Life in the Vast Lane

We had been driving for hours up Western Australia’s Highway 1. As we came over a slight rise we could see the road aiming straight for the horizon, with scrubby vegetation stretching out flat on both sides toward infinity. Miles later we reached that horizon, which was another small rise. As we crested it, the cycle began again. And again.

The warning of an American we had met the previous week began seeping into my consciousness. “Boring,” he had pronounced when he learned of our plans to spend 10 days or so driving Highway 1 up the coast north of Perth. A six-year resident of the Western Australia capital, he had seen that two-lane stretch of asphalt. Distances on such roads, he said, should be measured in six-packs.

His wife, a native of the state, confidentially softened his remarks: “The trip is what you make it. There is plenty to see.”

We were sure of that. Some years ago, we--my wife, Judy, and I--drove up Australia’s east coast, and on another visit we did the middle. There’s no end to the astonishing variety that is Australia. But preparing for this trip had been a bit intimidating, starting with the study of maps.

From the guidebooks, we had made a list of what we wanted to see--the limestone pinnacles at Nambung National Park, the dolphins that come ashore at Monkey Mia, Ningaloo Reef, the historical tropical city of Broome, and many other spots. The concern was the distance between them. No cities, towns, villages--nothing appeared along vast stretches of the highway. While it skirted the ocean in some areas, much of it ran parallel inland in a ruler-straight line.

An e-mail to the Western Australia Tourist Office in Broome, the farthest point on our proposed itinerary, allayed most of the concerns. Roadhouses are situated at strategic intervals along the highway--combination gas stations-restaurants-bars-motels that have everything you need for a stop or to keep going.

Our adventure had begun with an almost-cross-country train ride from Sydney to Perth. We had chosen the train (three days) over flying (five hours) partly because we hoped to see a cross-section of Australian outback scenery and partly because we thought it would help us sense the enormity of the country. Nothing, however, prepared us for the vastness and emptiness of the west.

The state of Western Australia, which encompasses about one-third of the country, has 1.8 million inhabitants, 1.2 million to 1.4 million of them living in and around Perth. The 400,000 others are spread out over an area one-third the size of the U.S.

The road north of Perth--Australia 1, which circles the continent--meanders through some suburbs, then slices through a sizable wheat belt that forms a semicircle around the city. Beyond that, nothing, or more precisely, almost nobody. The two lanes of the highway are wide, flat and smooth, the curves so gentle they are scarcely noticeable. On those rare occasions when we encountered another car, it was easy to pass because we could see so far ahead.

At midday the first day, we found a promising spot to turn off to a seaside village called Cervantes and the nearby Nambung National Park. The side road was a bit narrow but in good repair. But as happened from time to time, the last few miles to our destination, in this case the park, were unpaved--”unsealed” in Aussie argot.

Nambung is home to the Pinnacles Desert, acres and acres of limestone pillars in a landscape devoid of vegetation. It had a surreal quality to it; we could not mentally fix it in relation to any other time or place.

We had been told that Geraldton, our destination for the first night, was a major lobster port. That evening we looked for a restaurant serving the lobster dinner we were told we were obliged to have, but we failed to find one.

The back road near the coast from Cervantes to Geraldton was of reasonable quality, so the next morning, when the main highway north from Geraldton angled inland again, we were emboldened to try what promised to be a more scenic road along the water.

Our opportunity came at the village of Northampton, where we spotted a Tourist Information sign. The woman inside drew us a map of a road west to Port Gregory but advised that the road from there north along the coast up to Kalbarri hadn’t been kept up; there were potholes “as big as swimming pools.” She sketched another, parallel route a few miles inland. It didn’t faze her--so why should it bother us?--that this meant driving about 44 miles of dirt road. She was sure it was passable.

The reward for this gamble was in the town of Kalbarri, where the Murchison River empties into the Indian Ocean. Along the estuary we heard a squawking and looked up to see flocks of birds cavorting in the trees. They were gallons, a parrot-like bird about the size of a sea gull, with a brilliant rose and gray body and wings. This was one of the sights we had returned to Australia to see.

The 40-mile road back to the main highway from Kalbarri cut directly across Kalbarri National Park. True to form, the offshoots to all the scenic vistas were unpaved but manageable.

A few more hours of driving from horizon to horizon brought us to the turnoff for Monkey Mia (pronounced MY-ah), a resort on Shark Bay. Having seen virtually nobody traveling in either direction on the 80-mile road in from the highway, it was surprising to find the beach-side resort full.

This was one of our absolute must-sees, and we had made reservations early in our trip planning. Our room was in the international nondescript style, but some of the other “rooms” were in permanently parked house trailers.

Monkey Mia is where visitors get to interact with wild dolphins. Well, some visitors. When the animals are spotted on their way into the shallow bay, a ranger wades out to keep the crowd of people under control. As he walks back and forth up to his knees in the water, dolphins follow him, knowing full well what’s in his bucket. Meanwhile he’s explaining how to feed a fish to a dolphin and selecting the visitors who will actually do it. I was one of the lucky few.

Three of the seven dolphins were month-old pups, so nobody was permitted to go farther than the water’s edge. I was allowed to wade in a yard or two and lean down until the fish in my hand was just about at the surface of the water. The dolphin eyed me, opened its mouth, gently closed on the fish and turned away. When half a dozen other visitors had repeated the exercise, the show was over.

From Shark Bay we resumed our horizon-to-horizon driving north to Carnarvon, where we would stay the night. We hadn’t planned that with wide, flat, unpopulated roads and a sleek, six-cylinder sedan that seemed most comfortable at 85 mph, we’d be able to move so far so fast. We made the 150 miles to Carnarvon by noon.

Although that stretch of Highway 1 runs within a few miles of the ocean, the landscape is semidesert. So it was a surprise to find the mid-coast a tropical oasis, banana plantation country.

After that came Coral Bay and Ningaloo Reef Resort.

Ningaloo Reef is the Western Australia equivalent of the Great Barrier Reef. Some coral comes almost to the water’s edge, making good snorkeling possible right off the beach. The real treat is on the main reef, a few hundred yards offshore, and beyond. We splurged on a boat trip to go swimming there with manta rays.

We had been assured that rays are harmless vegetarians. That was comforting, because they don’t look harmless as they swim straight up from the depths. About 6 feet below the surface, however, they do a slow, backward somersault, with gaping mouth spread wide, to sieve a maximum amount of plankton through their gills.

The skipper moved to a few more spots; once, Judy found herself snorkeling cheek by jowl with a giant loggerhead sea turtle. As great as the outing was, we learned that we were six months late--or early--for Ningaloo’s big seasonal thrill: swimming with whale sharks.

Our next destination was Exmouth, at the top of the Northwest Peninsula. It’s a diving center, but most of the beaches and dive sites are on the west side of the peninsula--on the ocean at places like Turquoise Bay and out on Ningaloo Reef. Usually they’re reached by a road that goes around the end of the peninsula. We decided to get to Turquoise Bay the hard way, by a four-wheel-drive safari over the spine of the peninsula through Cape Range National Park. (It wouldn’t have helped to rent our own 4WD. The area is declared a wilderness, and only licensed tour operators are allowed through.)

Aptly named Turquoise Bay duplicated what we had seen at Coral Bay. The water was a brilliant blue and, thanks to the reef, almost without surf at the beach. We waded in a few yards, then stretched out flat on the water’s surface. It was so easy, and some of the sightings of fish and coral were so remarkable, that a couple of times in excitement I dipped my head well below the surface for a better view and ingested several mouthfuls of seawater.

That night I was afflicted with a severe case of diarrhea. As a nurse at the Exmouth hospital pointed out to me the next morning, tropical water is a perfect breeding medium for bacteria.

From Exmouth there were two ways to get back to Highway 1. One was to retrace our path down the peninsula and rejoin it where we had branched off, driving a very long V-shaped route. The other was to go back only a few dozen miles and take a shortcut between the legs of the V, but again the quality of the road came into question. Some maps barely showed the shortcut; others showed it but without information that it was passable in a sedan. As it turned out, the road had been paved the year before. It was beautiful, comparable to Highway 1.

Aside from saving many miles, we had another reason for wanting to take the shortcut. At the middle of it was a sheep station whose homestead also served as a bed-and-breakfast. We thought it was important to see how people survived on these arid plains.

Giralia Station is standard for the area; it covers about 1,000 square miles and supports 20,000 to 30,000 sheep. Unfortunately for its hospitable owners, Rae and Denver Blake, wool prices were depressed; when we visited they had just made a difficult decision to sell several thousand head to be shipped, live, to the Middle East.

Although it is isolated and rustic, Giralia is by no means unsophisticated. Our excellent dinner--lamb chops, as you might guess--was served by candlelight and accompanied by wine and flowers. Our breakfast, also adorned with flowers, included filtered coffee; it was the only time in Australia we were treated to that.

A few more hours of cruising across flat semidesert brought us to Karratha and Dampier, twin towns where the mineral riches of Western Australia meet: Iron ore from deep in the interior is shipped from the harbor, and Karratha is the terminus for natural gas piped ashore from wells 100 miles out in the ocean. Despite the industrial setting, the towns were pleasant enough. On one street, we came across a noisy flock of white corellas, part of the cockatoo family, and while watching them we found ourselves being watched by two kangaroos.

This stop was not planned. We simply knew that after traipsing 1,600 miles north, the time had come to turn in the rental car early, penalty and all, and fly the last 800 miles to our turnaround point, Broome, where we would catch another plane for Sydney.

We disagreed with our American acquaintance’s description of the trek to that point, but we chose to believe the guidebook’s description of the Karratha-Broome highway as among the most boring in the world. Everybody has a limit.

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GUIDEBOOK

The Wild West

Getting there: Qantas, New Zealand and Singapore Airlines offer service from L.A. to Perth, with one change of plane. Round-trip fares start at $1,770.

Australia’s two national airlines, Ansett and Qantas, fly several times daily from Sydney and other cities to Perth. The Great Southern Railway’s Indian-Pacific train (Internet https://www.gsr.com.au) makes the three-night run from Sydney to Perth twice a week.

Getting around: U.S. car rental companies have offices at Perth’s airport. Road maps are available at the Western Australia Tourist Centre, Albert Facey House, Wellington Street and Forrest Place, Perth, WA 6000, Australia; Internet https://www.westernaustralia.net.

Where to stay: In Perth we stayed at Miss Maud’s, a 52-room guest house in the city center, tel. 011-61-8-9325-3900; doubles cost $91 including breakfast.

Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort, Shark Bay; accommodations for two to four people range from $45 to $113. Tel. 011-61-8-9948-1320, Internet https://www.monkeymia.com.au..

Reservations for lodgings in Coral Bay, Exmouth and elsewhere may be made through the Gascoyne office of the Western Australia Tourism Assn., P.O. Box 1414, Carnarvon, WA 6701, Australia. Tel. 011-61-8-9941-3000, Internet https://www.gta.asn.au.