Mataranka to Darwin – God Love the Melon Pickers

The warm, clear waters of Mataranka Hot Springs, Northern Territory

Last year Alicia and I moved to the Victorian high country to do some pine planting. In winter. To say this was an ill-thought-out career move would be a gross understatement but while thawing in front of the fire in the Myrtleford hotel one night I had negotiated with an angry Belgian guy to buy all the camping gear out of his wrecked Ford wagon.

            “You give me ze rip off but I don’t care, take all zis shit.”

            And for $100 it was done. Tents, eskies, sleeping bags, cookers - a bargain. Fast forward 8 months and as I sat in the Mataranka pub watching the heaviest rain of the Wet season scour the campground, I knew that Pierre (or whatever his name was) had got his revenge. I had taken just under a week to travel the 3300km from Melbourne and I had camped nearly every night. And every night something new and interesting had happened to my ‘bargain’ tent. By now it was less nylon than duct tape and there were no pegs left to anchor it with because they were holding the poles together. Now I was deep in the tropics and it was not in ideal order to withstand the foot of rain that the tail-end of cyclone Yasi was expected to drop. I would need to get awfully drunk to sleep in that tent.

The fatally wounded tent. RIP

Luckily I was in the Northern Territory where it’s not considered a hangover unless you’ve woken up with someone else’s turd in you underpants. In the candlelight I ordered a beer and inquired about some food. The Irish bartender said that she’d see what she could do but with the power cut it would be hard. A very drunk man with a face so creased and brown he looked like a baseball mitt invited me over to his table and I got chatting to the residents of Mataranka caravan park. After a while it was obvious the power would be out for a while and the waitress cooked us all steak on the gas stove. One of the residents told me to park my bike in the bar and sleep in the ‘melon pickers quarters’. Somewhat to my surprise – especially about parking in the bar – the waitress agreed. So I spent the night drinking slightly warm beer by candlelight chatting to the three Irish backpackers who worked there and their boss who, late at night in a fit of drunken bonhomie, offered me a job. I slept in the melon pickers quarters – basically an empty backpackers dorm – and woke furry-mouthed in the morning to find that my tent had disintegrated. Sacre bleu!

I took a reviving dip in the natural thermal baths. The water was so clear I could see turtles swimming 6 feet below. A canopy of huge webs stretched across the pool, a brightly coloured spider in the middle of each. Eventually I packed my damp gear, dumped the sorry excuse for a tent in a wheelie bin, eased my aching body onto the bike and left for Darwin.

            And it rained. And rained. 600kms and 9 hours of constant, heavy, drenching rain. Big fat rain. Like riding through a waterfall. And cold. Honestly. Cold. I mean really. Deep in the Australian tropics and shivering like a bastard. Jesus. Sometimes I was down to 60kph in a 130 zone because the rain was streaming down my visor and the bike was skating and aquaplaning over unseen puddles. By the time I reached Mitchell St in Darwin, the backpacker-ravaged main drag, it was dark and I could not have been wetter. Dripping and shivering I parked illegally and walked into Melaleuca on Mitchell, the first backpackers I found. The tattooed girl working the night desk looked at me.

“Orright mate? Bloody ‘ell, you’re wet”.

See, I told you it had been raining! Near Katherine I stopped at Edith Falls. You can swim here in the Dry Season.

            I checked into a cheap dorm and waddled, clothes and all, straight into the communal shower. I did that thing that you see in movies that I didn’t think anyone actually did and sat on the floor of the shower fully clothed making contented moaning noises, like a half-drowned cat rescued from its weighted pillow case. I kicked a snoozing German out of the one free bunk and proceeded to stank the place up pretty good with my wet, mouldy motorbike gear. The four Germans in the room gave me haughty, disapproving glances now and then, but whether that was because of the smell or just because Germans do that kind of thing, I couldn’t be sure.

4000 overloaded kilometres at (relatively) high speeds on baking desert roads is a good way to bugger a rear tyre.

            Late that night, I woke to a sparking, smoking electrical socket in the ceiling. Turns out the water evaporating from my leathers strung all over the room, combined with ze Germans unplugging the air conditioner to charge their laptop, had caused critical levels of condensation to seep into the electrical socket. Woops.

            The next few days were spent trying to sell my bike before my flight out to Bali and drinking with various staff and residents of the hostel. I found out, somewhat to my consternation, that my new roommate Connor was one of the prime suspects in a series of shit-smearing incidents in the hostel toilets. I learned from the receptionist Lauren that a few weeks ago the former prime suspect, a strange kiwi vagrant, had been summarily beaten by outraged residents. Bowed and bloodied he had left. The following week, however, the arcane symbols had reappeared in the second floor mens loo. Connor himself blamed a copy-cat shit artist but the night cleaner – a 65 year old Geelong taxi driver, friendly in that edgy taxi-driver way – refused Connor’s conciliatory beer that night.

Our week in Darwin passed by in a blur.

            After a failed eBay ad, I had to go old-school and handwrite for-sale notices and post them (literally, not in a Facebook way) on the backpackers noticeboards in town to sell the mighty Nighthawk. I also posted on Gumtree.com as an afterthought and as I was losing weight at the local carwash polishing and cleaning the old bike in the million degree heat and hundred and thirty percent humidity, a young kiwi stoner called. He wanted to look at the bike. The next day I had $1600 in my hand and a skinny Auckland-born drug addict with no motorbike license was the proud new owner of the faithful steed that had bought me 4000kms through rain, heat and floods from one end of the country to the other – as far as you can go without falling into the sea.

            A couple of days later, Alicia flew in and we wasted a few hot, rainy days pleasantly tooling around Darwin, including one confusing night involving three drunken soldiers, an ‘entry only’ tattoo and the only gay bar in Darwin, upon which I see no reason to elaborate.

Very early in the morning of the 16^th Feb, after an all-nighter in Darwin to save on accommodation, we flew out on a $95 Air Asia flight to Denpasar, Bali.

Melbourne to Mataranka – Hot Hot Honda

A sweaty idiot at the Devils Marbles.

By 10am on the last day of January 2011, it had already hit 40 degrees in Horsham, Victoria. Beside the Western Highway sheep huddled together in the shade of the occasional gum tree, wheat crops swayed in the furnace wind and my Honda was getting hot. I parked outside a big Woolworths, took off my helmet and staggered into the air conditioning. 300km down, 3500 to go. Over a can of coke I looked at the bike. It leaned low over its stand under the weight of my pack and camping gear bungee-strapped to the seat. The paintwork glowed dusty red in the blinding light. It looked upset. 

The CB 250 was designed for commuters. It was small, light and economical. Only months before this bike had been plucked from a comfortable life carting an IT professional around suburban Melbourne – kept under cover and never carrying anything heavier than a Macbook Pro. Now it was carrying 50kgs of camping gear and a sweaty idiot from Melbourne to Darwin – right through the middle of the driest inhabited continent on earth – in summer. No wonder it was narky.

           By Bordertown the north wind was slowing progress badly. It was like riding into God’s fart. I was singing Cranberries songs into my helmet and the heat was so intense one of my nipples had melted off. I found the local swimming pool and rode straight off the diving board. Well no, I didn’t really, but it was tempting. My feet were so hot that when I walked through the kiddies pool it evaporated. The thermometer on the kiosk read 44 degrees.

I floated around gently steaming for half an hour and decided that my goal of reaching Adelaide early next morning wasn’t going to happen. I rode another couple of hours and set up camp in a truck stop 30 km from Coonalpyn.
 

Lunch and an oil change on the Stuart Highway

            A couple of big rigs were pulled up and as I wandered past to stretch my legs a driver got out.

            “Hot.” he said.

            I knew it was hot because he was exactly the 57^th person to tell me.

            “Must be shit on the bike.”

            Hmmm.

            “Good beer weather.”

            My ears pricked up. I knew these guys had fridges in their cabins. Was he going to offer?

            “Course I can’t have any in the truck.”

            Ah.

            I limped back to my hotbox tent and crashed out.

These rest areas are dotted all along the Stuart. They're not pretty but they are free.

The next day was much more bearable and I cruised the 250km to Adelaide, enjoying the gently winding highway through the Adelaide hills. On the long descent into town the little bike hit 130km per hour – still a record.

I picked up a new clutch cable and spent the day hanging out with my mate Stu Harvey in and around Glenelg. He has a CBR600 and it was great putting around the pretty beachside streets together without having my bag strapped on or my jacket cooking me.

After an unspecified number of Coopers Pale Ales and some very decent take away pizza I woke up shite and briny, ready for the ride up through Port Augusta and into the outback proper.

            I was grateful for the cooler conditions, although it was still mid thirties. Riding with my jacket unzipped and streaming behind me was the only way to stay cool, plus it was a bit ‘easy rider’ which is always good. I had left all my cooking gear and some extra camping stuff at Stu’s so now I was travelling without a backpack which was a vast improvement.

With a 12 litre tank I had to stop at every roadhouse. Petrol at this one was $1.95 per litre.

            Stopping at Port Augusta only long enough to fuel up and wash away the dregs of a hangover with some dirty fast food, I set off north – only roadhouses, road trains and dust between here and Coober Pedy. At Glendambo I stopped while a heavy thundery shower swept across the desert. I told the Vietnamese ladies working at the roadhouse that I had been to Glendambo twice in my life and it had poured rain both times. What are the odds? The barman told me that this time three years ago he had been here during a 12 day spell when the weather had topped 50 degrees every day.

“It was shit.” he said with a thousand-yard stare.

I was glad of the rain. These light showers in the desert were like welcome little bursts of air conditioning.

Dodging showers in the desert.

On a roadhouse TV near Woomera I had seen the destruction in Queensland caused by cyclone Yasi. Everyone said that the rain would hit Alice Springs in a few days. I had been doing about 700km a day because I’d heard that parts of the Stuart Highway flood easily and I wanted to get as far north as possible before the rain hit.

After two days riding through flat scrubby desert, eating roadhouse burgers and camping in rocky rest areas I had an early lunch in Alice. Palm trees whipped over Todd St mall as black clouds closed in. The wind had swung around to the south and cooled down, giving me a push straight up and across the tropic of Capricorn.

            200kms later I came around a corner to find a row of parked vehicles, their owners nervously eyeing the 300 metre wide river that had formed across Australia’s main North-South arterial. Grey nomads with caravans and wives named Shirley watched road trains and Landcruisers bash through the torrent.

            “Look Norm darlin’ let’s just go back to Alice. You know what happened last time,” said the Shirleys.

            A group of aboriginal men drove through from the other way in a beaten up EB Ford, one fella driving and the others wading through knee deep.

            “Deep, eh?” I said.

            “Yeah. Gettin’ deeper, too.” One of them smiled at me. “But you’ll be right, eh.”

            Yeah, ‘course I would.
 

The Stuart Highway north of Alice Springs. It was even deeper farther on.

            On my first day riding I had stopped at Kaniva in the Western District and taken to my motorbike boots with a Swiss army knife, hacking three inch-wide ‘air vents’ in each boot. Up until now it had been a great success, giving my feet some air flow and preventing my socks from evolving into complex life-forms. Now, however, I discovered a downside as I rode through fast flowing water up to my ankles, over the little bike’s brakes, chain and engine covers. Can that be good for it? I wondered, as my boots filled with water and the current tried to push me into a road train which had decided to cross from the other side at the same time as me for, I presumed, some sort of moral support.

That night, after nearly 800kms and 12 hours riding, I made it to Mataranka thermal pools. I set up my tent poorly and lurched to the bar to get a meal and a beer. Just as I got to the open-walled bar, the sky exploded. Water streamed off the roof and within five minutes the road was six inches deep. That was about all I had time to see because as I attempted to order a beer over the din of rain on the iron roof, the power cut out. Cyclone Yasi had got me.