The Outback’s Wildest Ride

WILUNA, Australia — Under the glare of the outback sun, our convoy of four-wheel drives pulls up to a well deep in the Western Australian desert. Some in our group have driven as much as 3,000 miles across the continent to reach this lonely place, the start of Australia’s most grueling overland journey, the Canning Stock Route.

All the vehicles are piled high with food, water, fuel and spare parts. It will take two weeks of hard driving across four deserts, from Wiluna--about 450 miles northeast of Perth--to reach Hall’s Creek, more than 1,000 miles northeast. We’ll be zipping up and down the thousand towering sand dunes that make the Canning a roller-coaster ride. On most days, we’ll be totally out of touch with the world.

The path we’ll be taking traces a line of 51 wells established by Albert Canning in 1906 for use by drovers (Aussie cowboys) mustering cattle from ranches on the Kimberley Plateau to the beef markets closer to Perth. Except we’ll be going in the opposite direction. Since four-wheel drives began making the journey from Well 1 to Well 51 about a decade ago, they have carved a two-wheel path through the deserts and over the red sand hills.

Only a few dozen intrepid four-wheel drives and their passengers dare travel along the Canning each year, but they are rewarded with some of the most stunning scenery in Australia. There is not a single house, no gas stations, no doctors, nothing. But that’s part of why the Canning is one of the greatest challenges for drivers and their passengers.

There are 12 vehicles in our group on this hot August day--three filled with paying passengers, of which I am one. Most of us are Australian, but there are also a few British travelers and one Italian. There are no Americans because the Canning is little known outside Australia. For the most part, we are four-wheel drive enthusiasts who spend our vacations challenging outback tracks in the mud-logged jungles in Australia’s far northeast, in mountain country near Canberra in Australia’s southeast and, of course, in the forbidding deserts of Western Australia, site of the Canning.

Paul Guest, the 27-year-old expedition leader and son of the company’s owner, Russell Guest, gathers us around him. “We’ll be traveling through some of the harshest, most desolate country on Earth,” he says. “So do exactly as I say, or you could put us all at risk.”

The Guest family has a commercial operation guiding four-wheel drive enthusiasts over the most challenging tracks in the country. They are well known among the four-wheel drive crowd who sign up months in advance for trips such as the Canning. We met at Alice Springs and proceeded west in a convoy to the start of the Canning, an unremarkable place marked by sand and low desert trees.

Our convoy enters the first desert, the Little Sandy, several hours after leaving Well 6. Carpeting the rocky plain are clumps of needle-sharp spinifex grass. Wave after wave of high red sand dunes roll toward the horizon. A two-rut track, barely visible through the spinifex, threads the dunes. Almost a century ago, Canning needed camels to get through. It took two years to drill the 21 wells, which are each about 20 miles apart--a day’s walk for cattle. The last mob (herd) traveled the route in 1958, and the Canning lay abandoned until rediscovered by four-wheel drive enthusiasts.

“When you say you’ve crossed the Canning, you earn real respect,” says Keith Smith, an Adelaide bus driver in his 40s who vacations by challenging Australia’s roughest tracks with his wife, Dot, in their four-wheel drive.

Midafternoon, the convoy reaches the first dune. It’s a formidable sight, soaring as high as a two-story building. As the four-wheel drives start to ascend, conversation is stilled. Smith grips the gear stick and eases it into second for initial thrust. The four-wheel drive roars up the dune at 30 mph, tossing and twisting like a rodeo bronco as it hits tire ruts carved in the sand. Dot hangs onto the vehicle’s strap, bouncing from side to side. Smith’s hand is anchored to the gear stick, a wary eye on the dashboard. Halfway up the dune, with the engine rattling, he tugs the lever down another notch. First gear. That should be enough power to get over.

But something’s wrong; the engine begins to strain. Alarmed, Smith pulls his foot off the accelerator. As the engine settles back to a safer level, momentum carries us over the top. Dot gives Smith a reassuring smile as he swerves to follow the track to the next dune. “Only 999 dunes to go,” she says.

All that afternoon we tackle the dunes, the four-wheel drives bouncing around like rubber balls in the tire ruts, swerving wildly to follow the sharply turning track--inflicting aches and pains on the passengers who endure it with good humor. Yet Smith cheers when Guest radios over the CB, “there’s a good place to camp up ahead.” The speedometer shows we’ve covered 80 miles, an average day’s run on the Canning.

The convoy drives onto a flat stretch of clay pan dotted with desert oaks, tall, spindly trees that look nothing like their stout European namesakes. When dinner is over, as bats dart through the darkness, we sit around the campfire recounting our exploits on the dunes. Among us are a coal miner from Newcastle, New South Wales; a retired businessman from Canberra; an architect from Melbourne; a young nurse from Galway, Ireland, working her way around Australia--all of us looking for adventure. It’s been a hard day and we’re all tucked in by 10 p.m. I sleep in the open at the entrance to my tent; above me a blaze of stars is spun across the black void.

The next morning we are up early and watch a golden glow along the horizon, the sky swiftly brightening to an immense bowl of blue. Hundreds of small parrots chatter among the desert oaks, then catch a sudden gust of wind in unison, off in search of feeding grounds. “City folk never know mornings like this,” Dot says, confirming what we’ve all been thinking.

We mere humans can journey safely through the Canning only after careful planning, but the desert harbors hundreds of different species that have adapted to its demands. Best known is the thorny devil lizard. Spying one basking in the spinifex, Guest halts his Toyota Landcruiser and gives chase. The solar-loving lizard is sluggish because it is still midmorning; Guest quickly catches the lizard (which he later releases). The hand-size thorny devil looks like a nightmare of nature, its splotchy red and khaki body covered with knobs resembling rose thorns. Because the desert lacks surface water, nature has given the devil an ingenious way of quenching its thirst. Tiny red capillaries run between its thorns, absorbing early morning moisture from the desert floor and from plants the lizard touches.

After several days on the Canning, we are appreciative of the native animals’ ability to get by comfortably in the desert. Although there’s no need yet to ration our water, our supply is running a bit lower than planned. Each four-wheel drive carries 52 gallons for up to five people, with five gallons a day contributed to communal pots for washing and cooking. That leaves just enough water daily to make a few cups of tea or coffee and to wash body and clothes from a bucket holding two quarts of water per person. Although no one goes thirsty, proper washing is impossible. Our bodies are encrusted with red sand, our clothes nearly stiff enough to stand on end and we reek of sweat and campfire smoke.

“That Canning must have been a tough bloke,” says Smith on hearing that the surveyor and his eight-man party dug the 51 wells by hand, each up to 35 yards deep. Using axes and sheer brawn, they chopped down hundreds of termite-resisting desert oaks and used the wood to line the wells.

Each day Smith has been raising the regional radio station. But the signal has grown increasingly fainter and now, when he twiddles the dial to pick up the midday news, all he can raise is static, which enforces our sense of isolation.

*

We are down to our last drops of fuel. It’s not possible for four-wheel drives to haul all they need to make the crossing, so three times a year Bill Shepherd, a gas station owner, trucks in fuel to a spot near the Canning. To get there he takes a round-trip trek of more than 600 miles from the outback town of Newman.

Topping a rise, Guest stares across the plain. The fuel dump should be a few hundred yards ahead. He spots a tiny glint of silver. “The drums are here,” he radios to the convoy. At the spot, about 150 yards off the track, the 52-gallon fuel drums are lined up in a row, one for each four-wheel drive. For the next hour, we pump the fuel into our tanks and jerrycans, taking on more than enough for the rest of the trip.

Although fuel has been stolen from the dump, it’s rare, Guest says--the dangerous challenge of the Canning drawing people, even strangers, together. “There are not too many places in the world where you can have thousands of dollars of fuel left out in the open, even somewhere remote, and be pretty certain it’ll be there when you arrive,” Guest says.

Poisonous snakes pose less danger than running out of fuel, but they are still a risk. At another ruined well, we stop for morning tea, enthralled by hundreds of tiny zebra finches darting down the well for a drink. Suddenly there’s a scream from behind a dense stand of mulga where some of the women are answering nature’s call. A king brown, one of the world’s most poisonous snakes, has appeared, gliding speedily across the sand. It’s bronze, the thickness of a fist and about six feet long.

Snakes were just one of the many perils that confronted the Canning pioneers. More dangerous were the nomadic bands of Aborigines who fought back when the white man invaded their lands, killing several explorers and cowboys. Soon after the convoy enters the Great Sandy Desert--at 114,000 square miles, larger than many European countries--we camp for the night by the grave of Michael Tobin. Tobin was Canning’s well borer who was speared to death by an Aboriginal warrior at this spot in 1907.

Just before sunset, Jack and Phyllis Creagh climb a dune to Tobin’s lonely grave. As the wind buffets the sand, whipping up a ghostly moan, the marble headstone glows amber in the twilight. The couple reflect on the men who died while blazing the stock route through this terrible but beautiful place, and on the Aborigines who fought valiantly against the invasion of what must have seemed to them like men from Mars.

On the 15th day, the convoy skirts a flat-topped mountain and suddenly comes face to face with civilization again. Not a single vehicle has passed us along the 1,200 miles of desert track, but now we see several cars darting about the Aboriginal settlement of Balgo. Electricity wires crisscross the sky, bungalows squat on the hillside, a silver water tower dominates the landscape. Not a word passes across the CB, the convoy members stunned into an eerie silence by the sudden confrontation with the outside world. Dot turns her head away, facing the Canning through the open window. “We’ll be back,” she shouts. “We’ll definitely be back!”

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GUIDEBOOK

Outback Australia

Getting there: American, Qantas and United fly nonstop from LAX to Sydney. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at $1,480. Qantas and Ansett fly nonstop from Sydney to Alice Springs. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at $515.

Canning tours: Organized tours of the Canning Stock Route are limited and should be booked at least several months in advance. Among the tour companies that offer them:

Russell Guest’s Australian 4WD Adventure Safaris, 38 Station St., Fairfield, Victoria, Australia 3078. It offers a variety of outback tours including a 22-day tour of the Canning Stock Route, meeting at Alice Springs, Northern Territory, and driving to Wiluna and then on to Hall’s Creek. Price for passengers in Guest’s vehicles, $2,350; or in their own vehicles, $765 for passengers to $1,200 for drivers, including necessary equipment and gas; from the U.S., telephone 011- 613-94-81-5877.

Western Desert Guides, 80 Glenelg Ave., Wembley Downs, Western Australia 6019. It offers a variety of outback tours including an 18-day tour of the Canning Stock Route, from Perth to Hall’s Creek, three times a year in 1997: May 1, July 1, Aug. 7. Price per person is $3,000; vehicles are available for rental; tel./fax 011-61-9- 341-2524.

For more information: Australian Tourist Commission, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 1920, Los Angeles 90067; for telephone information call (847) 296-4900.