Australian is a simple language. “What’s the difference between a Hamburger and a Hamburger Lot?”

The hamburger comes with salad. If you go for the lot it comes with egg, bacon, cheese, onion and the salad. I went for the lot, no salad.

By then I’d already driven 400km, and it was still only 12.30. Waking at 5am was fine, I went back to sleep. Waking up again my brain went, “Ah, feeling good, lets go.” By the time I’d had a shower, checked the score (hurrah Divock) and got into the car it was already ten past seven. I shrugged, followed my satnav’s directions. These consisted of:
“Turn right.”
“Stay on this road for 261km”
“Turn left.”
“Stay on this road for 139km”

I’ve had trickier journeys.

It took 70 of those 261km for the road to have a bend. In that time I saw dozens of kangaroos and hundreds of goats. They were all grazing on the verge, the goats fleeing 20 yards back when I approached, the kangaroos often not bothering. I’d seen a couple the previous night too, a trip into the outback to photograph the stars, pale silhouettes of marsupials stood by the road, ghosts watching me pass. I still hadn’t banked on seeing so many today.

The natural state for the Australian kangaroo is lying dead by the road. In 400km I’ve seen dozens of live ones, all the Cs: cute, curious and cautious. They would watch me pass but flee if I stopped, rare exceptions posing for photographs.

It was though a rare kilometre without seeing a dead one, and sometimes there’d be 5-6 in a 200 metre stretch. So I’ve seen over 400 dead kangaroos – but a dead sheep and several dead goats.

The goats were the biggest danger to me. The odd kangaroo would cross the road but only one near enough to make me slow. The goats however would panic and if a family gruop were grazing either side of the road it was almost certain that they’d try to gather on the same side as I approached. When that happened one of them would bolt the wrong way, realise everyone else had gone the other way and try to get across before my car arrived. Their success owed more to my change of direction and speed than their own judgement.

The early part of the trip had several road trains coming the other way, the odd car. I overtook one road train and a Hilux, then didn’t see another car for 120km. That was another Hilux, in the colours of the rural fire service, doing at least 20 over the limit. It overtook me then a kilometre ahead pulled off the road, a fireman getting out to open a gate.

At the 261km junction I stopped for fuel. Although I couldn’t have used more than 10-15 litres since filling up there was only one more stop available before the end of tomorrow and I didn’t want to gamble on them having fuel, being open or (after yesterday) existing. The pump was attended, a jolly lady that listened to my explanation for filling 3/4 full tank and simply said, “You’re sensible, not many places to fill up here. You’re in the bush now.”

She managed to charge me for 20l of fuel but the reason became evident: She’d put so much fuel in the tank and pipework that the gauge still read higher than ‘full’ 140km later.

The road after that was sand, through proper desert. Fewer living kangaroos, if anything more dead ones. I saw some lovely birds of prey, occasionally gathering together on the ground or in a tree but keeping to themselves in the air. As in the UK they treated cars as a annoyance and moved off whenever one was close, making them hard to photograph.

I reached Menindee, managed to fit another 8 litres into the car. That’s also where I stopped for lunch. The hamburger lot was good, although the egg was too runny. If I go down with salmonella this place will be getting the blame.

Menindee is tiny and paranoid about fruit flies. Don’t take fruit there, even if it was grown in Australia. The town has just a handful of roads which are tarmac only to within a few feet of the edge of the built up area. The fuel station has its prices painted on a sheet of plywood, at odds with the modern pump and chip & pin card reader. I leave town on the only stretch of tarmac extending beyond its borders, the main road to another town. Less than half a kilometre later I turn off again and enter a national park.

This park charges for entrance, a small hut containing payment envelopes and a secure place to post them. I sighed, put a $10 note into the envelope, filled out the details (car registration, date, number of days in the park at $7/day) and added a small note: “You owe me $3”. They’re lucky I paid at all, I didn’t see another person in the entire park.

Initially I didn’t see a thing. The road was dug out of the sand which had been banked up at the sides, blocking the view. There’s wasn’t much to view anyway, low scrub on sand, even less interesting than the rough terrain I’d been driving through all morning. The desert had more life too, in the whole park I saw just two kangaroo, although they were big ones, 5-6 foot tall and grey. They’d burst onto the road ahead of me, hopped along for a couple of metres, realised how stupid they were and disappeared into the stubby growth.

The comedy is that I’d come all this way explicitly to visit this park, it being the place I’d been assured of seeing wild kangaroos. Technically it delivered, but the journey had provided so much more. There were meant to be lakes there too, but they were dried basins, trees growing in the bottom.

I came around a corner and finally found water, a large lake in the distance, its shores suggesting it should be quite close and a lot larger. Where the water had receded a herd of goats grazed on the grass that grew there.

To check whether that was the third lake or if I’m only just reached the first (in which case those basins would’ve been something else) I looked to the other side of the car, found it to be the same parched sand and low bushes, three heads watching me pass.

I stopped the car, opened the window, poked out the long lens of my camera. A quick photo then the head turned, the body with it and a side profile shot, and another of its friends. A last look back at me and they moved off, limbs moving slowly but making good pace anyway.

I have seen wild emu.

I came out of the park, exiting the other side, and turning to head south. The road got no better, at times worse, and the corpses kept coming. Another left, this one signposted with my destination. I stopped to open a gate, and stopped again to close it. A kangaroo dozing under a tree was startled by my car, struggling to stand as I passed, showers of sand suggesting it had dug itself a cosy nest for the afternoon.

Another gate, some goats. Another gate, more marsupials. Finally a small wooden gate at someone’s house, labelled as the place I Was staying that night. A dog greeted me at the gate, but not its owner. I opened it, drove in, pulled up and got out. The dog wanted to play, offering me sticks. I walked through and found a reception area, a bell to ring for attention.

The bell made a lovely low loud dong, reverberating long after its single strike. A lady appeared, checked me in, told me I had an upgrade. This was because they’d had a dust storm and the room she’d planned to put me in was covered in dust. Later I found she’d only been home for an hour, away at a nearby town visiting her granddaughter. After checking me in she’d made me coffee, sat and chatted, told me the history of the place. At its peak it had been a million acres of scrub feeding a hundred thousand sheep but had been split up after the first world war. She’d been here 38 years and I’m not sure if they still raised stock but a small orchard was full of oranges and other fruits.

I had a two hour snooze, the early start and long drive combining with the warmth of the afternoon to make it a good option. It was only 17C when I started out and by 3pm had risen to just 27, but that was still warm enough.

Getting off my bed I saw goats on the other bank of the river. My hostess had informed me that all the goats on verges were escapees, livestock that didn’t care for fences. I wondered how the farmers knew who owned the kids born there, beyond the boundaries of their properties.

A walk down the river, chasing kangaroos the whole distance. They’d flee, stop, start to graze then hear me again, go bounding off once more. Kangaroos have excellent hearing, one was hopping along a fence towards me, not realising I was there. I tracked it with my camera, took three pictures in quick succession and it stopped, turned and hopped away again. It had heard the electronic shutter, an almost silent electrical snap that humans don’t hear from six feet away. This was the second kangaroo to hear it, one earlier had heard it above the sound of the car engine, photographs through the window with the handbrake on.

I couldn’t find the tree from which aboriginals had cut a travelling canoe. There were a lot of trees, standing, growing, fallen, chopped down. The river is very low, maybe a foot deep, the banks showing it can run nearer 15 foot deep, maybe 20. Too long a drought.

I returned to my hut, a cosy affair, its own veranda hidden behind insect screens, finally relief from the incessant flies. “We only get flies a couple of times a year” I’d been told earlier. It’s one of those times. I took off my shoes, hung them on a chair and swept out the mud that they’d brought in with them. I hadn’t expected that, so used to dry dusty conditions.

That walk took me to over 7km for the day, on top of the 500 or so I’d driven.

It was only 8.30 but the sun was setting, I’d had a long enough day. Time for my book and an early night (which turned out to be around 10.30 – good book!)

Tonight’s hotel is not a hotel. Hotels wish they could be this authentic.