My office has been transported from Fox Valley Road to a green Ford Territory travelling at 30km/h along the Great Eastern Highway from Perth to Sydney.
Am in a ghost town called Burracoppin as I’m writing this. There are traces of pubs, general stores and primary schools, but everything looks deserted and shut down for a while. Other than the cyclists I’m with and their support crew and the occasional road trains (huge trucks that transport all sorts of stuff from one end of the country to another) passing through, there isn’t a soul in sight.
It has been a really interesting 2 days on the road so far. Taking photos whenever possible, typing up press releases on the laptop in the car, downloading and editing photos…and then wishing that there is internet access in the next town I visit in order to send everything back to the office.
We are in such an isolated part of Australia that even mobile phone coverage is rare. My mobile has gone out of range more often than there has been reception. And during the short 30mins bracket where there is coverage, furious phonecalls are made to journalists, radio DJs, news producers as well as touching base with work.
Bill Bryson was really accurate when he called this the sunburnt country. The landscape so far has been of red earth, brown grass and everything is as dry as dry can be. This is an amazing country and I wouldn’t give up this opportunity I’ve had to see all these in a hurry.
Yesterday, we passed through Meckering, the site of a 6.9 earthquake inn 1969 that practically wiped out all the buildings in the town. And as I write this, we just passed the start of the longest rabbit proof fence in Australia which the movie is based on
Woke up at 4 this morning to set off from Cunderdin to Southern Cross. The nightsky is gorgeous over at this part of the country. The sky was awashed with stars and everything was so clear and felt so crisp.
Managed to catch one of the few gorgeous sunrise I’ve seen in my life, having always avoided waking up at strange unearthly hours. The road simply stretched on for as far as the eye can see, with flat sparse grassland to on both sides. You can imagine how magnificent the sky would look.
Jumped out to take a photo of the cyclists riding into the sunrise and nearly got blown away by a road train while standing by the side of the road.
While taking a break somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we saw a whole train of 79 big, fat, hairy caterpillars crossing the road. Still makes squirm thinking about it.
I still cannot get over just how dry, hot and harsh the landscape is. And yet, there is a strange resilience present, evident by the trees and bushes as well as beautiful multi-coloured birds flitting around. Not to mention the fact that people actually live around here, even if towns are small and few and far between.
Time to get back to work in my travelling office.
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