26 June 2026

We’d arrived in Halls Creek late the previous afternoon after Bob and Tom’s 200 km ride from Mimbi Caves.

By the time we arrived, everyone was tired.

We needed somewhere to stay that would take Lucky, and none of the campground options worked for us, so we ended up at a pet-friendly hotel.

It was expensive. Really expensive.

About $400 a room.

Jenny, Bob and Tom shared one room, while Lucky and I had another, so we were looking at around $800 for the night.

The rooms themselves were fairly plain. They had everything we needed; there was a restaurant on-site, and after such a long day we weren’t looking for luxury anyway.

Then we noticed the security.

Razor wire around the fences.

Suddenly the price made a little more sense.

We’re paying for the security.

There are no photographs from that night. Looking back, I wish I’d taken some, particularly of the security around the hotel, because it was part of our experience of Halls Creek.

But that’s easy to say now.

At the time, we’d been on the road all day. Bob and Tom had ridden 200 km. By the time we reached wherever we were sleeping each night, the routine was pretty simple: get everyone settled, get the boys showered, get some food into them and get them to bed.

Tomorrow, we did it all again.

Fuel before we leave

Jenny had needed fuel when we arrived in Halls Creek, so while the rest of us headed to the hotel, she went to fill her van.

When she came back, she was rattled.

She described a heavy police presence at the service station and said the atmosphere had felt confronting. She also described people using separate queues, which she understood at the time as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal customers lining up separately.

The next morning, it was my turn.

I needed fuel before we left, and we also needed supplies. Bread. Bananas. Tinned fruit. Noodles. The basic things we’d been going through feeding two cyclists across the Kimberley.

Out here, the service station was often much more than somewhere to buy diesel. It was where you stocked up on whatever you could get before heading back onto the highway.

I pulled up at the bowser.

Beside me was a police officer carrying a long firearm.

“Good morning, officer.”

He looked straight through me.

Nothing.

Not a word.

Just a stone-cold expression.

It was an unsettling start to the morning.

And then, as we’d done every morning for the past few days, we left town and returned to the Great Northern Highway.

Ahead of us was Warmun.

Another 170 km for Bob and Tom.

A Friday phone call from 2GB

About 30 km east of Halls Creek, we needed to find somewhere safe to pull over.

It was Friday, which meant Mark Levy from 2GB would be calling at 11 am for what was to become his regular Friday chat with Bob and Tom.

We found a break beside the road and waited for the phone to ring.

While we were waiting, I started looking around and noticed a couple of station signs nearby.

ALICE DOWNS.

SPRINGVALE.

They looked like two simple signs beside the highway, but out here a station can be almost impossible to comprehend in size.

Alice Downs and Springvale are part of the same four-station cattle operation, the Springvale Aggregation. Together with Mabel Downs and Texas Downs, the properties cover around 584,000 hectares, or 5,840 square kilometres.

And all you see from the highway is a sign.

Bob and Tom used my phone for the interview, which also explains why there are no photographs of the conversation.

My phone was my camera.

37°C by 11 am

It was hot.

Really hot.

By 11 am it was already around 37°C.

Finding somewhere to stop wasn’t simply a matter of pulling off the highway. Whenever we could, we’d position the vans to create shade, a windbreak, or preferably both.

The boys were spending virtually the entire day exposed to it.

They were generally up around 4 am, riding for hours and finally getting their heads onto pillows somewhere around 9 pm.

By now there was also a running joke involving Assos chamois cream, or as we’d renamed it, “Ass-Off.”

After day after day in the saddle, it wasn’t exactly a luxury.

The joke kept us laughing.

The cream kept other parts of the operation functioning.

Little Panton Old Crossing

We stopped at Little Panton Old Crossing, where Lucky could finally get out of the van and have a proper run around.

The road itself had been excellent. Solid bitumen, built for the road trains travelling through this country, and no potholes.

But here we had somewhere we could safely get off the highway.

Lucky was delighted.

When I’d first arrived, I’d noticed a woman in a car on the other side of the crossing.

She drove towards me and stopped.

We started talking.

I noticed she was wearing what looked like a hospital identification bracelet and had a wound on her cheek.

I told her what we were doing, about Bob and Tom riding from Broome to Bowral and why they were doing it.

She reached for her purse.

Then she put $50 into the donation tin.

One of those completely unexpected moments with a stranger that became part of the journey.

Fruit, road trains and cow shit

As we continued towards Warmun, we kept seeing signs about quarantine and fruit fly restrictions.

I’d already been through two full quarantine inspections on my drive across Australia before the ride, one crossing from Victoria into South Australia and another crossing from South Australia into Western Australia.

And I’d already nearly come unstuck at the first one.

At the South Australian border, they found a yellow capsicum in my fridge that I’d completely forgotten was there.

The fine was $425.

Thankfully, the woman doing the inspection let me off after I explained that I was travelling for the charity ride and that I hadn’t actually packed the fridge. Anya had packed it for me before I left home, and I genuinely didn’t know the capsicum was there.

It was a bit like airport security asking:

“Did you pack your own bags?”

Well… technically, no.

So by the time we were travelling towards the WA/NT border and seeing quarantine signs again, I wasn’t taking any chances.

We assumed there would be another inspection when we crossed into the Northern Territory, so we gave the fruit we had left to the staff at Warmun Roadhouse.

As it turned out, there was no inspection going into the Northern Territory.

At least nobody found another bloody capsicum.

Then there were the cattle trucks.

Huge road trains loaded with cattle.

I looked at the cows peering through the sides.

They had absolutely no idea what was happening to them.

Or where they were going.

I’ve got something on my bucket list:

One day, I want to drive one of those road trains.

Yep.

Cows and all.

Although there was one unavoidable downside.

It smells like cow shit.

A lot.

Then it was back to kilometre after kilometre of winding Kimberley road, with termite mounds appearing in every imaginable shape.

Even a short, stumpy little one deserved a photograph by this stage.

Jarlalu Bridge and the Ord

Eventually we reached Jarlalu Bridge over the Ord River.

I pulled over so I could get out of the van, stretch my legs and take some photographs.

Standing on the bridge and looking down, the landscape almost looked like a beach.

Wide stretches of pale sand sat beneath us, surrounded by the dry Kimberley landscape.

It was another reminder of how dramatically this country changes between seasons.

Well, that was fast

When I was ready to leave Jarlalu Bridge, I checked the road.

There was a campervan coming, but it was a long way behind me.

Plenty of room.

I’ve been driving professionally for years. I know how long it takes my vehicle to get up to speed, and by the time they reached me, I was already moving along nicely.

Then they overtook me.

What the fuck?

Where did they come from?

I have no idea how fast they were travelling, but they were moving.

Really moving.

These roads might look empty, but they’re not roads I’d want to be flying around blindly. They’re winding in places, enormous road trains use them, and once you’re committed around a bend, there isn’t always somewhere to go.

I watched the campervan disappear ahead of me and thought that would be the last I’d see of them.

It wasn’t.

Riding behind the van

After hours in the saddle, the wind was once again blasting Bob and Tom directly in the face.

One of the best features of my van was its electronic rear-view mirror.

A camera mounted above the rear doors meant I could see behind the van constantly.

That became incredibly useful when Bob and Tom were riding behind me.

Over time, we’d developed our own little collection of hand signals.

Faster.

Slower.

Stay at that speed.

I could watch them through the camera while adjusting the van’s speed to what they needed.

No radios.

Just the three of us, a rear-view camera and some increasingly well-practised hand signals.

Five kilometres to Warmun

Finally, another road sign.

Warmun 5 km.

That meant 165 km were behind us.

Nearly there.

And somewhere amongst all of this, I was still buying postcards.

They were like hen’s teeth out here.

Whenever I found them, I’d buy ten.

I travelled with stamps ready to go, although finding somewhere selling postcards didn’t necessarily mean finding somewhere with a mailbox.

Across the entire journey, I only found five places with decent cards for sale.

Technically there was a sixth at Dunmarra later in the trip, but they’d been sitting behind glass for so long that they’d faded.

I left those there.

Guess who was at Warmun?

We finally pulled into Warmun Roadhouse.

And guess who was camping right beside me?

Yep.

The campervan.

The people who’d flown past me after Jarlalu Bridge were a couple from New Zealand.

They’d flown into Broome, hired a campervan and were making their way across to Darwin before flying home to New Zealand.

That evening we saw them again inside the roadhouse while everyone was getting dinner.

The bloke seemed a bit grumpy, so Jenny and I quietly gave him a nickname.

I can’t remember what the nickname was now, but it was one of those names we could say to each other without anyone else having a clue who we were talking about.

I thought that would be the last we’d see of them.

It wasn’t.

But that’s a story for another day.

Warmun Roadhouse

While I wrote postcards, Lucky slept.

Completely gone.

Jenny, Bob and Tom stayed in the accommodation at Warmun Roadhouse that night.

Lucky and I stayed in the campground.

Another 170 km was behind Bob and Tom.

Tomorrow was considerably shorter.

Warmun to Doon Doon. 85 km.

From the road Originally posted during the journey on 27 June 2026. View my original Facebook post →

From the road Originally posted during the journey on 26 June 2026.View the original Instagram post →