Shadows falling across the land

From the air, on our recent direct charter flight from Perth to Uluru, I am reliving journeys remembered on the land below.

We break free of the sprawling boxes that are the Perth suburbs, follow Great Eastern Highway for a while, and then track north, over the salt lake systems around Bullfinch, near Southern Cross. And in a land journey not so long ago and not so far from here, I watched peregrine falcon chicks, sitting in a row in a cave in Baladjie Rock, as the mother came in and out to feed them.

We fly on north of Kalgoorlie and just south of Lake Ballard, where British sculptor Antony Gormley installed the shimmering human figures of his sculpture Inside Australia. From the significant hump of Snake Hill, there are foot tracks between them, as visitors walk the salt lake and feel the space.

My wife, sculptor Virginia Ward, is a friend of Antony’s and worked with him in London, and at one stage there were maps spread out on our dining table as he looked for a suitable site. I have a personal, family-like connection to Lake Ballard.

This is a good time to visit them, in winter.

The captain has already told us the direct flight time is just one hour, 45 minutes, as we have a jet stream behind us. Uluru is so much closer to Perth than Broome is (which I still find amazing).

The less-than-two-hours flight is in contrast to the road trips I’ve driven below. We are flying pretty much over Laverton, which is the start of the Great Central Road for me. First day, drive from Perth to Menzies or Kookynie; second day through Laverton and onto the GCR, to be camping the second night. The Central Land Council transit permit to travel the Great Central Road is for three days.

I may be one of few people who have an “I Love Laverton” sticker — but it’s there on the back bumper of my old LandCruiser.

From Laverton, the plane tracks pretty much along the Great Central Road. Tjukayirla Roadhouse, Warburton, Warakurna Roadhouse, Docker River and, before we know it, Uluru.

It is largely due to the establishment of Warburton as a missionary settlement in 1933, as an outstation of the Mt Margaret Mission near Laverton, that the road is here. For a long time it was just a dusty bush supply track between Warburton and Laverton, but by the mid-1950s, it had become a pretty respectable, graded outback track. Things stepped up in 1958 when explorer-surveyor Len Beadell was sent to build a new road from Giles to Warburton as part of the Woomera rocket range project. The British government had created the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia to test fire rockets across the remote spaces of WA, and access points to places like Giles were needed.

I think the three-day drive between Laverton and Uluru is one of the easiest remote journeys for West Australians. Great Central Road is a big gravel but all-weather road. There is fuel, water, help and some sort of accommodation at intervals of about 300km.

The road is being sealed but in “parcels”, with the stretches that are most expensive and difficult to maintain being done first. (So they aren’t just starting one end and doing it bit by bit.) Forty kilometres east of Laverton was sealed in 2021 and the plan is to seal more near Cosmo Newbery in 2025.

The 40km near Laverton was completed under an “alliance contract” between WA Main Roads, CareyMC and Central Earthmoving Company, which together was called the Wongutha Way Alliance. “Wongutha” means the broad group of local Aboriginal people that reside in the area, as the objective of the project was to maximise Aboriginal employment and business opportunities to help benefit local communities.

Road design is in progress for the last 100km section between Warakurna and the border. Survey, design, environmental, geotechnical and heritage surveys are under way.

The program is currently being reviewed to ensure completion of sealing by 2032.

There are budgerigars in green-and-yellow flocks down there. One of the world’s most popular pets, budgies are endemic to these deserts, but only in these natural colours. The big, dominant males always remind me of lions, with their big, proud, patterned heads. These vibrant parakeets are very social, flying in nomadic flocks, chattering away. They are superbly adapted for the arid and semi-arid regions of Australia, following rainfall and spinifex seed-setting.

Budgerigar were first scientifically described by English botanist and zoologist George Shaw in 1805, and given its binomial name by ornithologist John Gould in 1840. In England, Gould had progressed from skilled taxidermist, handling species brought back by others, to renowned ornithologist. In 1837, after his second voyage on the ship HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin took his bird specimens to Gould for identification. Gould came to Australia himself in 1838, to study the birds here. The result of the trip were the seven groundbreaking volumes of his epic work The Birds Of Australia (1840-48).

And just a fun fact, they have zygodactyl feet — two toes facing forward and two backwards, which helps them to balance, perch and waddle round the bloodwood trees.

There are zebra finches meep-meeping in and out of bushes and gathering in flitty crowds round the edge of any water they find.

The Great Victoria Desert is covered in spinifex — Australia’s most prevalent grass.

It is beautiful.

This is largely ungrazed, unfenced land, and that is a rarity.

We have flown over the Great Victoria Desert and Lake Throssell, named for George Throssell, the 13th premier of Western Australia, just as the desert itself was named by legendary explorer Ernest Giles in 1875 to honour Queen Victoria, the reigning monarch.

We’re heading well south of Great Central Road now, for the border. I’m following it all on maps.me, with my phone in flight mode, as it uses GPS.

We leave WA almost exactly over Surveyor Generals Corner, where our State joins South Australia and the NT.

It was named to commemorate the three surveyor-generals who stood here on June 4, 1968, to inaugurate the monument which marks the junction of the three jurisdictions’ boundaries. (They were Harold Camm from WA, H.A. Bailey from South Australia and P.J. Wells from the NT.)

And then we are descending. Already.

But my mind has already been down there, boots in the red dust.

ON THE ROAD

The first 800km from Perth to Kalgoorlie is on bitumen highways, then it’s another 240km to Laverton on bitumen.

Long sections of the Great Central Road are unsealed, corrugated and dusty, but well maintained.

There is fuel every 250-300km on the Great Central Road — at Laverton, Cosmo Newbery, Tjukayirla Roadhouse, Warburton, Warakurna Roadhouse and Docker River.

Distances east from Laverton are: Cosmo Newbery, 85km; Tjukayirla Roadhouse, 300km; Warburton, 560km; Warakurna Roadhouse, 786km; Docker River, 890km.

Camping’s easy and there’s accommodation along the way.

From the WA border to Uluru is about 240km.

A permit is needed for three days on the Great Central Road. For the WA stretch, start at dplh.wa.gov.au and click on “Apply for a permit to access/travel through Aboriginal land”.