Читать книгу Wild Ride - Daniel Oakman - Страница 22

Spectators craned to get a look at the bike that would carry Arthur through the wilderness. His Humber path-racer was a picture of simplicity: a sturdy steel frame, one gear and no brakes. Would it stand up to the rigours of outback travel? Or would its rider be left stranded in the desert? This journey would be as much a test of the machine as of the man.

Introverted and strong-willed, Arthur craved neither company nor conversation. He had the perfect psychological make-up for an outback endurance rider. At twenty-seven he was in his physical prime. He didn’t drink or smoke. He liked cycle racing and going for long walks.

Arthur was also a planner. To prepare for his round-Australia trip, he devoured as much information as he could find. He wrote to the Surveyor General of Western Australia, who provided maps and other information to help him negotiate the less settled parts of the colony. Some of the men he met on the goldfields had firsthand experience working and travelling in the Kimberley and western Queensland. He soon learned from them that while his journey would be arduous it could be done. As for the Aboriginal people he would encounter on the way, his strategy was simple: ‘I will need to camp well away from water and avoid them as much as possible.’ He carried a revolver, just in case.

Arthur reckoned he would finish the trip in five months, six if he got held up by bad weather or mechanical problems. Travelling fast and light was the plan. Carrying little in the way of provisions or spare clothes, Arthur planned to purchase meals and supplies at cattle and sheep stations along the route. He pedalled out of Perth with an escort of local riders, looking as if he was heading out for a weekend jaunt.

By starting in June and riding clockwise, Arthur assumed the rains would ease by the time he reached the tropical north. Alas, a longer-than-expected winter brought cold temperatures and heavy rain. The first day was a shocker. Only hours into the ride, the rain started coming down in sheets. Of course, he didn’t carry a waterproof cape.

Working his way north, Arthur found most of the waterways in flood. He waded through fast-flowing rivers and creeks, some running so high that he had to hold the bike above his head. ‘The country for miles upon miles was a perfect quagmire,’ he said. He pushed his bike for hours through unrideable slop. At times, the chain became so clogged with mud he had to remove it altogether to allow the bike to roll freely. He headed inland, in a vain attempt to find drier country.

Arthur’s lightweight set-up had another, more serious, drawback. Somewhat recklessly, he was travelling without a tent, groundsheet or sleeping bag. Tiny, sputtering fires made with damp wood did little to keep him warm. He spent many a miserable night shivering in wet clothes and counting the hours until dawn.

After nearly a month, as Arthur entered the Pilbara region, the rain began to ease. Here, he faced a challenge he had worried about since leaving Perth. A mix of curiosity, fear and distrust shaped Arthur’s first encounter with Aboriginal people. ‘They were quite friendly, though I kept my eye on them,’ he said:

All night long they kept their fires going, and till midnight sang in their weird, wild fashion, which gave me the bluey creeps. The gins [derogatory term for Aboriginal women] came to my camp and asked for bacca [tobacco], but I had none. For two hours one of them, a lean, skinny creature, about twenty years of age, sat opposite me and gazed at me without uttering a sound. Then she suddenly disappeared in the darkness.

On 2 July Arthur reached the bustling town of Roebourne on the Harding River, then the largest settlement between Perth and Port Darwin. He had covered 1,800 kilometres in under a month, a respectable figure considering the terrible conditions.

While Arthur rested and overhauled his bicycle, a group of cyclists on the other side of the country were planning to start their own epic journey. At 1pm on 5 July, brothers Frank and Alex White left Melbourne, intending to cycle round the continent — only they would be riding counter-clockwise. A third rider, Donald Mackay, would join the two men once they reached Brisbane.

Arthur knew this attempt was in offing when he left, although he didn’t know precisely when they might start. Like it or not, his journey was now a race. Although he had a good head start, the odds were tipped against him. Not only was he competing against a trio, Frank White and Donald Mackay were two of the strongest riders in the country. In 1898 Frank had ridden 6,800 kilometres from Perth to Rockhampton in sixty-two days, breaking William Virgin’s Perth-Brisbane record along the way. For good measure, he rested for a few days then cycled back again. He was, you might say, a man of determined disposition.

Frank was also outgoing and bold, a marketer’s dream who knew how to excite the cycling media. As he explained to Australian Cyclist magazine:

The alligators in the streams and the mosquitoes in battalions will be our worst enemies, as the blacks are not very aggressive unless you interfere with their lubras, and we are not out on a love-making expedition.

The public lapped it up. In bike shop windows, giant maps showed the latest position of the racers. In pubs, bets were taken.

In truth, it was the sponsors who fuelled the idea that the men were in a fierce contest against each other. The riders had more immediate concerns, such as finding enough food, water and shelter, and keeping their bikes (not to mention their bodies) in good working order. Survival was the first priority, speed a distant second.

Arthur left Roebourne under clear skies. Keen to increase his daily mileage, he rode late into the evenings. Travelling under moonlight proved ‘rather ticklish work’, he said:

… all the track you can see is a dark line in the high grass, sometimes as high as the handlebars of the machine. Sailing alone a dark lane thus formed, seemingly riding on and through nothing, and not knowing when or where you will strike a stump or stone or drop into a hole — for the country is cut up with big cracks and holes in the limestone — is not the most pleasurable means of travelling.

Arthur cycled into the Kimberley. Although it was sparsely populated and remote, European settlement had spread across the region. In the twenty years since explorer Alexander Forrest reported on the region’s potential for development, investors and pastoralists had scrambled to take up land. By 1899 thousands of sheep and cattle grazed the region’s pastures. All of this was good news for Arthur, as he depended on the people who worked these properties to provide him with food, shelter and information about the trails ahead.

The port town of Derby was the centre of the vast Kimberley pastoral industry. It boasted 200 residents, two pubs, three stores and a spectacular wooden jetty that allowed ships to dock. Arthur arrived on 23 July and stayed for two days, fitted new tyres to his bike and bought new shoes, having thoroughly destroyed his old pair over the last 2,700 kilometres.

Arthur headed east along the Fitzroy and Margaret rivers towards Halls Creek. The rivers were teeming. ‘You can catch enough fish in half an hour to provide for twenty people,’ he recalled. Challenges remained, however. The weight-obsessed cyclist had packed so light that he didn’t even carry a dish to make damper. Instead, to create a basin in which to mix the water and flour, he had to dig a hole in the ground and line it with a hessian bag.