Motorcycle Explorer Mar 2017 Issue 16 | Page 56

Travel Story: leigh wilkins - australia

Discovery

Descriptive passages found each night in Mitchell’s journal helped me seek the next steps of my expedition. It became easier to see what he was seeing so long ago. The landscape had changed yet remained the same.

Funnily enough, I had never ventured into the central west of New South Wales and what was presented was vast farmlands, it was easy to see why the early settlers had regarded this to be such good pastoral lands. Mitchell had the ‘foresight’ to see that where there were great forests there was also an opportunity to grow crops. Indeed, the land would be changed.

He described deserts with great detail, to the level of coarseness of the sands. On numerous occasions, I was to discover this sand. The challenges presented were often extreme and confronting, yet well worth the effort. Ray surprised me with his tenacity and determination. At 75 years of age, it couldn’t have been easy for him at times yet he pushed on and came out the other end, especially a 40 kilometre stretch of some of the finest sand I have ever encountered.

Mitchell suggested that Australia had a lifeless interior and went searching for greater riches. I too discovered these deserts, unlike Mitchell, I would never suggest these lands are lifeless. They are worth exploring, you might be surprised by what you find. The animals and plant life are rich and diverse, the human interaction with the landscape is just as so.