KEY POINTS:
Two minutes into the Great Outback Cattle Drive, I am lying face down.
My mount is called Take Two. Take Two is right. Take Two minutes to throw me off her back.
The Doc, one of the stockmen, puffs up beside me. "Son, you look a bit shook up. Maybe you should jump in the ute and call it a day."
Another stockman, Adam Lichfield, disagrees. "You gotta climb back in that saddle. It's the only way." I follow his advice, and after being led around by a drover with a "Jesus rope" (presumably so named because it saves), Take Two and I work out our differences.
The Great Australian Outback Cattle Drive is a rare experience, an adventure almost anyone of moderate fitness and confidence can enjoy.
Riders are matched with horses to ensure they enjoy the thrill of helping to drive 500 head of cattle along South Australia's historic Oodnadatta Track.
What makes the cattle drive such a great adventure is that no amount of planning can cover every possibility involving untrained man and beast in the Outback. But spills are rare, and there's a medic on duty and the Royal Flying Doctor Service on call.
After starting with Take Two, the next day I am given Missy, so docile I feel I should offer her a ride.
The Great Australian Outback Cattle Drive begins at Coober Pedy, opal capital of the world, 846km north of Adelaide, 685km south of Alice Springs, and a place so searing hot that people live in caves. From a winter low of -7 deg C, the mercury soars to 53C in summer.
We arrive at Coober Pedy by plane from Adelaide and leave by bus over 178km of dirt road that joins the Oodnadatta Track at William Creek, population 16. We pass through the Dog Fence, a 5400km barrier stretching from the Great Australian Bight to the foothills of Queensland's Bunya Mountains to keep dingos out of the southern sheep runs. North of the Dog Fence is cattle country.
When it comes to cattle country, nothing beats Anna Creek Station — 26,000sq km of Outback South Australia. It's bigger than Belgium, home to 15,000 cattle and 150 horses, 1000km from the nearest city and more than six hours' driving on dirt tracks from one boundary to the other. In summer, temperatures are hot enough to burst your tyres.
This is no place for the faint-hearted. In the old days, cattle were mustered by drovers on horseback on stations like this all over the Queensland and South Australian Outback. Great mobs were driven for hundreds of kilometres along routes, including the famous Birdsville and Oodnadatta tracks, to railheads.
Today, spotter planes and motorbikes do the job, but horses are still used by station hands, and it was a desire to see the tradition of the cattle drive survive that led to a handful of cattlemen dreaming up the Great Australian Outback Cattle Drive for the 2002 Year of the Outback. People paid to climb into a saddle and drive cattle down the Birdsville Track. They made friends with hard-bitten drovers around campfires at night, mixed with the locals, experienced the vast, haunting beauty of the Outback and sampled another Australia, far away from the shopping malls of Sydney.
The Cattle Drive was repeated last year and is on again next year on the Oodnadatta, an 850km route along the path of the old Ghan Railway, passing the southern border of the Lake Eyre National Park. Halfway between Oodnadatta and Marree, the end points of the track, is William Creek, home to 16 people and one pub, at the former junction of the long-gone Overland Telegraph Line and the disbanded Ghan. William Creek is surrounded by Anna Creek Station, and the only way to truly appreciate the landscape's immensity is from the air. Scenic flights can be booked through Wrights Air (www.wrightsair.com.au). The expanse of Lake Eyre and the beauty of the Painted Desert are unforgettable sights.
The Cattle Drive follows 390km of desert country, with groups of riders joining the drovers for five-day journeys. After riding instructions and a rundown on safety in the Outback ("don't pick up any long slithery things, they're called snakes"), there's a short familiarisation ride near camp. Once the drive starts, riders slowly work the flanks of the mob until the cattle and horses progress at an easy walk. Now there's time to marvel at the clay pans, gibber plains and ironstone which make up much of this beautiful, arid, ochre and dun-coloured county. The horizon shimmers like a hot skillet even though these are the cooler months of May and June. If it was summer, you'd be fried alive.
Look out for majestic wedgetail eagles, the occasional kangaroo or emu and, on the ridges, clumps of mulga, cane grass and eucalyptus. Anna Creek has been in the teeth of a drought for more than six months, but when the rain returns, the Outback greenery will burst into life within hours.
At day's end, the cattle are corralled near a water supply, usually a spring fed by the Great Artesian Basin. On the old drives, the aim was to get the cattle to the railhead in better condition than when they started, so good pasture and water was a priority.
Horses are penned nearby while riders return to the camp and ease off their boots. Sunset blazes across the Outback and, when night falls, the sky is full of stars. No street lights or police sirens out here. The temperature drops quickly, and beds in comfortable tents beckon, but there is always a roaring campfire on the Cattle Drive and the food dished up is sensational. Around the campfire you can yarn with locals such as Eric Oldfield, the 78-year-old patriarch of the Cattle Drive and its first head drover. He lives 200km up the road at Marree, seldom leaves the Outback and has never stepped foot outside Australia. "I don't need to go see the world," he rasps. "The world comes to me."
Too much wine and song around the campfire with characters like Eric is an easy trap to fall into. While you curse your folly when the cowbell clangs at sunrise, take solace in this being a once-in-a-lifetime experience — possibly the most fun you can have on four legs.
Coober Pedy
In the ranks of the world's weirdest places to live, Coober Pedy is right up there. Of course, the locals think it's normal to live in caves in the midst of an Armageddon-like landscape out of Mad Max or Pitch Black. Both post-apocalypse movies were filmed around Coober's Outback moonscape of pyramids from the dumped spoil of opal mining, and "junked" machinery. "It's not junk," one local told me. "When you live this far from the rest of the world, what others call junk, we call spare parts."
Opals have attracted chancers and society's runaways to Coober since their discovery in 1914.
Most of Coober's 4000-odd residents are non-Australians, many seeking their fortunes in the opal mines. Soldiers from World War I, with experience of life in the trenches, figured that living underground was the best way to escape the desert's temperature extremes. Today you can buy a section of hillside for around A$15,000 and, using a tunnelling machine, complete the shell of a house in three weeks. There's even an underground luxury hotel, The Desert Cave.
This dusty outpost, roughly midway between Adelaide and Alice on the Stuart Highway, attracts curious tourists. The Desert Cave runs daily tours which take in opal mines, underground churches and a graveyard crowded with immigrant surnames such as Axel, Magdic and Szabo. Perhaps the last words should go to hard-living local Karl Bratz, 1940-1992, who has a beer keg as a gravestone, inscribed "have a drink on me".
Travel notes
Getting there
Qantas offers 3 direct services a week to Adelaide and daily connections via Sydney. The Cattle Drive can organise transfers to join the drive.
More information
There are seven Cattle Drive tours available between May 5 and June 10. Meals and accommodation are included, flights and transfers are not. Each ride takes five days.
Fitness
People of any riding ability can take part as horses are ridden at a walking pace.
Outback festivities
Outback communities organise events alongside the Cattle Drive. The 117th Oodnadatta Races, William Creek Gymkhana and Marree Final Event coincide with the drive.
Booking
Contact your nearest Aussie Specialist Premier Agent on 0800 151 085 or talk to your local travel agent
COMPETITION
1. Click here here to WIN The Ghan Ultimate Journey
2. For more information on Australia click here
