused on the road ahead, and forced myself to pay attention. You live inside your helmet on a long-distance ride, but it becomes Wally World after a while. You drift, way off into other times, other places. While I rode I made lists, thought about tits, planned extensions to my house. I thought about the past a lot, revisiting childhood streets and alleyways in Scotland, like a morbid Google Earth. I jumped forward and backward through my past, made lists of people I wanted to catch up with, then crossed off the ones who were dead.
The problem is, if you let your brain box wander, your bike will eventually follow, likely straight into an oncoming road train. Rule of thumb, as I was repeatedly told by mates who know, guys who are long-distance riders: expect the worst, plan for the worst, and know yourself before you go. I have spent long isolated times away overseas with only my mind for company, so I knew hour upon hour, day after day of riding alone with only my thoughts rattling around in that helmet would be OK. Sometimes it would be a little dark, perhaps a little sick, but always within the realms of sanity. And of course I knew there was a truck a few k’s behind me, so no matter what, I had back-up. That made all the difference. Attempting a ride like this on Betty without back-up would have been foolish.
When we stopped to refuel and drink some water, Dan would hop out of the cab while I was filling up Betty and ask me questions with the camera rolling. The answers I gave him were not always decent, polite or civil, or even comprehensible. But he rolled anyway. It helped keep me sane.
I ran into other riders along the way, guys chucking The Big Lap like me. I tip my hat to all of them: they were out there alone. Some had gone bush, tackling the likes of the Gun Barrel Highway, the Canning Stock Route or Gibb River; some were just mad, having completed the Finke Desert Race—basically, about two hundred k’s of old railroad service track through the bush from Alice Springs to the town of Finke. Not too bad, I hear you thinking, but this track is hell on earth; you would be safer thrashing your bike across a minefield. There are corrugations deep enough to park a car in, and there’s no maintenance done on the track—ever. But that’s OK because you’re doing 140 kilometres an hour; at that speed you’re just planing over the top of everything and hanging on for dear life. So I listened while Geoff, the rider I chatted to during a break in the town of Jackson, told me how the Finke nearly killed him. Then he turned his attention to my steed. ‘Is that fuckin monstrosity a diesel?’
There are countless disadvantages to riding an experimental bike like Betty around Australia, lack of power being paramount. Close behind is the lack of comfort—the vibrations had my arms feeling like they had just come from the dentist; I kept dropping things—and at this point, the lack of spares. We were down to the last CVT belt, and Roma was about 80 k’s away. I waved to Geoff and took off, praying to the god of spare parts that my drive belts would turn up safely in Roma, all the way from Mexico.
Soon after Jackson, the road up ahead changed colour. I call that colour ‘Hint of Death’; it’s not quite brown, more of a reddish-brown mix. If this stretch of highway on my map was scratch-’n-sniff, then most people would vomit when looking at it on the way through Queensland. Plus, it looked like I was about to cross the frontline into some kangaroo civil war; littering the road before me were hundreds of stinking smashed carcasses in various stages of decomposition, from just splattered to bleached skeletons. I could smell it before I could see it, that rotting stink. Everyone else on the road was moving fast enough to rip through the pong before it made them gag—for other riders sitting on 130 kph it was just a matter of picking your way through the carnage and missing a breath. For me it was half a dozen breath mints and a prayer to the CVT belt: ‘Don’t fail me now.’
Australia relies heavily on the humble truck, the road trains that snake through our major arteries, but they don’t stop for anything, especially the wildlife. Some parts of the road resembled streets I’d seen in Kabul right after a bomb had gone off. There were bits of bodies all over the place, and with the bits come the birds. But here it’s not the odd crow, it’s packs of crows, big ones, and the formidable wedgetail eagle.
Those birds are masters at playing chicken, no pun intended. Many times during the ride I came around a corner to find a giant wedgetail enjoying the never-ending all-you-can-eat road-kill smorgasbord. They would have heard me coming a mile away but just sat there motionless in the middle of the road, giving me the ‘one day soon’ look before reluctantly moving off at the last second.
Our ride into Roma was very tiring; the sun had turned my helmet into a convection oven. Finally we reached the town, and Matty got on the GPS and navigated us to the motel.
Roma is where Australia’s oilfield started; the first wells were drilled out here in the late 1800s. I knew there would be enough oilfield hands milling about to make the next 24 hours interesting.
We pulled in to the motel, truck first, at dusk. I hopped off Betty and tried to cross my numb fingers while I asked the motel manager if a courier bag had arrived for me. Nothing. I tried to fill in the registration card, but my dead hands couldn’t form letters so Dan had to do it. The motel was laid out in a big U shape and we had to drive past all the rooms to get to our room for the night. The place was full of oilfield hands, who sat out the front drinking in small groups. They tracked our slow circle round the car park, pulled the standard squint at Betty and wandered over as I got off and slid my sweaty head from inside my baked helmet. ‘Mate,’ said a big fella sporting a roll-up that dangled from his bottom lip and a sauce-stained, hard-yacka work shirt. ‘Is that fuckin thing diesel?’
We all chatted for almost an hour, swapping stories and drinking beer. Then I got on the phone to try to find out where the CVT belts were. Steve was as encouraging as ever. ‘You’ll have them tomorrow, mate, late afternoon.’
I hung up. Dan looked at me enquiringly. ‘We’re going to have to stay here for two nights, mate; the belts won’t get here until tomorrow afternoon.’
Dan looked tearfully happy at the thought of a lie-in the next morning. ‘I’m gonna get some beers,’ he said, and took off. Matt departed in search of food he could actually eat.
I couldn’t relax though. I had a routine, it had to play out every night, no matter how tired I was. The bike needed a going-over in preparation for the next day. I had a bad case of ‘equipment anxiety’. I’m used to planning everything down to the last detail, but with Betty there were daily issues. Overcoming them was just part of the game played out each day. It was psychological warfare at times, a war of attrition between Betty and me. The wicked vibration from the diesel single shook lots of things loose, so I would lie there in the dirt with a spanner and cast my eye slowly over the bike, checking her from front to back. I had a little white paint pen to mark bolts so I could see if they had bac
ked off. I changed her oil, cleaned her air filter, checked the fuel lines and oil filter. I checked the tyre pressure on both Betty and the truck, lubed up everything that moved and polished everything that didn’t. Like many riders I have an obsessive compulsive bond with my bikes. In Betty’s case it was a pure love/hate relationship.
Matt came back with Dan. They had bought a slab of beer, two burgers with the lot and a salad roll. We settled in for the night, talking to the drilling hands in the cool night air well into the early hours.
Morning saw Matty putting a new sign on the back of the truck; he’d been down to the hardware store in town and come back with all the kit to make his own contribution to the ride: ‘Caution Slow Bike Ahead’.
He was standing on the porch with a coffee when I came out to squint at the truck in the daylight. ‘Nice work, mate.’
Dan was still asleep; all that running around with a big camera in the bush had taken its toll on him. ‘Get the fuck up, you lazy cunt.’ Matty leaped onto the bed and started jumping up and down until Dan got up.
After breakfast we decided to check out the Big Rig, an outdoor museum of sorts dedicated to the history of drilling in the area. We met the manager and got the full tour, and ended up spending the whole day there talking oilfield. Roma was very friendly to us, not just another outback town but one with a rich oil industry background. We pulled into the motel car park later that day. I ran in to reception, and there on the countertop were my CVT belts—all the way from Mexico. ‘Yes!’ I ran out waving them at Dan and Matty. We could hit the road again at first light. I was beaming as we rounded the car park.
This time some new faces milled about and there was a lot of laughter. A big bald Canadian guy sauntered up: ‘Hey man, are you Paul Carter?’
I pulled off my helmet. ‘Yeah.’ I stuck out my hand, he shook it and started laughing.
‘Dude, call your mom.’ Everyone burst out laughing.
‘You what?’ Then the penny dropped. I’m not very good at staying in touch with my family; it’s not unusual for a month to go by between phone calls to my mum. She lives in France in a tiny village—not that it makes any difference where she lives, she could live on another planet and still find me. I knew she didn’t like the idea of me leaving my girls behind to go gallivanting around Australia on a motorcycle, and when Mum wants an update, she gets an update. She worked in the oilfield for 30 years and knows how to find people. I’ve been on rigs in really remote Third World toilets, where a two-way radio is considered top-notch, high-tech communications, and my mother has tracked me down.
This time she’d surpassed herself. ‘G’day Paul, how’s yer mum?’ said the guy in the next room as we passed on the porch. I discovered that Mum had tracked my slow progress as far as Queensland and decided that Roma was an obvious place for us to stop for the night, so she got online and found the numbers for all the pubs and motels in Roma and simply started calling. It didn’t take long for everyone in Roma to hear that the oilfield writer—and by all accounts, mummy’s boy—Paul Carter hadn’t called his mum for a month. Matty and Dan found all this hilarious. For the rest of the night as different guys knocked off work and returned to the motel, they each gave me a huge grin and asked how my mum was doing, and it went on for the next two days. ‘Is that fuckin thing diesel—and have you called yer mother yet?’ Finally I gave in and called her. ‘Hi, Mum, I’m fine.’
The next morning Roma trailed off in the distance behind me: no more mum jokes, just a nice easy run on the Warrego Highway to Morven. I felt upbeat and well-rested. For people who don’t know, riding a motorcycle for extended periods can be physically and mentally hard.
I heard a lot of shit before I left to go on this ride. I thought about that for a while as we slowly rolled towards central Queensland. There were many people who supported me, but there were also lots of punishers, the sort who stay safely within their comfort zones in suburban bliss and feel compelled to make comments like: ‘Why would you bother to ride a bio-fuel bike round Australia? What’s that going to prove?’ or ‘You girl, with your support truck’ or ‘You’re not even going up to Cairns or off-road properly’ or ‘Mate, I’ve been round ten times . . . in the nude.’ Several of them said, ‘Your truck burns conventional diesel so what’s the point?’ I would go through the motions of explaining that if I did convert the support truck to run on the same fuel as the bike then I would need to haul more fuel around than the truck could carry. You can’t just pull up and get bio-fuel at every service station. Besides, I didn’t have the funding to do all of that; I only had enough to cover the basics. Anyone who manages to tee up a big ride is doing well in my book, and I have huge respect for the adventurers who actually get off their arse and do it. In fact, none of the riders I met on the road made comments like that; there was only mutual understanding and curiosity about the ride ahead.
A few hours out of Roma, we pulled into a tiny smattering of buildings and a roadhouse. Matty filled up the truck and I parked across the street in the shade, quietly sitting on Betty. I began to take off my helmet when the ground started shaking and I heard the roar: dozens of Harleys rounded the corner; the riders braked and backed their bikes in next to me in a long row, back wheels to the kerb. Pulling off their helmets and gloves, they dismounted and slowly gathered around me and Betty. My backside puckered. They all looked like real bad-arse bikers, with full-sleeve tats, big greying beards and dark wraparound shades. Oh fuck, this is the bit where I get to find out if Betty fits up my arse, I thought.
‘G’day mate,’ said a particularly big biker with gold teeth and a black bandanna.
‘Hey fellas.’ I tried to sound confident, but to these guys I must have looked like a lost schoolgirl on a Vespa.
‘Is that fuckin thing a diesel?’
Well, thank God for that, they were actually really nice guys. We had a good chat, then they all had a beer in the roadhouse and we continued on.
Matt came on the radio as we pulled out. ‘Mate, I thought you were going to get proper fucked then,’ he laughed.
‘So did I, Matt.’
Next stop, Morven.
It took time to get from point A to point B each day, partly because Dan is a perfectionist. Several times a day the truck would speed up and overtake me, then Matt would pull over, and Dan would spring from the truck and set up his camera. When he was ready, I would ride past, so Dan could film me approaching and passing the camera. Then Dan would jump back in the truck, and Matt would start the process again. That, or Dan would get me to turn around and ride past again so he could shoot the bike riding off into the distance; this often involved having to do it a third time so Dan could shoot the ride with his long lens, or a fourth, fifth and sixth time because of light, weather, traffic, or some other problem.
Sometimes they would scout ahead looking for a good spot to shoot, and this was when a road train would usually come out of nowhere and scare the piss out of me. Sometimes we would pass something that Dan liked and both Matt and I would leave Dan by the side of the road or he would take off up a hill or into the bush with his camera, tripod and a two-way radio to set himself up for the shot. Then we would backtrack a few k’s and sit there in the 45-degree heat slowly cooking, waiting for Dan’s voice to tell us he was rolling. Once we’d ridden past, he would come over the radio saying, ‘Shit, I didn’t get the shot, do it again’, ‘Shit, there’s a fuckin snake chasing me’, ‘Shit, my battery’s dead’, ‘Shit I forgot the long lens’, ‘Where’s my stills camera?’ or ‘Have you guys left me here? Come back . . . Hey, come on . . . this isn’t funny.’ Sometimes he took off into the bush and forgot the two-way radio altogether. This all added to my frustration; I had no idea how hard it is to do a ride like this on film.
Past two in the afternoon, we were heading into the sun, and the glare was directly in our eyes. I was riding with sunglasses, tinted goggles, and a tinted visor and I still str
uggled with the glare. We pulled into a dusty little place and stopped outside the pub, where I toe’d out Betty’s kick stand and got off. A dozen or so young blokes were sitting under the verandah, knocking back beers and laughing. As I turned I realised they were laughing at me, but I nodded and smiled. One young man stood up, looking a bit pissed and sunburnt. He ambled over, puffing up his chest and grinning. Here we go, I thought.
‘Is that piece of shit diesel?’
I smiled again—a bit thinly this time—and left my helmet on, just flipped up the visor. ‘Yeah mate.’
He looked over my shoulder at Dan, climbing out of the truck with his camera. I turned around and thumbed the comms. ‘Get back in the truck, lads, and go.’
‘Are you fellas makin a porno?’ the young lad asked. Interesting angle.
‘No, why do you ask?’
‘Well, you look like a big cock to me.’ He had a laugh to himself, and his mates joined in.
‘That’s a coincidence,’ I said casually. His brow furrowed, waiting for it. I glanced over at the boys sitting on the verandah; they were just pissed enough to go for it. Oh, well, I’ve come this far . . . ‘Coz you look like a giant cunt to me.’
Game on. It didn’t get that bad really; the bike was the first thing he went for, he missed on the first swing, and I was long gone.
Morven finally loomed up on the horizon ahead, being met by the sun on its way down. ‘Let’s go straight to the pub, I’m hanging for a beer.’ Dan’s voice over the radio sounded relieved.
We pulled up directly outside the small-town hotel and wandered in. I was pulling off my lid as I walked up to the bar; a middle-aged woman serving sized me up as I approached. ‘Bald head, motorbike, you must be Paul.’ I stopped, nodded. ‘Call ya mum, there’s a good lad.’ She walked off. Dan was pissing himself and Matt handed me his phone.