A special experience on the roads of Australia are the many individually and lovingly styled trucks, which rush towards you with up to four trailers like a train on wheels, mainly on the roads in the outback.
Shortly after Sydney, the first Australian trucks come towards us. The diversity and creativity of the drivers, who are often also the owners of the trucks, is almost inexhaustible.
The hood of almost all trucks is adorned with a huge battering ram, which the Aussies also call a roo-bar or bill-bar. This is also necessary. On the roads in the outbacks, drivers are often on the road in the dark and at night. Dangerous in the remote areas are the cows and kangaroos, which pass the streets especially at dusk and in the dark and are attracted by the lights of the spotlights. The drivers do not brake for “minor obstacles” of this kind. On the roadsides you can see the dead carcasses of the animals.
The trucks have a braking distance that is on a par with that of ocean liners. The size is just as impressive, as the trucks often tow up to four trailers behind them. When we meet them from afar on the red sand tracks of the outback, they seem like a mirage in the desert. Kilometers before the direct encounter, they announce themselves with huge clouds of dust and the closer they get, they grow steadily.
Truck in Australia
Spitting stones and dragging an incredibly long and never-ending cloud of dust behind them, the giants of the streets rush past us. It’s just a good thing that we looked ahead and saw the storm coming our way and steered our modest little motorhome to the side of the road. It’s also a good thing that we covered the windshield with a wire mesh on our drive through the outback. A rain of boulders pours down on us. Without the grille in front of our windshield, it would have shattered long ago.
Despite all these imponderables, Brigitte finds these monsters of the road so cute……..but she doesn’t have to drive past them, Jürgen solves the problem in no time at all, so to speak (note: turning the steering wheel)……… an art that must be innate, since it cannot be learned. Countless car wrecks on the roadsides testify to less talented drivers. However, it is not always the trucks that are to blame, sometimes it is just the kangaroos, the cows or the drivers have simply fallen asleep on the infinitely long distances that demand so much attention.
