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It started off as a coast-to-coast four-wheel-drive odyssey across Australia's top end.

4WD Odyssey

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 16:52:02

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the local tourist bureau on the best spots to camp around Ravensthorpe. Since our course was to take us north to Lake King and across the Lake King-Norseman road we settled on a spot called Pallinorup about 50km north of Ravensthorpe and 20km short of Lake King.

Pallinorup is a nature reserve wrapped around a small lake just off the main road. A little bit of four wheel driving put us overlooking the lake on a small hill. We rolled out the swags again and Richard fired up the gas stove to whistle up a quick red-beef curry for dinner.

Eager to get on the road before the heat of the day kicked in we were up at the crack of dawn for the traditional bacon-and-egg breakfast and then headed up to Lake King. At Lake King we turned east and out onto the Lake King-Norseman road. The last time Richard had been this way the road had been impassable due to flooding but this time it was very definitely open seeing as the temperatures were already in the mid to high thirties and it hadn't rained out there for months.

In fact the landscape was tinder dry and we could see in the far distance a rising column of smoke indicating a bush fire somewhere out in the scrub. Down the road we passed the Lake King gravel air strip where the single light airplane on the field was taxiing for takeoff. A bit further down the road we came to the state barrier fence which stretches from the north to south of Western Australia and separates various pests from the farming lands in the west.

As we got further down the road it became obvious that we were getting closer to the fire we had seen earlier in the distance and it was a big fire. We considered our options carefully because the Lake King-Norseman road is a 200km stretch of gravel with exactly four corners and no options. If the fire were to cut the road off we would be pretty much stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Luckily ...