Tag Archives: roadhouse

Christmas In Darwin And An Unexpected Night Spent In Renner Springs.

05 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Australia, Daniel Brace, Travel, Travel Diaries

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Christmas in Darwin was an unfamiliar experience. For a start nobody gave a shit. There were no decorations, a few small ones for sale in the shops but nothing spectacular. Our room did however boast the finest Christmas tree in all of Darwin. No expense spared, its ample branches were dripping with baubles, tinsel, glitter and candy canes.

Isn't it beautiful?!

As a matter of fact, the Northern territory were so indifferent to Christmas that the first person Faye wished a merry Christmas replied, “Fucking right it’s merry. There’s only one more sleep until the cricket.” If the Grinch lived in Darwin he’d be thrown out for being too festive.

We did celebrate a little though and cooked up some shrimps and chicken wings that one of the lads had stolen from work and drank more than a few Bundy and Cokes.

Australia looks nothing like this

In fact the Grinch did have a part to play that Christmas as our families had sent us a package of presents which still hadn’t arrived by Christmas Eve. In an amazing and entirely uncharacteristic feat of organisation which I will probably never better I managed to find out which plane our box was on, what time it landed and the whereabouts of the office in the airport that handled these things. And so we jumped in the van and sped off towards the airport with only twenty minutes remaining until it closed until boxing day.

“We haven’t a moment to lose!”, I probably said as the van nearly reached 50 miles per hour. “I can’t hold her. Shes breaking up.”

With the theme from Bullitt in my head I used a pile of sand left by the roadside as a launchpad, clearing the perimeter fence and skidded and fishtailed to a halt outside the mail hangar. At least I think that’s how we got in, it was a long time ago now and my memory is a bit hazy.

With literally minutes to spare though, we picked up our presents and Christmas was saved. It turned out that my Grandmother had sent us some clothes and towels, useful items, and about twenty packs of tissues. I’m not sure why she sent tissues and I am afraid to say that she has taken that secret to the grave with her now, but when the parcel was  x-rayed the customs officers thought that the small packages were some kind of class A substance or high explosive and so the package was delayed until it had been thoroughly rummaged through.

With Christmas rescued and by now out of the way and a New Years Eve spent in our room as Faye had not been well we called out a local mechanic to take a look at our vans carburettor (yes they still have those in Australia) as it had a habit of backfiring, which was hilarious in multi-storey car parks because people would dive behind bins and under cars thinking that Al Quaeda had decided to target the arsehole of Australia. It still needed fixing though as it couldn’t be healthy for a car to make that much noise. I stood out in the 30 degree heat and helped him. By now the wet season was in full swing and humidity levels were in the high 90′s. As we were finishing up, Faye came out to ask if we needed a drink of water which we gratefully accepted. When she arrived with it, I leant over to kiss her and she pulled away. “No thanks, you’re all sweaty”, she said. To which the mechanic replied, “You’re in Darwin now darlin’. If you don’t kiss a sweaty man, you don’t get a kiss.”

With the van now fixed to some extent, we finally packed up our stuff again and headed south to Alice Springs, the plan being to stop for a night in Tennant Creek en route. We didn’t get as far as Tennant Creek because I stopped at a derelict old roadhouse just outside of Humpty Doo (I love that name) so that I could relieve myself. Unfortunately whilst there I also managed to somehow relieve myself of my wallet. I didn’t realise until we were about 60 kilometers outside of the next roadhouse, Renner Springs. Renner Springs was not a great place to end up as this website shows. This page is entitled “What’s happening around Renner Springs”. The answer to this question is fuck all.

Like so many places along the Stuart Highway, it owes its origins to the Australian Overland Telegraph Line. It was named after Dr. Frederick Renner, who was dispensing medical advice to the team working on the Telegraph Line when they passed through the springs in 1872. In 1877, Dr. Renner saw a flock of birds while working on the Telegraph Line and found that the birds were drawn to this particular area by the natural springs, which were later rather attractively named Mud Springs. These freshwater springs, which bubble up from underground helped the area surrounding Renner Springs achieve its importance to the Northern Territory beef industry because they provided water to the area.

Established in the 1950s, the Renner Springs roadhouse building is an old army hut relocated after World War II from the army’s staging camp 50 km at Banka Banka Station, which dates from 1885.

A charming country pub nestled in the attractive farming region known as the Barkly Table Lands

Having had a look at the website, the Renner Springs Roadhouse does seem to have improved a great deal since we went there but we ended up having something of a nightmare when we got there. Obviously we had no money, and not enough fuel to get us to the next town, so we went in to ask at the bar if they could accept a travelers cheque. A man with a receding hairline which magnified what was already a disproportionately large forehead lumbered over to the bar. I explained that my wallet had fallen out of my pocket a few hundred miles back and so I didn’t have any money or enough petrol to go back and find it. His glassy eyes looked me up and down. He shrugged and looked away. “Don’t take travelers cheques.”

“In that case I’ll have to camp here, order new cards and wait until they are delivered.”

“The camp site is seven bucks a night.” he replied.

Obviously he had missed the point about how I had no money AND no petrol so would be staying there regardless.

“OK, I’ll pay when I get my cards through.” I said.

“Money up front, mate.” he replied again, flatly.

I walked out and gave Faye the bad news. She started to cry and I noticed an aboriginal woman was watching us across the field. “I think shes looking at us.” I whispered. “cry some more!”

She was definitely watching us and so I sent Faye over to ask her for some money so we could use the phone box to reorder our cards. As it happened she did more than that, lending us a couple of dollars for the phone, paying for a nights camping, giving us dinner which we ate with some friends of hers who were also passing through the roadhouse and they gave us twenty litres of fuel to get us to Tennant Creek where there was bank that would cash travelers cheques.

Once again we had been saved by a friendly stranger. No thanks to Frankenstein behind the bar though.

Going Somewhere – An Australian Adventure

Bruce Forsyth and the Nanutarra Nightmare

11 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by in Australia, Daniel Brace, Travel, Travel Diaries

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In the morning we packed our things into the van, filled up with petrol and embarked on what was to be a much extended journey to Port Hedland. It all started unremarkably, driving along the same highway we had joined in Perth over a thousand kilometres ago. A few hours into the trip however and I noticed that the temperature gauge on the dashboard was rising rapidly. This can be unnerving at the best of times but on a deserted highway in the middle of a huge desert, in an unfamiliar country it can be very worrying indeed. 
As I had expected the engine soon overheated and in a cloud of steam we ground to a halt by the side of the road. A quick inspection of the engine revealed an empty radiator so I took a little of our valuable drinking water out and topped it up, only to watch it pour out of the bottom. I hoped that it would simply be a case of moving a hose clip in order to bypass a section of perished radiator hose but further investigation soon revealed a leak in the water pump itself, a far more serious problem.
Although we had joined the R.A.C. when we bought the van our breakdown cover only extended thirty kilometres outside of any major town and we were hundreds of miles from any inkling of a mobile phone signal anyway. We decided that the only thing we could do would be to hitch hike to the nearest roadhouse and ask for help there. 
An hour or so passed before we managed to flag down a passing car. A young couple were driving with their family in the back, so we decided it would be safe for Faye to go with them while I stayed with the van. I am told that she shared the back seat with three children, a dog and a canary in a cage for nearly three hundred kilometres before heroically returning eight hours later with the proprietor of the nearest roadhouse, one Mr Bruce Forsyth (I kid you not). And best of all, he had absolutely no idea who Bruce Forsyth was back in England.
Whilst anxiously awaiting her return I sat on the deep red sandy ground about fifty yards away from the van, watching the sun set over the endless flat landscape. It is not until one is completely alone in the Australian wilderness that its true size fully reveals itself. As darkness falls you expect to be completely enveloped by it in the absence of any man made light. In fact the opposite is true. The landscape is lit by a soft bluish white light, reflected down to Earth from the cratered surface of the moon and aided by the gentle, primeval light from countless billions of distant stars, some of which have long since disappeared.  The Milky Way, our own galaxy, slashes through the dark sky like a shining, diamond encrusted dagger. 
In my opinion there is nothing more humbling than staring up into the sky, hundreds of miles from civilisation, smaller than the tiniest pinprick on the desert landscape and that is how I spent the greater part of the eight hour wait for Faye’s return.
Occasionally I was interrupted by passing truck drivers or ‘truckies’ as they are known in Australia, all of whom were keen to make sure that everything was alright. You see when you drive through the outback, you become part of a community. The harsh reality of what could happen if something were to go wrong binds everybody together who uses those endless empty highways and so in their own way, everybody looks out for each other. 
This spirit is illustrated by the simple gesture of raising your index finger slightly from the steering wheel as you pass another vehicle. This simultaneously means ‘Hello’, ‘I’m O.K.’ and ‘Are you O.K.’ whilst acting as an acknowledgement that whatever happens, somebody will always be there to help out.
Anyway, Faye had returned from her little adventure in a Toyota ute (pickup truck) driven by a gentleman called Bruce Forsyth. He was tall and slim, probably in his early sixties, but looked well for it, as people from such places have a tendency to. Faye had at first found him in her own words ‘a little bit creepy’ but he in fact turned out to be one of the most helpful and accommodating people we could have hoped to have met under the circumstances. 
He hitched a towrope onto the roo-bars on the front of the van and towed us all the way to the Nanutarra roadhouse. It was a long way to be towed by anybody’s standards, about three hundred kilometres in fact but it was worth the wait, and the three hundred dollars he asked for to do it. When we finally got to Nanutarra he towed us onto a small campsite next to the roadhouse and took us into the restaurant where his wife offered us whatever we wanted from the menu, free of charge. Having eaten pretty much nothing but peanut butter sandwiches since leaving Perth I plumped for a roast chicken dinner whilst Faye rather bizarrely chose a toasted cheese and onion sandwich. When we had eaten our fill and were ready to go to bed Bruce told me that I could borrow any tools I needed from the garage and that behind the roadhouse there were fifty or so wrecked cars of various makes and models which I was free to pick over and see if I could find a working water pump.
He didn’t have the spares himself to fix it and unfortunately Nanutarra roadhouse is literally just that, a roadhouse. There is no settlement nearby. No farms or mines or oil wells. Just acre upon acre of dry, empty desert. This meant that to order a new water pump would have taken a month and that was just a little longer than we had hoped to spend in Nanutarra. 
I spent the next week pulling promising looking water pumps from the wrecks behind the roadhouse and trying them on the van. Some looked like they might work but didn’t fit. Others fitted but didn’t work, but not one could manage to do both simultaneously. I did find a huge collection of pornography stashed in one of the less accessible wrecked cars and couldn’t help but wonder to myself whose it might be. Bruce didn’t strike me as the type to have his own personal smut collection so I finally settled on his brother as the prime suspect as he was the only person living there who was not married. And I hear the dating scene in Nanutarra isn’t quite sex and the city. 
After a week of this nothing had changed. I had tried to book a place on a car transporter that was due to pass through the roadhouse in a few days time but to no avail. Every time I heard another vehicle pull into the roadhouse I rushed out from amongst the jalopies and accosted the owner, trying to get a tow from somebody. Most of the traffic was either too small or too big to tow us anywhere although I did get offered a tow as far as Tom Price, a small mining town in the Pilbara region, but that would have taken us from one remote outpost to another, even more remote one. 
In the morning on the eighth day of our stay at Nanutarra, having become firm friends with Bruce and the Forsyths, Bruce came to our van and told us that he had to go to Karratha, the next reasonably sized town, about three hundred kilometres away in the heart of the Pilbara, to buy some stock for the roadhouse. We jumped at the chance and soon we had hitched up the van and set off.
We had yet to even leave the camping area before I was wildly blasting on my horn and waving my arms around. I hadn’t thought to put the keys in the ignition and so the steering lock had remained on meaning that as Bruce turned right to take us out onto the highway, we continued to go in a straight line on a collision course with a large wooden fence. Other than that the trip was uneventful and a few hours later he dropped us off in the car park of a local Nissan garage and went on his way.

Going Somewhere – An Australian Adventure

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