“
D
o you want to ride the Canning Stock Route with me?” I asked Scott. “Sure,” he said, “what’s that?”
The very beginning of all this is hard to track, though the route itself is simply a line, already on the map. Instead of an uncertain possibility invented by us to connect two places, it is someone else’s line – mapped out and originally equipped with 51 wells over 100 years ago by the surveyor Alfred Canning, who had a dual purpose like so many others. Foremost, he envisioned a pest-free cattle droving route from the Kimberley to Perth, but also had an eye out for gold. Despite the pioneering achievement, there is the murkier tale of shackled Aboriginal guides used to find water – water we would come to rely on during our unsupported bicycle journey along the 1,650 km Canning Stock Route (CSR) through the West Australian desert. A word on the route and landmarks: The 51 wells sunk by Canning at the inception of the route are numbered south to north. Durba Springs is a haven of soft grass and shade about 500 km from the start, just after well 17. Kunawarritji is an aboriginal community near well 33 (1,000 km in) and the Canning Stock Route finishes officially at another small community, Billiluna, 180 km south of Hall’s Creek on the Tanami Highway that connects the Kimberley region of northwest Western Australia with Alice Springs in the centre of the country. The catalyst for action was the need for ‘something next,’ noticed when we were booking flights back to Australia several months before the end of a dirt road oriented pan-American cycle journey. Years earlier, I’d read of Jakub Postrzygacz’s epic first unsupported CSR ride in 2005 and added it to ‘the list.’ It seemed destined to languish there indefinitely, until my wife and I spent a month riding in Perú with Joe Cruz and his Surly Pugsley. While the fat tyres never rendered the impossible possible, seeing it up-close brought the CSR up from its resting spot. That was
Bunyan Velo 26