Motorworld by Jeremy Clarkson

Author:Jeremy Clarkson [Clarkson, Jeremy]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Motorworld (Television program), Automobile driving, Voyages and travels, Transportation / Automotive / General, Automobiles, Automobile travel, Humor / General, Automobile drivers, Travel / Essays & Travelogues, Travel / General
ISBN: 9780141017877
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2006-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Australia

For a country whose most notable contribution to the world of television is a programme called Neighbours, it comes as quite a surprise to find the nearest big city to Perth is Jakarta. But don’t expect a rugged, hairy-bottomed sort of town. Think more in terms of Milton Keynes and you’re about there. Interesting motoring stories? Er… no. Not really.

Okay, so what about Sydney, likened by many to San Francisco? Oh come on. San Francisco is the best city in the world, with fine vistas, extraordinary hills, the Golden Gate, wonderful restaurants and an endearing blend of character and cleanliness.

Sydney is a huge, soulless sprawl where the people are chippy and the architecture is reminiscent of Birmingham. Except that Sydney doesn’t have the International Conference Centre.

Again, if you attempted to make a motoring programme there, it would last about three minutes. ‘Er, everyone drives Toyota Starlets.’ The end.

I went to Queensland, too, where the coastline was tropical and unspoiled, but apart from a tendency to drive on the beaches of the Whitsunday Islands, I was still stuck. Cairns had nothing. Nor did Townsville. Australia was turning out to be a dead duck. Until I headed inland.

Peel away Australia’s coastline and you’re left with an area which is about the same size as America. And yet it has the same population as Leeds.

In outback Australia there is one person for every square mile and, to put that in perspective, in the Scottish Highlands there are twenty people for every square mile. Australia is enormous. And almost completely deserted.

Out here is where we would find the real Aussie action. Out here we could pose the question: what good is a car when your nearest neighbour is 300 miles away and there are no roads?

It’s not as though we’re talking about an arid desert. There are trees and, just below the surface, there are vast reservoirs of water which fell as rain three million years ago in Malaysia.

Obviously, the soil doesn’t provide lush green Anchor-butter-type grass, but it isn’t useless dust either.

This means that, every so often, you come across a farm which is so large it is rather hard for a European to get his head round the numbers. We needed to visit one, to find out about life in such remoteness, but were told, time and again, to get lost, in that polite way Australians have developed. ‘Fuck off you Pommy bastard.’ Something like that anyway.

Thick-skinned perseverance eventually saw us arriving at the truly enormous Wave Hill Station which is near… nowhere really.

It covers 13,000 square kilometres, making it the same size as Cornwall, Devon, Avon, Somerset and Dorset.

At any one time, 40,000 cattle are grazing on its paddocks, but even so it’s not the largest farm; not by a long way.

It isn’t the most remote settlement either, even though the nearest shop is 280 miles away. The nearest pub is a 100-mile trek and to get to the nearest biggish town by road takes eighteen hours.

To get there, we flew

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