The Tanami Road• The Tanami Road

goes from Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, to Halls Creek, in Western Australia.

• It goes through the Tanami Desert

A strange name!

• “Tanami” is a strange name for a desert.

• It is an Aboriginal word meaning “never dry”

• …but deserts are the driest places on earth!

A long road• The Tanami Road

is 1032km long.• In the holidays, I

rode it on my bicycle. I started at Alice Springs, and finished at Halls Creek. It took 10 days.

• How far did I cycle each day?

A big bike!• My bike weighed 80kg, and

was too heavy for me to lift! How much do you weigh?

• I carried:– 23 litres of water.– A tent– A sleeping bag– A sleeping mat– A portable cooker– Food– Clothes– Camera– A spare tyre– Tools to fix my bike

Morning has broken!

• Sometimes I would start riding while the moon was still up.

• It was cold at this time of the morning, and I would have to wear my jacket to keep me warm.

Fire in the sky!

• But it would soon warm up when the sun rose.

• What do we call the part of the day when we see the sunrise?

• I’ll give you a clue…it starts with a D…

• Dawn!

Where does the sun rise?

• Where does the sun rise each morning?

• That’s right, in the east!

• Where does it set every evening?

• Yes, in the west!

Sometimes I saw big mountains.

At other times it was flat all around.

Sometimes I saw animals.

• This cow was very friendly!

Sometimes I saw animal homes!

• What animals live here?• That’s right, termites live here!

Sometimes I saw beautiful flowers

Sometimes I saw lots of trees.

• The tree in this picture is called a Ghost Gum.• Why do you think it has this name?• That’s right, it is a gum tree with a trunk as white

as a ghost!

One day I saw a small airport!

• Who would fly out here?• People fly out here to work in the gold mines. • They stay at the mine for two weeks, and then

fly home to their families for one week. Then its back to the mine again for another two weeks.

Sometimes the road was very bumpy. These parts were hard to

ride on.

Sometimes the road was sandy, and I would fall off and have to

push my bike!

No water to shower!• I got very dirty from

falling off so much.• But I needed all my

water to drink and to cook with.

• There was not enough to have a shower.

• So I stayed dirty!

A long way to the next drink!

• In one part of the track I had to travel more than 300km before I could refill my water containers!

Sometimes trucks would go past very fast, and spray lots of dust over me, making me even more

dirty!

…but other times they would stop, like this truck did.

• This is called a road train. Why do you think it has that name?

• Why do they build such big trucks?

Glad to finish• After 10 days I reached

the end of the road.• It was very hard, but it

was also fun.• Sometimes to reach our

goals we have to do things that are hard. These things make us stronger.

• Hard times also make it more rewarding when we get to the finish!