I’d been asking around in Esperance about the dirt road leading north to Balladonia but only received conflicting reports, no one seemed to know about the state of the road, or even that it exists - even though it cuts out 100 km off the drive from Esperance to Balladonia, so I loaded up with supplies including 8 litres of water and set off. The early miles of well-graded grit were quick enough, but the road, known ominously as ‘The Track’ soon became less distinct with rocky sections and harsh corrugations that beat and rattled me as I rode along. I wasn’t daunted by the distance, but as time wore on, stories of souls lost in the outback played on my mind. I kept thinking that a ripped tyre, a broken chain or buckled wheel could leave me stranded and in some serious danger. There had been no phone reception since leaving Conningup, and as my progress slowed over the deteriorating track I realised that 8 litres of water was nowhere near enough.
The only way of navigating was by the sun and tracking distance on my bike’s computer. At 124 miles I should have emerged on the main highway, but by 126 it still wasn’t there. By 128 I was beginning to panic, with a mouth dry as dust and still no sign of any human influence to indicate I was getting closer to civilisation. This was no place for a white-faced city-boy. I could hear the rescue teams now, talking over my desiccated body, “Bloody idiot! Didn’t he read the signs?” or worse still my charred remains possibly never found having been caught in a raging bushfire.
Finally I spotted a telegraph pole and within the next painfully slow mile I was back on the asphalt, and never have I been so glad to see a petrol station, and no petrol station attendant has ever looked so surprised than the one that saw me emerge from the darkness of the track covered in red dust, stagger to his fridge and proceed to down a large bottle of water before saying a word. When I explained myself, he simply said, “Bloody idiot!”
As a barely populated dot at the western edge of the desert, Balladonia doesn’t appear to offer much of interest but it holds a curious claim to fame being the crash landing site of the Skylab space station in 1979. With typical Aussie humour the local council issued NASA with a littering fine, and were rewarded with a personal apology from President Carter himself.
So, looking out for space debris I headed down Australia's longest straightest road - all 146.6 kilometres of it. For those of us who are metrically challenged its more common name is the "90 Mile Straight", and there’s a big signpost just in case you hadn’t noticed not changing directions for a while and folk (usually the ‘grey nomads’ – oldies that have retired and are travelling about in campervans) like to stop to have their photo taken by the sign.
This morning’s wake-up call was the flapping of the tent in a stiff westerly wind so I was up like a dingo up a didgeridoo to be pushed along all day, watching the almost imperceptible changes in landscape as the desert approached. The miles racked up rapidly with my fastest ever century coming in at five hours and nineteen minutes.
The wind that helped me so nicely all day became a curse leaving me wrestling with my tent after dark and scrabbling round for rocks to hold it down and hammer the pegs into the stony ground. Against advice to the contrary I left my shoes and socks outside of the tent overnight as I couldn’t bear to be in their company any more. I figured that any snake or spider stupid enough to want to venture too close to those repulsive stinkers would be too stupid to want to bite me.