Day 10 of Broome to Bowral

A walk in the park

Ninety-two kilometres.

For someone who cycles regularly to keep fit, a ride might be 20 or 30 km. For an experienced endurance cyclist, 100 km is a substantial ride, while 160 km is a serious undertaking.

In cycling circles, riding 100 miles (approximately 161 km) is known as a century ride, a significant milestone for endurance cyclists.

For Bob and Tom?

Ninety-two kilometres was beginning to sound like a walk in the park.

After the distances they’d been covering since leaving Broome, including yesterday’s enormous 228 km ride from Kununurra to Timber Creek, today was practically a day off.

Well, almost.

There were still 92 kilometres of Northern Territory highway between them and Victoria River Roadhouse.

But by our increasingly ridiculous standards, this was a short day.

The road ahead

Bob Montgomery was 82 years old. His grandson, Tom Malcolm, was 18.

Together, they were cycling 5,290 kilometres from Broome to Bowral, raising funds and awareness for Motor Neurone Disease.

I was part of their support crew, travelling with my dog, Lucky, while Bob’s wife, Jenny, drove a second van.

By Day 10, we’d developed a routine.

The boys left early, often well before sunrise, while Jenny and I packed up camp, organised supplies and eventually headed down the highway to find them.

Then came second breakfast.

You can’t ride those distances on enthusiasm alone.

The boys needed feeding, regularly and generously, and I was becoming quite proficient at producing breakfast from the back of a van in the middle of nowhere.

But there was something else we’d learnt.

Finding somewhere safe to stop was becoming just as important as finding the boys.

The Victoria Highway runs through some spectacular country, but it isn’t a place where you can simply pull over wherever you fancy.

There are long stretches with narrow shoulders, heavy vehicles and very little room for error.

The landscape is magnificent. The roads demand respect.

And with two cyclists out there every day, we were becoming increasingly conscious of the risks.

Victoria River country

The journey towards Victoria River Roadhouse was another reminder of why I loved travelling through this part of Australia.

The vast distances.

The changing colours.

The gum trees.

Some of those trees looked as though someone had painted them into the landscape.

Beautiful trunks, extraordinary shapes, branches reaching into the sky.

I could have driven those roads all day.

There was something about the country that made me feel completely at home, even when we were hundreds of kilometres from anything familiar.

And then there was the Victoria River itself.

This is a landscape shaped by one of the Northern Territory’s great river systems, with dramatic sandstone country, seasonal flooding and waterways that have sustained life for thousands of years.

It’s also crocodile country.

The sort of place where you admire the water from a sensible distance.

By the time I reached Victoria River Roadhouse, I was about an hour ahead of the others.

I’d been told to go ahead, set up camp and have a rest.

Naturally, I ignored the last instruction.

Instead, I got the spaghetti bolognese bubbling away in the van.

A few hours simmering would make it beautiful, and with any luck we’d be eating by six, in bed by seven and up again at four.

Such was our glamorous life on the road.

Deb, Jenny and the Great Diesel Debacle

The campground operated on a one-way system.

You drove in through a big country-style entrance, followed the road around, found your campsite and eventually exited through another gate.

Simple enough.

Or so you’d think.

Bob and Jenny had booked a donga, one of those basic, transportable accommodation units commonly found at remote roadhouses, mining camps and outback work sites.

They’re practical rather than luxurious, providing somewhere for truck drivers, contractors and other travellers to sleep.

Tom was sleeping in Jenny’s hire van, parked beside mine on a powered site, with the amenities block conveniently nearby.

I’d just about got everything organised when two women came roaring around the campground on a quad bike.

One was Deb.

The other was a little redhead.

I didn’t know their names at the time.

They wanted to know whether I’d displayed my camping permit on the dashboard.

Yes, I had.

In fact, I had two permits, one for my van and another for Jenny’s, who would be arriving shortly.

I explained all this.

Off they went.

A few minutes later, I spotted Jenny’s van coming around the road near the dongas.

Unfortunately, she’d entered through the exit.

And Deb was not happy.

Suddenly, the quad bike was chasing Jenny’s van, with Deb and her sidekick banging on the side and shouting for her to stop.

“YOU COULD HAVE KILLED US!”

Apparently, driving the wrong way through the campground at less than 10 km/h was an extraordinarily dangerous activity.

Unlike hurtling around the same campground on a quad bike.

Jenny looked at me.

I looked at Jenny.

I pointed towards her donga.

Just stop there, Jenny. You’re here.

By this stage of the trip, I’d become quite proficient at directing Jenny with hand signals. I’d usually arrive at camp first, work out where everyone needed to go, and then guide her into position.

But this particular arrival had attracted rather more attention than usual.

Jenny, who was nearly 80 and normally the picture of composure, wasn’t having a bar of it.

She apologised for getting lost but pointed out that she’d been travelling slowly and obeying the campground speed limit.

Unlike, she suggested, the two women on the quad bike.

Then came another interrogation about the pink dashboard permit.

Where was it?

I went over and explained, again, that Jenny’s permit had already been accounted for.

Both vans had the same Miles for MND signage. We were very obviously travelling together.

Eventually, Deb and her offsider disappeared.

Peace returned to Victoria River Roadhouse.

For the moment.

The best XXXX in the Territory

Bob and Tom arrived after their 92 km ride.

Bob was delighted with the place.

He walked into the roadhouse, ordered a cold XXXX and declared it the best beer he’d ever tasted.

He even recorded a video recommending that anyone travelling through the Top End stop at Victoria River Roadhouse for a cold one.

Now, I don’t know whether that beer was objectively better than any other XXXX in Australia.

But after riding 92 kilometres through the Northern Territory, I suspect it tasted pretty bloody good.

And Bob was happy.

That was what mattered.

A few wines and a sideways shower

That afternoon, we settled into the roadhouse.

A few wines for Jenny and me, a few beers for Bob, a couple of Cokes for Tom.

Dinner was sorted, and there was no great rush to do anything other than relax.

Tom had also discovered that the shower in the donga had a rather interesting design feature.

Water sprayed sideways, and there was no proper door separating the shower from the bedroom.

He demonstrated the problem for us, dancing around trying to avoid the spray.

It was hilarious.

Bob recorded another video, this time describing their accommodation and the shower that was watering the room as well as whoever happened to be standing underneath it.

But he wasn’t complaining.

He was still talking about the beautiful countryside, the Victoria River and what a wonderful place this was to visit.

That was Bob.

He could find something good in almost anything.

We’d ridden, driven and survived another day in the outback.

What could possibly go wrong tomorrow?

Where’s the bloody diesel?

The following morning, Bob and Tom were already back on the highway when Jenny and I went to fill the vans.

We’d deliberately left refuelling until morning.

At two or three in the afternoon, the roadhouse bowsers were packed with travellers coming and going.

At seven in the morning, there was barely anyone around.

Perfect.

Except we couldn’t find the diesel.

We found the petrol bowsers.

No good.

So we went inside and asked the woman behind the counter.

“Where’s your diesel?”

“All the way over there,” she told us, pointing towards the side of the property.

Right.

Off we went.

It was a fair old walk to the diesel bowsers.

And when we finally got there, we discovered a sign.

Please see Deb inside the roadhouse and leave your driver’s licence to have the diesel bowser unlocked. Your licence will be returned after payment.

Oh, for God’s sake.

We’d just been inside!

Why hadn’t she told us?

Back Jenny went, trudging all the way to the roadhouse with her licence.

But the fun wasn’t over.

We had two vans.

And apparently, the bowser could only be unlocked for one transaction at a time.

So Jenny filled her van, then had to go all the way back inside, pay for her diesel and arrange for the bowser to be unlocked again.

Eventually, she called out to me.

“YOU CAN START PUMPING NOW!”

By this stage, the whole exercise had become ridiculous.

And Jenny was getting increasingly unimpressed.

This was a woman who rarely swore.

But Victoria River Roadhouse was testing her vocabulary.

“Fucking Deb!”

I nearly fell over laughing.

Meet the manager

Then Deb appeared.

She explained that they’d been having a terrible problem with people driving off without paying for diesel.

There were no cameras covering the bowsers, so when someone helped themselves to fuel and disappeared, there was little she could do about it.

Hence the driver’s licence system.

Fair enough, really.

A bit inconvenient, particularly when you’ve got two vans to fill and the bowsers are miles from the counter, but at least there was a reason behind the madness.

Then something clicked.

“Hang on. You’re Deb?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m the manager here.”

Ah.

Deb. The manager.

The woman responsible for the diesel system.

And the very same Deb who’d been banging on Jenny’s van the afternoon before.

Well, that explained a few things.

We’d arrived at Victoria River Roadhouse expecting a quiet overnight stop, a decent meal and a little rest before another day on the road.

Instead, we’d had a quad bike pursuit, a shower that watered the bedroom, a diesel expedition and the unexpected pleasure of hearing Jenny lose her patience.

“Fucking Deb!”

I still couldn’t get over it.

I didn’t dare photograph Deb.

Some characters are better left to the imagination.

Tomorrow, we try again

By the time we’d sorted out the diesel, Bob and Tom were already somewhere along the road towards Katherine.

Another day.

Another long stretch of highway.

Another early start, another second breakfast and another chance to see what the Northern Territory had waiting for us.

We were ten days into a journey that would eventually take us 5,290 kilometres across Australia.

We’d begun to understand that the distance was only part of the story.

There were the people we met, the unexpected problems, the places that surprised us and the ridiculous little moments that made us laugh.

There were days when everything went to plan.

And there were days when absolutely nothing did.

But every morning, Bob and Tom got back on their bikes.

And every morning, we followed.

Tomorrow, we try again.

From the road Originally posted during the journey on 2 July 2026. View my original Facebook post →

From the road Originally posted during the journey on 1 July 2026.View the original Instagram post →