The Road Back: South Australia and NSW
Coming back through South Australia and New South Wales, a route that goes through endless plains of mulga, spinifex and hummock grasslands, I drove through the stormy weather that was causing epic flooding as it moved to the east. I got some spectacular shots of the storms sweeping across the desert into the eastern states.
2022 has seen record flooding in these states, and the concomitant damage to the roads. This is becoming a growing trend, year after year. I travelled these roads 30 years ago on a cross-Nullabor trek, and I don’t remember seeing any road damage due to heavy rain, but on this occasion I saw literally thousands of severe, extensive, deep potholes and destroyed bitumen surfaces. It was a milder form of the Mereenie Loop road, but this time tarred, and going on for thousands of kilometres. I could not take my attention from the road for a second lest I damage the car’s undercarriage.
I was left wondering how much longer humanity will be able to fund the annual repairs to this kind of climate change induced damage. Hundreds of millions of dollars are required. I had a weirdly prescient sense that I was seeing the beginnings of a sea change in our domination of the planet. I can easily imagine that many roads will eventually become impassable as the human enterprise contracts under the pressure of global heating and chaotic weather. For every 1°C we heat the planet, the atmosphere can carry 7% more moisture, thus turbo-charging the hydrological weather cycle, making for more frequent, more intense storms (in a related news story: ‘Rain bursts’ over Sydney have intensified 40% over last two decades). So it really is becoming a case now of Après moi, le déluge ….
Landscapes were once again superb, often mallee and mulga woodlands on red soils, harsh and beautiful.
I also went past Lake Hart, a salt lake on the Stuart Highway. It contained water due to the recent rains.
Visiting the centre of Australia in the warmer months is ill-advised. The heat is just too taxing. But I’m planning another trip already.
