on the straight and narrow

It’s called the Goldfield Highway and runs from Perth to Kalgoorie.  For most of its 400 miles, it’s straight, flat and single carriageway.

Many places have long straight roads but what marks this one out as a bit different are two special roads signs; ‘free coffee’ and ‘road train assembly point’.  Glyn tells me that there are so many accidents from people falling asleep at the wheel that petrol stations offer a free caffeine fix to keep drivers on the straight and narrow.

The two most common accidents are driving off the road into the bush or veering into the path of a road train.  Road trains are not just BIG trucks with trailers.  They are ENORMOUS.  Once they get going fast - and they do travel fast - they are hard to stop.  Glyn and I are sharing the driving and one comes up behind me on my shift; I grab a quick shot in the rear mirror while we’re stopped at a roadworks sign. It’s a bit like a scene from the film Duel (an early film by a young Steven Spielberg, about a car driver terrorised by an apparently driverless truck in the Californian desert).

The first 50 or so miles are a gradual climb from the coast up through the Swan Valley vineyards and the countryside reflects this - undulating and relatively green.  It then flattens out and we hit Eucalyptus groves - red-barked trees looking stunning against the blue sky.  

We stop about halfway and spend the night at a campsite.  Glyn doesn’t want us to risk driving in the evening. So it’s just not possible to make the journey in one go; not in Matilda anyway.

It becomes clear as the day progresses that Matilda has seen better days - she’s more the clumsy celebrity in Strictly Come Dancing rather than the pro dancer.  She’s slow, noisy and hard work to get up to speed.  (Choose your own Strictly celebrity).

We strike up a conversation with our campsite neighbours - a biker couple - Hell’s Grandad and Granny; I expect to see Born to be Mild emblazoned on their leather jackets.  She has a very nice white Yamaha 750; it looks like a child’s bike against her husband’s.  His is a red and black monster; a Triumph (I didn’t know Triumph still made bikes) with a 2.3 L engine.  That’s bigger than most cars.

He’s towing a trailer tent. Glyn asks how the bike copes with the extra load; “I’ve had it up to 165 with the trailer”.  I’m horrified until I remember that this is a metric country and he means kph rather than mph.  Even so …

Today the countryside changes again - we move into terrain often described in travel guides as ‘featureless’.  It’s flat as far as the eye can see - as if some gigantic, unseen hand had taken an iron and smoothed all the wrinkles and creases from the landscape.

But it’s not entirely featureless.  The soil is predominately red, but patches of white show through where minerals have leeched out onto the surface.  And black indicates the presence of fire.

Eventually we arrive in Kalgoorie mid-afternoon.  The town still has a frontier, gold rush look about it. The campsite has a treat in store - ensuite facilities.  Ensuite?  In a campsite?  We park next to a small brick building.  Inside is our own shower, basin, loo and plugged in hairdryer.  Bliss.

There are so many blips in my head and so few in my camera.  But at least they are in my head.

Our internet is limited - one user at at a time and with three blippers that’s never going to be easy.  I will catch up soon.