Читать книгу Wild Ride - Daniel Oakman - Страница 16

That morning on the streets of Adelaide a good many working folk must have caught sight of something not easily forgotten. Jerome rejected conventional cycling attire and had instead decided to wear a set of pinstripe pyjamas. The lightweight cotton outfit, he rightly observed, would be comfortable and protect him from the sun. He tucked the loose bottoms into his socks. To this already arresting ensemble, he added high leather boots, a fashionable homburg to shield his head and a revolver. With his swarthy complexion and an enormous ringmaster moustache, Jerome looked like a Mexican bandit on his way home from a slumber party.

If he turned heads, he didn’t notice. He proudly rode out of town without a single person to see him off or wish him good luck. After less than half an hour, the good-quality city roads came to end, replaced by a mixture of clay and gravel. But Jerome’s spirits would not be dampened. Flushed with excitement and energy, he felt a wonderful feeling sweep over him. He recalled ‘a glad feeling of being alive, untrammelled, free. And so we gaily sped along. It was a very dance on wheels. We are on the track at last!’

The first few days were indeed a joy. The weather was mild, the roads good, and Jerome reached the end of each day in high spirits with a hearty appetite. He travelled to Burra via Gawler and Kapunda, over undulating farmland dotted with peppermint gums and box trees. Only the ruins of the copper works broke the pleasing scenes. But such pleasantness was about to end.

In the late 1890s Australia had not yet recovered from a crippling economic depression. In South Australia the economic recovery was further delayed by drought. The country beyond Orroroo, the gateway to Central Australia, showed the ravages of both. Jerome recorded in his notebook how he pedalled through a ‘sunbaked’ wasteland populated by cattle that looked like ‘barrel-hooped skeletons held together by rawhide’. In hotels along the way, he overheard barroom conversations, tales of ‘helplessness’ from ‘drought-harried men’.

Riding through the wind and sun-blasted landscape near Carrieton, Jerome was caught in a blinding dust storm. A man passing in a horse-drawn cart offered the struggling cyclist a lift. Although tempted, Jerome was a man of honour so he declined. He needed to ride every inch of the way if his ride was to have integrity as the first purely human-powered traverse of the continent. He consoled himself that the storm would pass and that, in a few days, he would be somewhere other than here.

At Cradock, some 350 kilometres north of Adelaide, Jerome reached the ‘outskirts of the kingdom of the bicycle’. From now on, the sight of a man pedalling through the empty spaces would be a cause for wonder, celebration or alarm. Accommodation, too, was becoming harder to find. Weary from riding 100 kilometres into a headwind, Jerome arrived at Hookina just on dark. Red sand had piled up against the walls of the local inn, threatening to overwhelm the entire building. No rooms were available, so he decided to ride on, contemplating his first night camping ‘wild’. Riding by lamplight, he passed a cottage where the owner happened to be in the front yard. Stunned to see a bicycle on the road at night, he offered Jerome supper, bed and breakfast.

Random acts of kindness afforded to those travelling on two wheels were to become a hallmark of Jerome’s long journey. But such hospitality, however genuine, was invariably tinged with a degree of pity for this wretched soul on a foolish quest. None of this mattered to Jerome, of course. Grateful for any comfort, in the morning he bade his host farewell and pressed on.

The Flinders Ranges filled the eastern horizon. Riding over bad roads, Jerome arrived at Parachilna for a late lunch before following the railway line to Beltana Station. Here, for the first time in his life, Jerome encountered a group of Aborigines. Surprised to find the four women fully clothed, he rang his bell and doffed his hat. They grinned widely. ‘We parted company the best of friends,’ he recorded in his notes. ‘It may not always be so,’ he half-joked; ‘the painful necessity may arise presently to shoot some of your male distant relations.’ Such was the callousness of the times.

On 16 March, after six days on the road, Jerome spent a day luxuriating in the comfortable hotel at Hergott Springs. There he overhauled the bike, repaired the slow leaks in his tyre tubes and collected a rug he had sent ahead by train from Adelaide. However, keen to keep his load as light as possible, he left the rug behind, planning to use fires to keep warm whenever he was forced to sleep rough. The locals, while kindly, had no hesitation in questioning the wisdom of his journey. Some were familiar with the roads to Alice Springs, but never beyond.

When it came time to leave, even the elements were against him. A howling headwind seemed a warning to reconsider. ‘Go, back! Go back!’, it whistled in his ears. Jerome redoubled his efforts. On this day, he recalled, ‘I wasn’t taking any warnings’. Then things got even worse.

Jerome had ridden plenty of stony tracks thus far, but nothing like this. He was now in gibber country. With angular rocks ranging in size from a marble to a fist, the gibber plains of Central Australia are purpose-designed to stop a cyclist. Bicycles sink into the tracts of smaller stones, either bringing the rider to a standstill or sending him skating over the top until he crashes. Fields of larger stones force the rider to carry or push his vehicle.

One device that softened some of the blows to Jerome’s buttocks was a sprung saddle. In an era before the invention of suspension forks, steel springs fixed below the bike seat helped absorb vibrations and jolts. Over lumpy ground, the springs had the effect of bouncing the rider up and down. This hopping motion may well have been what inspired some Indigenous Australians to call the bicycle the ‘kangaroo machine’.

After pedalling and pushing his bike all day, Jerome had covered a mere 34 kilometres. Dejected, he camped at a waterhole and wrote in his journal:

Plugging away, barely moving, against a viciously strong wind, over bleak, soft, treeless, and nearly flat country, strewed with loose stones, and with a sand-hill now and again by way of change, or the marshy bed of a salt lagoon to wade through — an experience to be forgotten as soon as possible.

That spirited enthusiasm of the first week was all but forgotten. After another ‘heartbreaking day’ he reached the southern edge of Lake Eyre.

On the plains, where the stones thinned out, Jerome could manage a higher speed, but negotiating gibber-strewn roads demanded great concentration and energy. But Jerome tried to not lose his sense of humour. He once occupied an hour or so trying to work out the musical note made when the tyres flicked aside the loose stones. He found it be a high D. When the stone was not flicked aside and the bicycle bucked hard over it, ‘a low D is emitted — by the rider’. Continuing his musical theme, Jerome recorded that the ‘dominant notes’ of this country were ‘sun, stone, mirage, and sun’.

In the morning he tried to find an easier riding surface by the train line. This, too, proved difficult. The ground immediately next to the line was too soft. But between the tracks themselves it was too rough. In either position, he could hear nothing over the roar of the wind. Although the train only came once every three weeks, Jerome could not help nervously glancing over his shoulder every minute or so.

The chance of being surprised by a train was slim. But riding near the rail line came with other risks. Snakes bred in the foliage that grew alongside, and the rail itself could be an obstacle. Sometimes the two hazards combined. One time, when Jerome lifted his feet from the pedals to avoid a snake that darted across his path, his front wheel struck the rail. He tumbled down a steep embankment, scraping his skin and ripping his clothes. His first thought, though, was for Diamond, which remained near the tracks. He climbed back up the slope to examine his companion. Save for a twisted handlebar, the bike was unscathed. As he was utterly dependent on this bicycle for his safe movement through remote country, it is no surprise that Jerome developed strong feelings for his ride. The journey had been ‘terribly trying on the bicycle; but Diamond is staunch. We are fast friends already; and in the oppressive silence I find myself familiarly addressing the steel-ribbed skeleton with words of comfort and encouragement.’

Feeling a little faint after the crash, Jerome decided to make camp for the night. At daybreak he set off for William Creek. As he was in no rush, he made a detour to a nearby property he had heard about. Experiments with irrigation had transformed the Anna Creek Station into an ‘oasis in the desert’, and Jerome was impressed by the bounty being grown there. He believed the property demonstrated the extraordinary productive potential of the region. Even more impressive for the ravenous cyclist was the decadent spread of locally grown produce that the owner laid out for lunch.

Sufficiently fortified for his onward journey, Jerome again braved the headwinds and stony trails. As he approached Warrina Creek, the already rough track became steadily worse; it was ‘so demonically vile’ that he bucked over the rocks like a cantering horse, Jerome recorded. Once again, he fell well short of his destination and camped near a deserted hut.

Another challenge for the outback rider was the bush fly that breeds in the abundant manure produced by roving stock. Clouds of the sticky menace attacked Jerome’s eyes. As riding the rocky tracks necessitated keeping both hands on the handlebars, he couldn’t even swat them away. By the time he reached Oodnadatta on 20 March, his eyes were swollen and lined with pus-filled sores. He had the dreaded bung-eye. The ailment was awful, but the timing was good. He had arrived at a veritable city in the outback. The remote settlement had two general stores, a butcher’s shop and a blacksmith. It also had a district doctor. Jerome received treatment and spent the next five days resting at the commodious hotel.

Before he left town, the doctor gave him some parting advice: ‘Be careful. Think well before you venture beyond “The Alice”.’ Jerome had heard this before. But the time for thinking had passed. On 25 March he left without hesitation, and pedalled alongside the Overland Telegraph line that would lead him to Port Darwin. That said, riding towards a place called Blood Creek in no way eased his anxiety about the way ahead.

The next few days were the hardest slog of the entire trip. Dry creeks, gibbers and sand — a trifecta of misery. And a bit of snake-dodging added a little ‘spice of excitement’ to the laborious ride.

Approaching Blood Creek, a gibber field got the better of him and bucked him off the bike, twisting his ankle in the process. With no food or drink, he stretched out in the sand under his waterproof oilskin. Here his primitive sleeping arrangements proved a blessing. Heat from his body created a layer of condensation on the underside of the sheet. He got up and ‘greedily licked up, cat-like, all I could of the precious dew’. Luckily, his injuries were minor enough that he managed to cycle and walk 60 kilometres to the creek, where he found contractors at work on the bore.

From here he rode to the telegraph station at Charlotte Waters, just north of the future border between South Australia and the Northern Territory (officially created in 1911). He refilled his containers, but made a fateful decision to press on under the midday sun. An easy-to-follow track did not emerge. He struggled over loose sandhills, shouldering his bike up the steeper dunes. ‘A fierce sun tormented me from above and blistering sand from beneath,’ he later recalled.

Once he ran out of water, he became ‘parched beyond endurance’. So began the crazed search for a well. In the distance he noticed a man-made structure and raced towards it. Alas, it was a fenced-in grave. Was that an omen? ‘It was dangerous to think,’ he told himself. ‘On, on!’ At twilight, he found the well. He threw himself down, and drank, then drank some more. Later he was overcome by stomach cramps but managed to keep the water down. As he lay there recovering, he contemplated how easy it would be to perish after first being driven mad by thirst.

By morning, he felt a little better. The three-hour ride to Crown Point Station went quickly on the well-defined track. After exchanging the usual pleasantries with the manager, Jerome sat down for lunch and ‘ate like a wolf’. His spirits rose once again, and he rode on with fresh zeal.

The days began to blur, one into the other. To get better traction on the soft sand, Jerome tried deflating his tyres a little. Alas, the experiment failed. On some days he did not even get to pedal his bicycle, such was the difficulty of getting over the sandhills.

As he rode in the sweltering conditions, Jerome’s mind was occupied by one thing: water. The longer it took to move between each creek and well, the more obsessed he became. Everything worked against moving fast. But Jerome had come, to some degree, to accept the slowness of outback travel. ‘The wind is mostly in my teeth,’ he reflected, ‘but that is of small consequence now that I am content to creep over these interminable wastes.’

Occasionally, a natural feature jolted him out of his boredom. At Frances Creek, Jerome glimpsed what appeared to be a spire of rock jutting into the sky. He climbed a high hill to get a better look. Chambers’ Pillar rose from the sandhills to the west. He thought it looked like a mighty furnace stack built on top of a hill, a ‘solitary sentinel guarding the heart of a continent’.

Still, Jerome plugged away. Then, without warning, the land changed. The sand dunes and mulga scrub gave way to granite hills and outcrops. He rode through a narrow pass between two long wall-like formations. Looking up, he imagined a volley of native spears whizzing down upon him. He pedalled with more purpose, continuing deeper into rocks and eventually reaching the end of the track. A famous waterhole, he had been told, could be found higher up, so he shouldered his bike and picked his way into the heart of the formation. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. ‘Very weird is this Ooraminna,’ he would later write. ‘It is a citadel of desolation strongly guarded.’ Huge boulders were heaped into fantastic shapes, reminiscent of castles, fortresses and towers. ‘Gaunt and frowning’ they stood, threatening to fall at any moment. Predictably, the ancient rock art he observed failed to move him. Having drunk deeply at the shaded rock pool, he descended, bicycle still on his shoulder, and searched for the ‘pad’ that led north.

Once clear of the soft sand, Jerome rode along a smooth clay flat. Making good time, he wove through dense mulga scrub. Here and there he caught glimpses of the horizon and, through the haze, a line of mountains. Drawing nearer, the line thickened into a ‘mighty wall’ of rock, blocking any further progress north. Upon reaching the banks of the bone-dry Todd River, he spied a gap in the wall. On a good road, he sped through Heavitree Gap and along the riverbank. Ten minutes later he reached a small cluster of buildings, a sight he had been dreaming about for a week. Alice Springs, at last!

Weeks of hard effort had stripped Jerome’s naturally wiry frame to its bare essentials. He spent his time socialising and gourmandising with the locals, and made sure to put on some decent ‘condition’ for the lean times ahead. Local men asked, as they always did, why he had volunteered for such foolhardiness. Surely, it must be because he had lost a bet? Well accustomed to the question, Jerome liked to say that he was just like a chicken at the edge of a road and simply wanted to reach the other side.

The Alice Springs Hotel and ‘those good things which it contained exercised strong magnetic attractions’. It was a hard place to leave. But after a five-day spell, Jerome was ready to start out on what he thought would be the most dangerous and difficult part of the journey. Ready to farewell the intrepid rider, a good gathering of locals stood outside on 13 April. With his knapsack full of provisions, he rode through the MacDonnell Ranges and along the telegraph line to a lovely waterhole at Burt Creek, beneath the Enbra Hills. Missing the conviviality of town and in melancholy mood, he picked up a stick and began thrumming the spokes of Diamond’s front wheel. He dubbed his impromptu composition ‘Across the Continent in Pyjamas’.

Jerome made steady progress on well-defined tracks. On faster sections he enjoyed sweeping around the trees, ant hills and other obstacles. Looking at the dense mulga scrub that surrounded him, he marvelled at the ‘brave and venturesome’ European explorers who had forged a path through dangerous country. By contrast, the knowledge and skill displayed by the people who had lived there for thousands of years made little to no impression on him.

The three days from Alice Springs had been uneventful but tiring. When in mid afternoon he reached well-known Tea Tree Well, he decided to stop for the evening. Dense ‘nigger-harbouring’ scrub made him nervous, as did a scattering of naked footprints in the sand. But he found the courage to remain and drew a bucket of sweet water from the well, fed by the nearby Hanson River. He distracted himself by turning his engineering skills to a tiny adversary that had been slowing him down since his journey began.

At certain times of the year, a spiny weed sprays its fruit across great swathes of the country. The distinctive burrs, known as cat’s heads or three-cornered jacks, were the bane of cyclists everywhere. Depending on their size and density, the burrs could tear through a tyre like a machine-gun. More commonly, each revolution of the wheel would drive them deeper into the tyre until they pierced the inner tube.

Even Jerome’s extra-thick tyres were no match for the larger thorns. Fixing punctures under the blazing sun was demoralising and exhausting. Fed up, Jerome turned his engineering skills to the problem. He flattened an old tin matchbox he found by the well and attached it between the forks, bending the edges so they almost touched the tyre. The metal edge knocked troublesome burrs from their toehold before they had a chance to become more deeply embedded. While a few persistent thorns did breach Jerome’s ingenious device, over the rest of his trip he saved countless hours patching tubes under the hot sun.

At dusk, Jerome lay down in the sand to sleep. Still a little on edge, he fell asleep thinking about what to call his invention: a ‘burr-catcher’, ‘ejector’, ‘arrester’. Or, perhaps, a ‘burr-dissuader’. No sooner had he closed his eyes that an ‘unearthly wailing’ echoed along the river. Dingoes. Jerome fired his revolver in the general direction of the noise. The ‘howling nuisances of the bush’, as he called them, went quiet. But minutes later they started up again.

In the morning, once Jerome got moving, the sight of Central Mount Stuart momentarily shook off his tiredness. The bald, dark red sandstone mass rises over 800 metres above sea level: it owes its name to the fact that it was once believed to be only a few kilometres from the dead centre of the continent. He paused to take in the impressive sight, but a notebook entry suggests that he really longed to see something else: ‘Would have preferred a brewery.’

Jerome believed in three things: good health, good luck and a good bicycle. For a remote adventure of this magnitude, even these three were not enough. Jerome’s cavalier approach to planning very nearly ended in disaster. From Barrow Creek Station, he faced a daunting haul of 257 kilometres before the next opportunity for food and supplies. But, instead of stocking up on essentials, Jerome resolved to set out with water and piece of cake tied to his bike’s handlebars. In his journal he quipped with his usual irony that he would be very hungry by the time he arrived at Tennant Creek, at least three days’ ride away.

The first morning did not go well. Over the bumpy trails, the poorly secured cake soon bounced off the bars, never to be recovered. The creek where he expected to replenish his water supply was dry. Worse still, as he searched the dry bed, his bike fell over and the stopper dislodged from his water bag, spilling his dwindling supplies into the sand. As his thirst intensified, the salty meat he had eaten for breakfast became a source of real regret. He rode all afternoon without a drink. There was still no sign of the next creek as the light began to fade. ‘Diamond, we must make a dash for it! On, on!’ he said to no-one. In his panicked state he crashed heavily, dislocating a kneecap. By now it was dark. Jerome reset his swollen knee and tried to sleep.

After a restless night, he awoke dehydrated and sore. Unable to ride, he limped along with his bicycle through the sand and scrub, following a crude map drawn by the resident trooper at Barrow Creek. After an hour he reached a faint ‘pad’ that led to Wycliffe Well. Hobbling as fast as his swollen knee would allow, he found a waterhole ‘filled to overflowing with “the nectar of the gods”’. He lay down, plunged his head into the water and ‘drank with rapturous delight’. A lifesaving find, no doubt, but 130 kilometres still separated him from Tennant Creek.

As he rode on next day, Jerome pressed gingerly on the pedals, sparing his knee. Spectacular rock formations offered some distraction, and he imagined giant hobgoblins coming along to play with them. (Today, they are known as the Devil’s Marbles.) Despite his injuries, by dusk Jerome had covered the 60 kilometres to Bonney Creek. He arrived in spectacular fashion, coming a cropper while trying to ride through a pebbly crossing. A group of Aborigines scattered into the bush. Although frightened, Jerome refused to leave the water. He gathered firewood and inspected their now abandoned camp site. He decided against tucking into the goanna and ‘frizzled snake’ left on the fire, and had to be content with his last remaining soup tablet. Hungry and miserable, he went to sleep with his head shoved into his spare pair of pyjama bottoms to protect himself from the ‘athletic mosquitoes’.

Now on his third day without food, Jerome resolved to cover the better part of 100 kilometres to Tennant Creek by nightfall. Even under the best of conditions, it was an ambitious goal. But this time Fate was against him. At Gilbert Creek he lost the trail and wasted valuable hours finding his way out of a billabong he mistook for the main watercourse. Following the telegraph line also proved to be much slower than expected. By this time, many of the original wooden poles used to support the wire had been replaced by steel poles. Workers often left the old poles right across the track. Unwittingly, they created a tedious obstacle for bike riders, who now had to cycle into the scrub to avoid them, or lift their bike over each one.

Jerome’s luck turned, however, when he chanced upon two white men with three Aboriginal boys. He quickly accepted their offer of hospitality and a place to camp. ‘You’ll not think I’m a beast, will you?’ he asked by way of an apology for his voracious appetite. ‘I’ve eaten nothing for three days.’ They did not. In the outback, as Jerome discovered, no-one stood on ceremony or looked askance at a man devouring enough food for three people in a single sitting.

In the morning his luck continued. Smooth roads eased the burden of the final 50 kilometres to Tennant Creek, which he reached on 21 April. The brevity of his telegram to The Advertiser in Adelaide spoke volumes about the state of his mind and body. ‘Am well,’ he fibbed: ‘Three-and-a-half days from Barrow. Intend spelling here for a while.’ Possessed by an ‘unnatural-seeming craving for food’, he ate almost continuously. ‘My happiest thoughts were centred around the dinner table,’ he wrote later, ‘and there was a savage delight in the partaking of every meal.’

Jerome had learnt his lesson. When he felt strong enough to continue, he loaded his bike with as many provisions as he could carry. He picked his way slowly northwards, staying at cattle stations or camping with drovers. But following the telegraph line continued to be deceptively challenging. The faint track did not always follow the line directly. It often led away to find easier terrain, or diverged to waterholes and other features, leaving the traveller unsure of his bearings or how to rejoin the main route. Sometimes the tracks just petered out to nothing and left one hopelessly — and dangerously — lost. Near waterholes and creeks there was usually such a profusion of ‘pads’ and tracks that a ‘traveller might just as likely follow up the wrong one as the right’, Jerome later recalled.

Encounters with local Aborigines were more frequent now, but still fraught with fear and misunderstanding. Jerome preferred to keep his distance. Here he found his bicycle did much of that work for him. As he memorably explained to a newspaper reporter, his bicycle ‘was the best revolver I had’.

Once, while he repaired a flat tyre, two curious Aboriginal boys came a little too close for comfort. Jerome squirted his bike pump at them, the hiss of air causing them to flee. ‘They were careful not to venture within range of so deadly a weapon anymore,’ Jerome recalled.

As well as a belief in his technological superiority, Jerome carried with him all the racial prejudice of his era. Let one stark passage suffice:

The first beholding of adult blackfellows and blackfellowesses naked may be slightly shocking to sensitive nerves. An uncomfortable, uneasy feeling will probably be induced. But this creepiness soon passes, and one comes to either look upon or pass unnoticed the ungarbed blackfellow (and later on the average lubra) as he might the apes and monkeys in a zoological gardens.

Of course, all his braggadocio masked a deep vulnerability. Most nights he went to bed terrified, with one eye open and a loaded revolver within reach. One of the few things that gave him the confidence to carry on was knowing that other white men were nearby.

Fear, too, was literally etched into the buildings Jerome stayed in. On 3 May, after a few days of rough riding, Jerome reached the sanctuary of Powell Creek Telegraph Station. One of the workers there was a cycling enthusiast and an amateur photographer. He delighted in taking shots of Jerome and Diamond with the station buildings as a backdrop. Look closely at the image on page 27 and you can see the defensive gun loops built into the cottage walls. A rifle is pointing through one of them directly at the camera, helpfully demonstrating how it was used. Such defences, Jerome explained, were a ‘reminder of the days when the natives were troublesome’.

Jerome spent a few days at the station before riding past the Ashburton Range and onto the Sturt Plain. The flood-prone terrain had a reputation for being difficult to cross. In the Wet, the blue-black clay became inundated, or at least so muddy as to be impassable. In the Dry, the retreating water left waves of cracked mud. Early settlers called it the ‘Bay of Biscay’ after the wild, pitching seas encountered in the North Atlantic off the coast of France. It was said that the jolting and choppy terrain forced horse riders to stop every 100 metres to reset the kinks in their spines and rest their aching jaws. Riding at the peak of the dry season, Jerome likened the experience to ‘cycling up and down a stairway, with the stairs of unequal height and width, blindfolded or in the dark’.

Nevertheless, he possessed the fortitude and resilience common to every overland cyclist. Once at the beautiful Newcastle Waters, a lagoon-like waterway bursting with life, he soon forgot about past hardships. He lay down beside the river, watching the birdlife, eating, sleeping, writing and reading. ‘I was right, the bike was right, so all was right as right could be,’ he recalled.

Jerome had to drag himself away. Worse still, the road ahead meant riding another 20 kilometres of these Biscay soils — yet another morning of ‘bumpy, desolate, barren wretchedness’. Once clear of the plains, Jerome entered a dense, shaded forest. Something odd began to happen, something strange and supernatural. The forest seemed to come to life. As he recalled, he cycled into ‘a fairy land’, where ‘fairy fingers pulled hard upon the wheels and stopped them’. He stood transfixed at all the life and beauty that surrounded him.

Then, as in some delightful dream, I led Diamond to a hedgewood tree, and stood stock still to drink in the melody — silent melody; for there was no sound to woo the eyes from the feast of tropic beauty … O marvellous Nature, supreme master-artist, what human brain could conceive so glorious a transformation scene — so swift, so entrancing, so unexpected!

He moved on reluctantly, riding slowly to make the most of every second, ‘to stretch the sweetness out’:

The charge of scene and country was so marked and impressive that … in the lasting gloom and shadow of countless solemn giant trees, encompassed by a penetrating solitude, I experience again those indescribable sensations … mystic sensations of a hushed expectant awe as in the presence of a something living, breathing, but unseen, intangible.

The land was ‘throbbing’ with power and purpose. It was neither dead nor inert, unlike what he had once thought. There, in Nature’s embrace, he felt trivial and frail, an ‘insignificant atom’. Yet he was not afraid; quite the opposite. He felt calm and relaxed, as if he had awoken from a deep sleep: ‘In the vast immensity of towering forest the thought of quiet death was no unwelcome one.’ Two months in the desert had left Jerome a changed man. In a very real sense he had entered another world, almost another state of being. Lost in reverie, he draped Diamond in wattle blossom and other flowers.

With a light heart, Jerome wheeled his way through the forest land towards Daly Waters and on into savannah country. A few days later, he arrived in reflective mood at Elsey Station on the Roper River. There he wandered the fertile gardens and enjoyed the pleasure of being able to sleep indoors. The river seemed to cast a spell over him. In the evening he walked its banks and gazed at the water. This ‘fair picture’ of pandanus palms and gum trees that lined the banks delivered ‘some of the most delightful scenery one could desire to look upon’. The mood was broken only by the rumbling of his stomach and the return of his insatiable appetite. Surrounded by such bounty, it was no surprise that the station gardens were able to provide a splendid feast of ‘sweet potatoes and other dainties’, a meal so alluring that only when he went to sleep did Jerome stop thinking about it. A decade after his visit, Elsey Station was immortalised in the autobiographical novel We of the Never Never, written by Jeannie Gunn, who arrived at the station with her husband, Aeneas, in 1902.

There was still 400 kilometres to go to Palmerston — the town would not be officially renamed Darwin for more than another decade — but Jerome entered the final phase of his trip in good spirits. Now deep in savannah country, grass replaced sand as the primary barrier to easy cycling. En route to his camp near the King River, 64 kilometres from Elsey, he encountered fields of grass so thick and tall that he could not see over them as he rode. Unable to see the track, he was forced to dismount and search the bottom of the tunnel of grass to make sure he was heading in the right direction. Annoyingly, grass coiled around the bike’s chain and sprockets, stopping him in his tracks. Only after hacking it away from the mechanical components could he press on.

Arriving at the Katherine River the next day — 18 May — Jerome rejoiced not only at the gorgeous sight but also at the promise of a hotel bed. His journey was practically at an end. Checking in at the telegraph station, he was bemused to find a message from the Dunlop Rubber company. The note, as Jerome saw it, was an ‘impertinent’ attempt to ‘ferret’ out of him a testimonial and endorsement for their products. Incensed that they only approached him now that success was assured, Jerome regarded this as ‘mean, and answered accordingly’. A later advertisement from Dunlop crowing about the reliability of its tyres on Jerome’s trip, however, does suggest that an agreeable arrangement was eventually reached.

In the morning, Jerome shouldered his bike and waded across the river. After a few more days of relatively easy riding, he finally arrived at the outskirts of Palmerston on 22 May, whereupon he stopped, removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. At many times during the ride he had wanted nothing more than for it to be over. Now, with the end in sight, he didn’t know if he should be glad or sorry. Looking fondly at his robust metal companion that had performed so faithfully over the last seventy-four days, he gently rested his palm on one of its handlebars. ‘Thanks, Diamond,’ he whispered, adding in German, ‘Es ist vollbracht!’ The deed is done!

News of Jerome’s impending arrival had been circulating for days and a small group of local cyclists rode out to meet him. They guided him through town and down to a stretch of beach below Fort Hill. There Jerome submerged Diamond in the water. The party christened the beach ‘Bicycle Point’ in commemoration of the record.

With a heavy heart, Jerome sold his much-loved Diamond to pay for a passage to Sydney. After his arrival, he caught a train to Adelaide for a public reception before going back to work in Broken Hill with a water supply company. Wherever Jerome went, he thrilled audiences with tales of his adventures. Yet, while he quietly enjoyed his new-found status as a cycling hero, he never disguised the extent of his suffering. ‘Nothing, I assure you, would induce me to undertake the trip again. Once is enough,’ he told a reporter. ‘That I didn’t go right off my head is a mystery.’

Postscript

Australians were still talking about Murif’s ride a decade on. When Henry Dutton and Horace Aunger failed in their attempt to drive a motor car over the same route in 1907, even more respect and astonishment were heaped upon the pioneering cyclist.

As for Murif himself, little is known about his life after the ride. We do know that, being desperately short of money, he went back to work as an engineer and explored some mineral leases before migrating to San Francisco in 1903. He died there in 1926, unmarried and childless. Records show that while living in California he took out a copyright on a few of his musical compositions. It’s unclear if his bicycle-spoke instrumental ‘Across the Continent in Pyjamas’, written on the banks of Burt Creek, was among them.