From the Great Ocean Road, we drove to Adalaide to visit a friend. From there we flew to Alice Springs, a small town that really has no reason for being except that, in this desolate location there once was a repeater station for the telegraph line that connected the Australian Continent from south to north. A bustling town has since grown up here to service tourists who visit Australia’s Red Center.

We rented a car and took off for the desert, driving south on the Stuart Highway.

There’s really nothing out here. Every hundred kilometers or so, the highway passes a roadhouse. These places can best be described as utilitarian. Most offer minimalist lodgings and very basic meals. Some offer home grown entertainment.

More importantly, the roadhouses are communications posts from which help can be summoned for those whose cars break down in the desert. Last month a friend struck a kangaroo, damaging his radiator. (And the kangaroo.) He hailed a passing road train (a semi with three or more trailers) that stopped at the next roadhouse where the driver called a tow. Distances are such that our friend spent most of a day on the roadside before help arrived.

Roadhouses display old photos of desert pioneers on their walls, or collections of license plates, or old vehicles rusting away. Trucks get used hard here. This 1939 Dodge dragged many early tracks, making the interior accessible.

The first tour bus in these parts was built on a 4WD truck frame, modified to accept tires from a Boeing 727. That’s how bad the roads were.

Sometimes we feel like we’re in Arizona. This monument is called Mt. Connor. In the American Southwest, it would be called Connor Mesa. But there’s no Spanish influence in Australian place names, so they make mountains out of mesas.

The government provides occasional roadside rests. Many are provisioned with water, which could be a matter of life or death in certain circumstances. We heeded advice that we should bring a spare gallon of water in our car in case we became stranded.

The car rental company made it clear we were not permitted to drive our 2WD Nissan on unsealed (dirt) roads, a reasonable restriction given how easily it is to get stuck in loose sand or a creek bed. Suitable 4WD vehicles are available for rent, but for novices, going into the bush in one of them is a bad idea unless in caravan with another vehicle.

An alternative is to sign up for a small tour group. This rig is carrying seven tourists and their guide deep into the outback. The trailer behind the Toyota Land Cruiser is the chuck wagon.

This unsealed road is not some nameless track. It’s a major arterial leading to the Western Australia border. Many Australian roads are like this one. Australia is too big, too new, and too thinly populated to yet have connected all of its towns with highways. Major road or not, this one shouldn’t be attempted in a regular passenger vehicle.

A string of footprints of a type I haven’s seen before runs alongside Docker River Road.

They were made by camels, descendants of those brought to Australia in the Nineteenth Century for transport in the western deserts.

I saw these melons growing wild. I broke one open with a rock to expose green flesh, like a honeydew. Without thinking, I stuck my finger into it, then into my mouth. It had an incredibly bitter taste, like alum, impossible to clear from my tongue by spitting. At that point it dawned on me that I had just tasted an unknown plant on a continent that has more deadly plants and animals than any other. I began to speculate about the latency time of any alkaloids I might have ingested.

Later I learned these were paddy-melons, introduced by Afghan camel drivers as fodder for their animals. This plant has become naturalized, as have the camels that eat them. Paddy-melons are not tasty, but much to my relief they’re harmless.

Driving on, the land becomes more like the Sonoran Desert near Tucson. It’s still desert, but thick with sturdy plants that survive the aridity.

In the distance—mountains: our destination. Out here, it takes a long time to get anywhere. By now we’re thankful to be reaching a place where we can get Cokes, a hot meal and a place to sleep.