Beginnings

Recently came across a box of old slides and photographs, mostly taken in Australia from  1968 to 1970.

Back then I was what they called a “ten pound tourist” in the late sixties when Australia wanted to boost their population and was short of teachers especially of maths and science.

I was a graduate (but had no teacher training) and I moved around mostly to outback schools which were even harder to staff.

Starting in Sydney, I then taught in Beaudesert in Queensland, Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory and Tom Price in Western Australia.

Along the way I bought a VW Kombi van with two friends; we fitted it out a bit and drove
through Queensland and on to Darwin where we split up and I got a job in
Tennant Creek.

The Red Centre

While there I got to see a bit of the red centre including Uluru (which was known as Ayers Rock at that time) and Kata Tjuta – the Olgas. The Australian government handed the area back to the traditional owners, the Anangu, in 1985.

Back then people were allowed to climb Uluru but the climb was closed permanently in October 2019.
Both Uluru and Kata Tjuta are sacred sites that are part of the Dreamtime myths.

The Stuart Highway

The Stuart Highway runs between Darwin and Port Augusta and is named after explorer John McDouall Stuart, the first whitefella to reach the centre of Australia. The indigenous population had already been there for 30,000 years.

After Darwin was bombed in 1942 the Stuart Highway was sealed between Darwin and the South Australian border but the section from Port Augusta to the Northern Territory border wasn’t sealed until the 1980s.

Travelling north and south along the Stuart Highway was fast and easy for trips to Katherine, Darwin and Alice Springs.

There were no speed limits in the Northern Territory until 2007 (according to Wikipedia) and quite a few roadhouses where you could get petrol, food and drinks. I stopped frequently on my travels to freshen up with cans of coke from big red chest freezers.

You had to watch out for road trains though. They were huge trucks with up to four trailers travelling very fast (no speed limit back then, remember?)

If you saw one coming you got out of the way.

VW bug

In Tennant Creek I had a Honda 90 but I sold it and bought a VW bug when it was time to travel on.
I tweaked the passenger seat so it could be used for camping.

I filed away the metal strut on each side to turn a bolt hole into a U-shape so that the seat back could be lifted to lie flat and I could sleep on it.

Actually I didn’t do the filing myself, I think the metalwork teacher at the school did the hard graft.

My bug had a little sun visor at the front and I fitted a chicken-wire shield to cover the windscreen.

The road from the South Australian border was dirt and Australians drive fast – I wanted as much protection from flying stones as possible! Must have worked – I don’t remember any smashed windscreens.

Bulldust bogdown

At night I used to pull off into the bush out of sight of the road and set up camp.
This was usually no problem but once, near Coober Pedy in South Australia, I drove into a bulldust hole.

Bulldust is a fine, soft, powdery red dust and once my front wheels sank into it I had no traction and wasn’t going any further. Bugger.

Coober Pedy is an opal mining town and as a girl travelling alone I was told to get right off the road at night to stay safe. Hah!

I cooked dinner, cleaned my teeth and went to bed.

Next morning I scooped out the dust from behind the wheels, packed the space with mats and vegetation, deflated the tyres a bit (to give a wider area in contact with the ground – more traction) and reversed out. It doesn’t take long to write that but it took several hours to achieve it.

After that I was careful to examine the ground closely when I drove off road.

Across the Nullarbor

At Port Augusta the Stuart Highway became sealed – very civilised.

Heading west on the Eyre Highway it was sealed as far as Ceduna but then all dust and corrugations, across the Nullarbor, until Eucla on the WA border.

There wasn’t a lot of traffic but other travellers had fairly grunty cars, Holdens for the most part, and drove at least 60mph flying over the top of the corrugations.

Me and my bug chugged along at about 30mph riding gently up and down the bumps. I chose a speed that produced the smallest number of bangs, creaks and rattles.

It was slow but I think the bug was grateful.

Western Australia

Fewer than 3 million people live in Western Australia, most of them in the fertile southwest corner: 75% live in Perth, the sunniest capital city in the world.

In Perth I reconnected with Craig, Doug and John – first met them carving roads out of the bush in South Australia – and the four of us hit the road in two VW bugs (mine and Doug’s) to drive north to Tom Price.

Tom Price

That town was purpose-built by the Rio Tinto mining company in 1965-66 for workers at the Mount Tom Price iron ore mine.

The mountain is almost pure haematite and is being gradually gouged out and shipped to Japan or China so it’s probably considerably shorter than it used to be.

Driving along unsealed roads is dusty and on the way north my bug’s brakes failed. There was nowhere to get them fixed so for several hundred miles I drove (very carefully) going through the gears to slow down before using the handbrake to stop.

A lot of vehicles come to grief one way or another in this remote part of Australia – the local Tom Price tip contained many defunct cars one of which was a VW. The boys managed to salvage and fit brake drums so I was soon safely mobile again.

The Pilbara

That meant we could get out to visit some of the fascinating places in the Pilbara region, home to some of earth’s oldest rock formations.

These included Wittenoom, the site of a blue asbestos mine that closed in 1966.

The population then gradually dwindled, partly because people moved away to find work but also because they started dying from asbestosis.

Wittenoom is the largest contaminated site in the southern hemisphere and its name has been removed from maps and road signs.

Back then people still lived there and I believe the race course was still in use in 1975. Almost all buildings have now been demolished.

We also visited Juukan Gorge, once known as Rio Tinto Gorge.

In 2020 the mining company blew up two rock shelters in the gorge that had been in continuous use by indigenous people for 46,000 years and was one of the top five most significant archaeological sites in the whole Pilbara region.

Rio Tinto said sorry (but still paid huge bonuses to their executives).

Travelling on

When I left Tom Price just Craig and I travelled on to Darwin, and there was a useful addition to my bug.

The metalwork teacher at Tom Price made a roof rack out of square steel tubing. We could store bags and spare tyres on top and travelling inside was more comfortable.

Only downside was that the car sounded like a jumbo jet taking off because of the reverberation in the tubes but we solved that by sealing up the ends.

From Darwin I started off on the overland trail to England – Portuguese Timor, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand where I came to a halt because India and Pakistan were at war.

I flew home.

But I certainly got my ten pounds worth out of Australia and I hope I was of some use to them.