Gallery

Two years, two roads, and one very small machine.

All photographs by the author. Click any one to enlarge — arrow keys to move through them, Escape to close, or swipe on a phone.

Preparation

A blue three-wheeled pram on grass in Germany
The first machine, on a lawn in Germany, before any of it. Its rear axle was sixty centimetres wide, which nobody thought to measure against anything.
Hauling a loaded trolley through winter pine forest
Training through a European winter — the loaded trolley, bare fields and pine forest.
A full expedition kit laid out on a floor
The chaos room. Ninety days of an expedition laid out on a living-room floor, in the order it will be needed.
Handwritten daily ration ledger in red ink
The ration ledger, in her handwriting, in two languages. Peanut butter every three days. Jerky daily. Haribo only every four. Sunscreen on a seven-day cycle.
Handwritten shopping list in red ink
The third shopping list. Parmesan, applesauce, containers, lighters.
A floor covered in colour-coded shopping bags
Ninety identical bags, packed by hand, on a floor in a suburb of Perth.
Bottled water stacked in bulk before distribution
Four hundred and fifty litres of water, before it went into the ground.
A four-wheel-drive boot packed with dry bags and water
Loaded, and no room left for anybody’s swag. Both of them slept in her tent for six nights.

Ninety holes

The support vehicle, liveried
The support vehicle. Six days, south to north, eighteen hundred and fifty kilometres.
Standing in spinifex holding a petrol auger
Mid-drop, somewhere in the spinifex. A petrol auger, ten or twelve holes a day.
The loaded support vehicle
Food, water and a fortnight of Coles and Woolworths, going up the middle of Western Australia.
The support vehicle on the track with an orange flag
On the track, orange flag up.

The Canning

The Lake Stretch, Nyarna, information panel
“This country belongs to the Tjurabalan people… Your Canning Stock Route permit does not cover access into this land. Stay safe. Use Channel 40.”
A sign reading To Well 46, 28.7 km
Twenty-eight point seven kilometres, via seismic lines. Follow signs.
A painted drum marking Well 48
Well 48. The trolley’s shadow is in the frame.
The Well 45 marker beside a white gum with the loaded trolley
Well 45, beside a white gum.
Self-portrait at the Well 42 marker
Well 42.
A burnt-out vehicle wreck beside the track
A wreck beside the track. Nothing gets moved out there.
The wreck, with the trolley in frame
The trolley alongside it, for scale. Forty centimetres across the rear axle, built to that measurement on purpose.
Hand-painted steel sign reading CSR closed, use bypass
The rain. “CSR CLOSED — USE BYPASS.” This is what ended the first attempt.
The trolley strapped to a trailer, caked in mud and spinifex
Coming out. The trolley on a trailer, packed solid with red mud and spinifex seed. It was still raining.

The Gibb River Road

Walking with the pram, a white cockatoo perched on her
Somebody’s pet, let out of its cage at a rest stop. They asked whether she would like to hold it. It is the most photographed moment of two years and it lasted about a minute.
The Mount Elizabeth Station turnoff sign before dawn
The Mount Elizabeth turnoff, at four in the morning. She never went in — the photograph is the proof of passing.
Barefoot river crossing, boots on the pram
Boots off, every single crossing. Wet shoes rub, and a blister ends a walk.
A tent pitched beside a creek
One of the very few camps on the Gibb anywhere near water.
A billabong in the Kimberley
Far enough from the coast to be safe. Sandy bottom, all the way out.

Beginnings and endings

The Yiwarra Kuju monument at Wiluna
Yiwarra Kuju — One Road. Wiluna, where the sealed road gives up and the Canning Stock Route begins.
Road sign reading Mount Magnet, Geo Hub of the Murchison
Mount Magnet, after ten days and three hundred kilometres of walking to find a bus.
Cartoon of a figure flattened under a balloon marked Fatigue
“I am done for today.” From the trail sketchbook, drawn in the tent.
Coloured-pencil drawing of a dune field captioned corrugated horizon
“Corrugated horizon.” Her own two words for nine hundred sand ridges, in her own handwriting.