Truckers Darren Schneider and Rod Bryson couldn’t have chosen a more dramatic place to stop. But having turned off the 90 Mile Straight, “Australia’s Longest Straight Road,” in the early hours of the morning en route from Melbourne to Perth, their three-carriage Kenworth inexplicably shuts down. A misty dawn reveals an endless vista of saltbush: They’re bang in the middle of an ancient seabed stretching 700 km from South Australia’s Head of the Bight west to Balladonia. Nullarbor translates as “no trees” in Latin, and for the moment the truckers are without a clue. “Usually when there’s a fault, a series of codes will flash up on the dash, but that’s not coming up,” Schneider says. “You just have to try and eliminate all the possibilities.”
The usual culprit along this stretch of road is the kangaroo. “The roos breed up something phenomenal,” says Eucla mechanic Rodney Fowler, who regularly tows broken-down vehicles across the Nullarbor. “Trucks bowl them over all the time, and a few cars as well. And they just keep on coming and they don’t thin out.” But a roo isn’t to blame this morning, nor is low oil or water. Written across the Kenworth’s chassis is the motto without trucking australia stops, but into the last quarter of their 40-hour trip, Schneider and Bryson must simply sit on the roadside and check and recheck the truck manual.
Having moved to Perth from New Zealand little over a year ago, Bryson, 48, is new to the Nullarbor. “The thing that struck me,” he says, “is it’s the same but different. There’s always something a bit different down the road.” Today he’s especially struck by the tyranny of distance. From Ceduna to Esperance alone, he says, “this distance would get me the whole length of New Zealand.”
Schneider, 43, knows the area more intimately, having roamed it for 20 years as a mines driller. Even today, he’s not regretting his decision, three months ago, to take up trucking: “The money’s not as good, but it’s easier.” In five-hour stints, he’ll take the wheel while his companion beds down in the padded cabin bunk. Each knows the other’s boundaries. “If someone doesn’t want to talk,” says Schneider, “you leave him alone and he leaves you alone.”
With no sign yet of the engine coming to life, Schneider decides to hitch a 30-km ride to Balladonia, where he’ll phone for help. “Get me a sausage roll or something, mate,” Bryson calls from the truck, soon to be a mere speck in the landscape.
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