The Virtual Reinhard
Created | Updated Jul 22, 2004
A Letter from the Mungo Desert - Part One
Five in the morning, pitch black, nothing stirring in Canberra apart from a mismatched pair of four-wheel drive vehicles heading purposefully westwards into the Australian outback. Although we'd travelled quite widely in New South Wales, the south-eastern corner of the island continent, it is all comparatively lush, and we were keen on seeing some of this famous outback desert that we'd been hearing about. However, the nearest example was about a thousand kilometres to the west, and although my modern air-conditioned Nissan could do it in comfort, Teun and Loes were in their twenty-year old Land Cruiser, the Wahoo, so we had to take it gently.
After climbing out of the vaguely hilly bowl that forms the Australian Capital Territory, we rolled down to the flatlands of the Murrumbidgee River and the town of Narandera. Every small town in Australia struggles to be 'the home of' some unique feature, whether it be the 'biggest merino sheep in the world' (made of concrete, in Goulburn)", or 'the biggest trout in the world' (made of fibreglass, in Adaminiby), or 'the oldest continually licensed premises in Australia' (one of at least three similar claims that we have found, this one in Berrima). Narandera is no different. As we turned onto the arrow-straight Sturt Highway, roadsigns sternly admonished us that we had missed the opportunity to see The Largest Playable Guitar In The World.
We were the only vehicles on the highway. Ahead of me, all I could see were the dull red tail-lights of the Wahoo, and a bright blue backlight on Teun's dashboard, which appeared somewhat bizarrely to be a GPS navigation system. I made a note to ask him about it later.
Dawn rose in the rearview mirror. The night slowly faded to grey and then fled into the usual gorgeous blue of another perfect Australian day. The occasional trees on the horizon became shorter and stubbier, the earth by the side of the road became noticeably redder, starkly contrasting with the green of the grass being grazed by the thin and hardy Australian sheep.
The road continued on, and on, ever westward, past another sign proudly proclaiming that we were driving through 'The Best Wheat-Growing Country in Australia'. Back in lofty Canberra, the days had been getting mild, even a bit chilly, but out here on the plains we started slathering on the lotion as the morning sun scorched through the open sunroof.
Six hours in, I needed a coffee, so we pulled over in Hay, pretty much the only town on this part of the Sturt, and stoked up on the things that we thought we needed; several pints of caffeine, some baling wire, a roll of gaffer tape, and a spade. Remembering the glow of the Wahoo's navigation computer, I asked Teun for a demonstration. He looked somewhat sheepish as he showed me the screen. He'd forgotten to load in the map for this part of Australia, so the screen showed a huge featureless field of blue with a small 'you are here' cursor flashing in the centre, and far far off at the bottom of the screen, a little dot that said 'Melbourne'.
Actually, back on the Sturt, driving across the endless red terrain, that felt about right. Emus wobbled humorously by the side of the road. Hours passed. Finally we arrived in Balranald, the last fuel station before the Mungo and the point at which we finally left the Sturt and headed north.
