Germs of the Australia Ride
"It's the Queen's highway, for God's sake!"
Harry, the owner of the caravan park in Coolgardie, Western Australia when I told him that the Aboriginal Land Council had denied me a permit to ride the Great Central Road.
I admit that I have a fascination with English culture.
This has many sources which is hard to summarize. Why the King James Bible became such a world-wide bestseller in days past. The dynamics which made a culture turn Roman Catholicism into Anglicanism, which later morphed it into Episcopalism. How a barbaric culture (beheading was okay) came to be known as “prim and proper.” How the Industrial Revolution, beginning in England, transformed and also devastated the world. I won’t go into many other ideas which intrigue me.
But as far as making me hop on a bike in Australia, it was when I rode the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) in 2017. The air of the “American West” was there every day as I rode, and with that, several things caught my eye: 1) The devastation of the native population as an encroaching culture took over, e.g. Indian reservations, 2) gouging out the natural land in search of ore, e.g silver mines in Colorado, 3) the presence of cows everywhere, shaped by a particular diet, and, 4) the attitude that a wide open land was there for the taking, e.g. America’s “manifest destiny.”
Then it occurred to me that there were other countries that had a similar country as their source of origin. The U.S. started with English settlers who were rejected religiously by their mother country, but the new arrivals nevertheless carried English social mores to the new land. Australia began with English rejects who were sent as far away as possible, but who also carried with them English social mores. Similar forces seemed to be happening in Australia as in the U.S., albeit about 50-100 years later. I find the similarities intriguing enough.
So I said to myself, “Why not repeat the GDMBR ride in another country, and see what is similar and what is different?” The impulse was just that simple.
It’s not that I expected to learn anything. Maybe I will or maybe I won’t. It was just a starting point for deciding where to ride. I just find an Alexis-de-Tocqueville-type ride a fun thing to do.
If nothing else, my body will be more fit.