It was a remote corner of Australia’s Northern Territory. The motorcyclist, dressed in leather overalls and Darth Vader helmet, approached on the rust-red outback road, a plume of fine dust rising from his chunky rear tyre. Giving us a thumbs down, he circled behind us and pulled up beside our car. He was riding a big off-road bike and his accent was French, although I never did ask his name or nationality.
‘The sand ahead is terrible,’ he said. ‘A truck and a 4x4 are stuck and blocking the way. You must turn around. You have no hope of getting through. Especially,’ he paused, nodding rather dismissively at our car, ‘in this.’
He meant our Mini.
Turning around was unthinkable. There were only two alternative roads we could take – one far to the north, the other equally far to the south. Forty-three years after the first east-west crossing of Australia by car, there is still no sealed road that connects the east and west coasts via the centre.
Most people, of course, will not attempt the journey in a Mini. Yet that first historic crossing in 1966 was done in just such a vehicle. Supported by a bigger Austin and, on the roughest Western Australian tracks, by a Land Rover, the little Mini pounded for days over desert terrain. For good measure it then looped along the north-west coast and did a north-south crossing as well. In all, it travelled 12,000 miles. Four adventurers shared the toil and one of them was my dad.
As well as following in my father’s footsteps, there was another reason to use a Mini for my own east-west crossing. The Mini is 50 years old this year and an adventure was called for, to commemorate the golden anniversary of Britain’s most iconic car.
So, on a cool autumn morning in Sydney, we set off across the Harbour Bridge, destination Perth. The little Mini Cooper was standard apart from a sump guard – a thick protective metal plate underneath the front of the car to protect the engine and other mechanicals from rock damage – and the removal of the rear seat. Two spare tyres and two 20-litre fuel containers occupied the space instead. Photographer Mark Bramley was alongside me. I’d driven with Mark before and trusted him. Plus, we get on well. That’s crucial when you’re about to spend the next ten days cooped up in a small car.
In a 4x4 BMW support car was engineer Darryl Cook, tasked with fixing our Mini should we break it. His car was heavily laden, mostly with spares for the Mini, including two more tyres. It also took our camping equipment. We carried a satellite phone plus an emergency electronic beacon that promised attention within four hours, wherever we were.
Our planned journey mostly followed my dad’s east-west crossing and would measure just under 4,000 miles. In terms of difficulty, it was neatly split in two. Until the halfway mark of Alice Springs, at the hub of Australia, the roads would mostly be tarmac. Our daily drives would be long – about 500 miles a day – and the temperatures would be hot – up to 40°C, possibly higher.
After Alice Springs, things would get tougher. We would be driving on gravel or poorly maintained dirt roads that were recommended for 4x4s only. They would be rock-strewn and corrugated, and there would be pockets of deep sand. We were to journey through central Western Australia, the most deserted part of the world’s most deserted continent.
For the first two days, heading north-west from Sydney to central Queensland, the only hazards were the scores of Eastern grey kangaroos bounding across the road at dusk, eerily phantom-like in the twilight. Had we hit one, it would have been the end of our Mini adventure and very probably of us too.
