'Way out here where the dead men lie, and the gibber plains stretch ahead...'

I always heard this line as 'stretch your head', but Neil Murray says otherwise, and he should know, because it's his song; 'He Was Born', from 1982.

Neil's songs kept rolling around my head as I pedalled my bike recently from Lennox Head (near Byron Bay) to Uluru. We went the long way, via Broken Hill and Port Augusta. I rode two bicycles actually; Lily the flighty carbon fibre endurance road bike, and Lachie the trusty but slower steel gravel bike (named after two Clydesdale horses with similar temperaments).

I was able to ride two different bikes – choosing the right one for the conditions that day – because my partner Eve accompanied me in the car. We met up for lunch and for delicious dinners which she made each night, so I was usually only carrying some emergency tools, water and snacks.

Most nights we slept in what we called our 'twag' (a swag in a trailer), with a marquee over the top. Eve modified the details of how this worked in various ingenious ways as we travelled.

We carried a portable stove and water, and lots of vegan food, including the all-important Aldi soy milk, unheard of in the wild west.

Each day, we travelled around 100 km. The biggest day was 159 km, but the toughest day, into an almighty head wind, was also the shortest, at just 77 km. The biggest uphill day included over 2,000 metres of climbing. As we got further west, there were fewer towns, so we camped in rest areas when there were no caravan parks.

Because we were still doing our writing and photography work as we travelled, we carried a big rechargeable battery, solar panel and Starlink technology for phone and internet access in places where there was no mobile signal.

We left the coast at the start of June and made it to Uluru early in July, including rest days at Gunnedah, Cobar, Broken Hill, Wilmington and Coober Pedy. This was winter in Australia, and conditions were mostly chilly, but we struck every kind of weather along the way, travelling in a boomerang-shaped arc across three states.

A lot of people advised me that this was a very silly thing to do.

So was it dangerous? There are lots of urban fears and fantasies about the outback, most of which carry little relation to reality, but there's certainly a lot of death out there; memorials, graves, and enormous numbers of dead animals.

There are risks too – particularly running out of water, running out of light, and running out of room on the edge of the road to escape from bigger, faster vehicles.

Because Eve was with me, I was able to mitigate these dangers more than a conventional touring cyclist. No big touring bags meant I was able to ride faster, and was more maneuverable.

I could ride later in the day if necessary, because she was setting up our camp, and I was less affected by wind and gravity than if I'd been carrying everything with me.

Also I didn't have to ride home!

'Far away, beyond the Queensland border, far away, towards that western sky...' [Far Away, Neil Murray, 1988].

For many of us, huddled round the edges of the ancient island continent for most of our lives, the real Australia is something you fly over on the way to somewhere else, or look at through a windscreen after you retire.

I've always felt a connection with the outback, but haven't spent a lot of time there. It occupies a big space in my psyche though. Maybe that's true for a lot of Australians.

The big question, when you tell anyone you're riding to the heart of Australia, is why? Why do it? Why put your body through something like that? This trip was never about raising money for something, or highlighting a cause, although that was assumed by many.

Is it selfish to ride like this for personal motives?

For me, there were a lot of different reasons to attempt this journey.

I've always loved bikes, and when I was a kid in Canberra, coming home from a ride somewhere, I used to fantasise about not stopping – just keeping riding, over the hills, beyond the horizon.

I'd been introduced to the pleasure and pain of two-wheeled touring when I was small by my big brother, and loved it, but somehow this 'not stopping' idea had slipped out of reach since my childhood. Here was a chance to reclaim it.

Over the years, I've explored a lot of Australia off the bike, including WA, SA and the NT, but for some reason never quite made it to the red centre. I wanted to travel out there in a personally meaningful way.

At the same time, I've always been terrified of the idea of riding to Central Australia. Something inside drove me to face the challenge in spite of that, or maybe because of it. After many postponements, against the odds, the planets eventually aligned to make the trip possible.

In terms of destinations, Uluru is a mythical place, a wonder of the world, and also literally smack-bang in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that's why the idea of riding out there remained in the back of my head over many years, slowly growing into an intention, then a tangible plan.

What else? I wanted to test my physical and psychological strength. After years of unhealthy video editing, I needed to give myself a transformational jolt – a reset. I wanted to show what could be done on a purely vegan diet.

I wanted to do something that seemed impossible. I wanted a gruelling adventure.

When Eve said she wanted to join me, I wanted to see if the journey would deepen our relationship.

The spiritual aspect of a ride like this is harder to discuss or define, but that was definitely part of it. A pedal pilgrimage to Uluru – literallly connecting with country, from the most easterly point to the centre in this case – is far more meaningful to me personally than walking the El Camino or flying to Disneyland.

At night during the trip I read Patrick White's Voss (a novel my father loved), based loosely on the journals of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. Voss was another person who had trouble defining exactly why he was drawn west, to the unknown. In his case, sacrifice led to a kind of merging with country.

I wasn't heading on a self-destructive mission like the explorer, but for both of us, the journey was at least as important as the destination.

'I belong to this fine open country, from which I never will part...' [Fine Open Country, Neil Murray with Sammy Butcher, 2013].

Normally when I've been out west of the Great Divide, it's as an activist film-maker, fighting for one cause or another, usually opposing environmental destruction. On this trip I was more of an observer, waving to the drivers of mining vehicles and cattle transports along with everyone else.

As a cyclist, you're watching everything but you're also embedded; within the landscape, weather and unfolding history, not looking at the world from behind a barrier. This makes you feel more empathetic.

In the east, traffic tends to pass in little clumps of vehicles, with gaps in between, like echidna trains. Out west, the cars mostly disappear, to be replaced by road trains and grey nomads in 4WDs pulling large caravans, and the occasional dusty ute belonging to a local.

On a bike you notice the transient painted hieroglyphics left by road workers; some easy to decipher, other squiggles as mysterious as runes. In the east, these markings are everywhere. In the desert they become rare.

The graffiti also changes as you get closer to the centre. It becomes more pointed, and political. There are long, acrimonious discussions between participants across time and space on issues including the Voice referendum, war in Gaza and veganism.

Angry words are scrawled on the floors, ceilings, pillars and benches of lonely rest stops, where there's usually nothing but a table and a bin. These scribbled conversations extend on to wrecked vehicles and Telstra infrastructure.

One upended burnt-out car north of Marla declared in a painted tone that would brook no argument: 'Stolen land. The colony will fall.'

In a nation full of people who claim to love their country, rubbish lies beside almost every road, highly visible from a push bike. All the major junk food groups are represented, orbiting out around the larger towns to 100 km/h eating distances, with Kuiper belts of broken glass beyond.

Beside the roads there are also broken things of every description, occy straps, Jim Beam cans, nappies, gloves, pizza boxes, flavoured milk cartons, toys, bits of wire, plastic, broken eskies, hubcaps, nails and screws, ice cream wrappers, straws, tires, dumped white goods, shredded tires and muffin boxes.

Red Bull may not give you wings, but it's certainly generous in the rubbish department. Piles of silvery nangs show where teenagers have got high on nitrous oxide, maybe stolen from their grandma's pantries.

Sometimes the road brings unexpected gifts to the cyclist; glimpses over bridges down to wild rivers, unbroken occies, a slightly rusty shifting spanner, a perfectly good sleeping bag, wildflowers, black-faced sheep, flights of quail, a beautiful dead butterfly with wings still animated by the passing traffic.

Mulga parrots bejewel otherwise drab country. In a drift of red sand, there are wild emu tracks. An owl stands guard over one of our campsites in a flowering tree, beside a remote roadhouse. On a grey day, a flock of wild Gouldian finches bring life to a desolate roadside verge.

On a busy highway, a praying mantis is waiting for a safe moment to cross (there isn't one).

Plastic turtles and lizards commemorate a fallen truckie. A courageous foxy chases me 100m down the road.

A tiny, almost hidden memorial remembers a place where a young mum and her two little girls died.

An hour in a jet might cover the same distance as six days by bike, but the experience is vastly different.

There's a strange, sensual intensity to everything when you're on human-powered wheels; the tangibility of the air as it swirls behind trucks, the ever-changing play of light and shadow, the kiss or sting or assault of rain, the wonder of an apple or a piece of chocolate, the glory of a hot shower, the relationship with gravity, the life and death wrestle for a few inches of road.

I rode through one heavy-feeling valley in New England which seemed to slow the bike strangely, as if by melancholic force. There were no hills or wind to explain it.

In other places the bike seemed to float, or fly.

'Who will ride with Stuart, who’ll suffer where he goes?' [Who Will Ride With Stuart?, Neil Murray, 2015].

Retracing the routes of the explorers gives new insights into what these courageous oddballs and misfits went through; their heroic suffering and the even greater suffering they brought in their wake, particularly to the original inhabitants.

It seems there's something about the outback that encourages men in particular to push themselves to extremes, sometimes into tragedy.

Near Horrock's Pass (named for the explorer shot by his camel), I met a young bloke slathered in sunscreen who was pushing a cart from Perth to Newcastle to raise money for indigenous literacy.

The highway through the centre of Australia is closely associated with John McDouall Stuart, who crossed the continent after multiple failed attempts, and the road to Uluru is named for the prospector and probable conman Harold Lasseter, who died west of Kata Tjuta in 1931.

On a bike, you're engaged in an ongoing dance with the intertwined primal forces of gravity, the sun, and wind. Every day was different.

Unlike the experience of the explorers, I had a road to guide me, but the quality of the surface varies greatly. As a rider, you feel every detail through seat, hands and pedals. Fatigue strips are a particular challenge when they're in the best place to ride. Sometimes it's smoother to ride off the road completely.

Gradient can be a friend or enemy, but is never far from mind. Contrary to expectation, it's rarely flat in the outback, and when the wind is against you it feels exactly like riding up a mountain.

One day, I'd spent hours fighting a strong headwind and was approaching exhaustion when I was lifted by the news from Eve that Julian Assange was free. The rest of the kilometres were much easier.

From the bike, it's clear that the amount of potential renewable energy in this country is staggering. We passed solar farms, giant wind turbines and a solar thermal plant – whole towns powered by renewables in some cases – but there are clearly opportunities to do much more, without damaging fragile environmental areas, although some seem determined to do that.

Animal senses become heightened when you're surrounded by threats. The metallic bark of a vehicle crossing a cattle grid, the thrum of a wire fence crossed by goats, and the different engine notes of heavy diesels and lighter vehicles acquire new meanings.

Tiny changes in the sounds of the bike itself can become an obsession.

If a truck comes too close, and you get a fright, there's a momentary benefit in acceleration as fight or flight kicks in, but if you spend too long in this state it can become exhausting. Often the physical tension only becomes obvious when you stop, or turn on to a quieter road.

One day, heading north from Port Augusta, an ambulance went past me, then another, then three police cars, then fire trucks. It was obvious something bad had happened, but I had no idea what.

Eve was in the car somewhere up ahead. I hoped whatever it was had happened beyond her, but when I reached a line of stopped cars with lots of flashing lights up ahead I did some calculations and realised she was in the danger zone.

I reached the front of the line of cars to discover a stranger had died in a single vehicle accident, coming south. Eve was safe, but I found out later she'd been very close to the place and time where the other driver had crossed the road. The emergency workers told me most serious accidents out that way involved single vehicles.

Because of the fatality, I would have been stuck on that cold highway for hours if I'd been in a car, but the police let me take a big detour cross-country round the accident on the gravel bike, so I could reach our camp before dark.

Generally though, Eve had the weight of worry as she waited for me to turn up at the places we agreed, especially when mobile connections weren't working.

My only injuries in 3,366 kilometres were minor; scratches from lapses in concentration at low speeds, getting distracted and getting caught up in the pedals.

Strangers offered me water, toffees, chocolate chip cookies, and sometimes honks and waves. On the second last day, I even got a clap out of a passenger window from someone who had no idea where I'd ridden from.

I experienced less anti-bike rage in a month riding out west than on a typical day in the 'progressive' Northern Rivers. On the entire trip, I never saw another long distance cyclist from the bike (we met a few later on though).

The road train drivers everyone had warned me about were mostly extremely professional. One day at lunch, a friendly lady caravanner who was sharing the truckies' frequency told us they were telling each other about the fella on the bike, and taking extra care.

A very big bloke on a massive touring motorcycle pulled alongside while I was fighting a gale and said 'you need one of these' while his partner filmed me with her phone from the pillion seat. I resisted the urge to say 'you need two of these' before they zoomed off.

Another day, a man with a caravan said he was spending $10 extra each time he filled up with fuel on headwind days. For me it was an extra muesli bar or two instead.

Whatever the weather, and no matter how isolated the road, there was never that sense of being alone you feel in cities. In the outback, people genuinely look out for one another. After the riding part of the trip had finished, and we suffered a series of mechanical mishaps coming back through Queensland, we saw this wonderful Australian quality in action again and again.

'Australia, where are your caretakers gone? '[Native Born, Neil Murray, 1995].

The kindness of outback country strangers stands in great contrast to the murder of so many of the original inhabitants and the casual cruelty to animals which still dominates Australian rural culture.

Cow transports spend hours waiting in the sun while their drivers stop at roadhouses. Emu families are smashed to pieces on bridges. Countless wallabies and kangaroos are mangled every night in highway carnage. Majestic eagles are drawn down to the road to feed before becoming roadkill themselves. Then there are the shooters, authorised and unauthorised.

These words came to me between Pimba and Glendambo after observing:

An eagle flies from the ruins of a sheep

Pursued by crows

In the entrails

A cat

Crouches

Some creatures appear to have done well from the colonial takeover; particularly goats, crows and pigs. Towards the centre though, almost all the animals have disappeared, both dead and alive, although people said there was more green growth than usual for the time of year. Only small birds of prey remained, high on the thermals.

There's a feeling that important elements are missing.

As for the Indigenous human population, the Coniston massacres near Alice Springs were less than 100 years ago, and there are reminders everywhere of the ongoing effects of colonisation, particularly in places like Tennant Creek.

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park is jointly managed by Anangu people and National Parks, and in many ways is a genuinely inspiring collaborative effort, showing how things can improve when knowledge and respect are shared, but here as in most places out west the people working behind the counters are generally young people from overseas, working their 88 days towards their working visas.

As for Uluru itself, my first glimpse from the bike was a mysterious blue shape over red hills covered in graceful native casuarinas, like sentinels. It was shy for such a big rock, gradually revealed in all its glory and turning orange as the clouds parted. Closer, it is an infinitely complex sculpture, with different layers of meaning depending on who is observing it, and the time of day.

Kata Tjuta emerged through a cleft in the hills, looking like a Terry Gilliam animation or Whiteley fantasy of feminine curves. Somehow both places have survived millions of photographs, and hours of video, to demand fresh eyes and wonder.

So what did I learn from this journey? I'm still figuring that out, but there are a few things which come to mind.

A bike is a lot slower than a car, but sometimes it's still too fast to absorb a place like Central Australia.

If you want to do something epic and personal, find a way to do it with your partner, or another person who understands.

If you want to do something that seems too big to be humanly possible, break it into smaller chunks and tackle them one by one. The flipside of this is that it can STILL seem impossible afterwards!

I've learned that I can always become stronger – the sight of a road stretching into what looks like infinity no longer fills me with trepidation when I'm in the saddle. I know I'll be on the other side before long.

Most importantly, if I can do something like this at the age of 53, without being particularly fit, then it's probably not too late to attempt whatever scary, challenging, impossible-sounding thing you've been thinking of. It's mostly a matter of training and attitude.

Like Neil Murray told me when I messaged him from Ingomar: 'Keep pedalling and you’ll get to wherever you want to go.'

***

I wrote this essay in July 2024. Photos by Eve Jeffery and David Lowe (Cloudcatcher Media).

Thanks to Eve for her love and support, to my family for their advice and encouragement, to Ballina Bicycle Emporium and 99 Bikes Tweed Heads for supplying my gallant steeds, and to Australia for the ongoing inspiration.

Special thanks to Neil Murray for all his wonderful music over the years. Go and see him live if you get a chance. He understands this country much better than most. Check out his website: http://www.neilmurray.com.au/index.html

If you would like to follow me on Strava, please email: cloudcatchermedia@gmail.com.

There are some photos from the trip in this Flickr gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidlowe1970/albums/72177720319250574

0 comments

Masters of War

A personal film making A–Z

Renovator's Dream

Watching Charlie Sexton Over The Years

What's in a hat?

See all posts from David Lowe