14,000 km by Horse Cart - Norseman, Australia

Ian is a sunburnt, energetic man. He is taking a tour in a custom built horse drawn wagon. The object of the trip is to raise a million dollars for cancer research. Ian will drive his horse wagon around the entire circumference of the Australian continent, a distance of more than fourteen thousand kilometers. Ian doesn’t seem crazy, but he does make me feel quite normal…

Five minutes at the Norseman turn off, and I am experiencing serious hitchhiker anxiety. The only traffic on the road seems to be road trains, and they speed by without hesitation. I can’t really blame them. towing three or four massive trailers, these trucks must take hundreds of metres to stop, and minutes to get back up to speed. But, as usually happens when getting a ride seems impossible, five minutes later, a car stops.

Rob’s vehicle is actually much more than a car. It is a mobile crisis management centre. The outside of the four-wheel-drive is decked out with about half a dozen different aerials, which Rob informs me are for CB radio, phone, satellite phone, UHF, VHF, and some other obscure acronyms. Inside the car are stretchers, first aid equipment, fire fighting tools, flotation devices, an inflatable raft, water and food for a week, vehicle recovery gear, and a large box of bibles.

(Top pic: old and new. Rob’s off-roader, and Ian’s off-roader side by side.)

Rob is a mobile minister. He drives around outback Australia to the most remote and isolated places, offering friendship, assistance and counsel to people who are often hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town. In addition to being a man of God, Rob is also a fully qualified firefighter, and a captain with the SES; Australia’s volunteer emergency rescue corps.

In five minutes Rob and I are chatting away like old friends. We have a lot in common. Rob grew up in the country, and started camping and traveling in his teens. Like me, he was a boy scout.
Rob loves gadgets, and had to upgrade the suspension on his four-by-four, to cope with the weight of all the gear he habitually carts around.

“In this job” Rob tells me, “I have to be ready for everything. The places I go, the people I visit, are so far from everywhere. I’ve helped build sheds, I’ve fought bush fires, I do marriage ceremonies and help with search and rescue operations routinely. Just last week, we got a report that some Dutch tourists had got themselves bogged on a dirt track about eighty kilometres north of the Nullarbor. Me, the local police, and two other blokes from the SES went out to look for them. I must have driven more than six hundred kilometres looking for them, but the report we had was vague at best. The people who made the report were tourists themselves, Germans, and they didn’t know the region at all. After three days the police called off the search. We still haven’t found them. For all we know, they may still be out there.”
“So do you think they will show up?” I ask him.
“Nope, Rob replies. If they are still out there, they will be dead from thirst by now.”
Rob grins and adds, as an afterthought;
“There is a German girl on our rescue crew at the moment. She said ‘if it’s Germans reporting Dutch people missing, they probably killed them and pushed their car off the road into the bush.'”

“I’m going to go to the station on this side road” Rob tells me. “I can drop you off here, or you can come along if you like.”

I am curious about Rob’s work, so I decide to tag along.

The station, which was once the homestead of a massive farm, is now a motel / caravan park / roadhouse.
Rob has come here to deliver a trailer to Ian.

Ian is a sunburned, energetic man, with a grubby looking felt hat and a ready smile. He is taking a tour in a custom built horse drawn wagon. The object of the trip is to raise a million dollars for cancer research. Ian will drive his horse wagon around the entire circumference of the Australian continent, a distance of more than fourteen thousand kilometers. Ian doesn’t seem crazy, but he does make me feel quite normal.

“I average about twenty kilometres a day” Ian says. “I expect the journey to take about three years all up.”

I am speechless.
The horses are also keeping their opinion of the mission to themselves.

“God has helped me every time I had problems” Ian tells us. “Like this week. When I met Rob in Esperance, he said to me, here’s my number, let me know if I can help. That was so inspiring. Nothing can stop me. People sometimes say to me, it’s an impossible mission, but nothing is impossible if you have a strong faith.”

“This trailer is going to save my life” Ian says to Rob, as we unhitch it from Rob’s car. “The horses drink sixty litres of water every day, each, so I just can’t carry enough in the wagon, especially in the desert.”
“How are you going to tow the trailer?” I ask Ian.
“Well that’s where Mark comes in” Ian tells me. “I met him in Esperance the other day, and he didn’t have much on, so he’s decided to go round the country with me and be my support driver.”
Mark says “hello”, shyly.

We hitch the trailer to Mark’s car, and load on buckets of water, and sacks of horse feed.

“So how did you get roped into this?” I ask Mark, while Rob and Ian sort out the trailer hitch.
“Well, after me amputations, Mark tells me, I was pretty lost. Depressed. I been living in me car for the last few weeks. When I met Ian, and he told me what he was doing, I just had to give him a hand. What he’s doing is fucking awesome.”

Mark has no legs below the knees, and gets around in a wheelchair.

“I’m a diabetic” says Mark. “One day, I had an argument with my missus while we were driving. I got out of the car and started walking. It was one of those real hot W.A. days, and I burned the skin on the soles of me feet. They got really infected. ‘Cause I’m diabetic, the doc’s couldn’t give me much medication. The infection spread. They took me feet off, but it kept spreading. Eighteen months ago, I lost me lower legs.” Mark grins. “I spend a lot of time sitting in me car anyway, so I might as well be doing something worthwhile, you know? And what’s more worthwhile than raising money for cancer research?”

We finish loading the horses supplies, and have a cup of tea. Rob always travels with tea and cake, he tells me, which means he is always a welcome guest, even in atheist households.

Ian and Mark climb aboard their respective vehicles, and set out across the dusty Nullarbor Plain, at a stately walking pace.

“Do you think he’ll make it?” I ask Rob. “He seems to have a lot of faith.”
“I don’t know if faith is gonna help him” Rob says with a smile, “but he’s a determined bugger alright.”

(L-R: Rob, Ian and Mark. The horses will consume most of the supplies in the trailer in one day.)