We are in Karijini, Western Australia’s second largest National Park: the sun is a smudged vermilion marriage mark on the earth’s forehead – my Bengali iconography evokes a bride’s shyly sweet morning after the wedding night before.
The sound track is the song of unknown birds. The fragrance on the cold morning breeze is an unfamiliar presence for this urban dweller from the Australian coastal south.
Years of hoping, months of planning, three days and 1600 kilometres of driving has brought us from Fremantle on the south-west coast of Western Australia to the ‘glamping’ spot in the Karijini Eco Retreat.
Read any travel magazine and you would think it is impossible to get here without one of those humongous 4WD diesel-fed vehicles. The travel editor of a WA-based newspaper dismissed my plan of driving to Karijini in at electric car, with his smirk barely hidden behind a curt email ‘Good luck with your EV in outback WA!’
Over a pleasant dinner at the Cheela Plains Station, our last stop before Karijini, I pin down a friendly grey nomad, almost by definition driving a 4WD dragging a motor home. He pays over $250 for every 500 kilometres or so. And that is not including the environmental cost of fumes from thousands of ICE cars in and out of these ancient and fragile landscapes.
According to recent government figures 650,000 people visit Karijini each year. It takes a lot of cars to transport all those people!
EVs are not a final solution of course, but with no tailpipe emissions, they are a move in the right direction for pleasure travel.
‘How about it then – a trip around Oz, taking in the national parks?’ I had asked Co-Pilot. He had said ‘why not?’
I could think of many reasons. I wanted a pleasant trip to beautiful places, not some adventure story of breakdowns and heroic rescues. The Plugshare app showed fast chargers, thin on the ground once you headed north from Perth. The WA government’s planned WA EV network is getting built – but we are not quite there yet.
Also, I was a bit concerned that our two-year-old EVie (a Hyundai Kona Electric 2022, Extended Range) will develop an inferiority complex, sitting between the Big Cars in an over-crowded caravan park, struggling to suck enough electrons from a Caravan socket overnight.
On a good day, with a full tank, EVie has a projected range of 480 kms – but open roads, high speeds and bad weather can easily reduce that by 20%. Yes, Range Anxiety is rearing its ugly head again. What if some of those chargers are broken? ‘We’ll call a friend’, said Co-Pilot.
‘Friends’ refers to … ahem, shall we call them EV-angels? Some 30 or so EV drivers have completed the 13,000+ kilometre drive around Australia – some of them more than once.
Several live in our neighbourhood in and around Perth and have been generous with their time, advice and encouragment. Our first leg is straightforward: a 450 km drive to Geraldton. And there is a fast charger about half-way at Jurien Bay.
But EVs cannot prevent human errors. 150 kms into the journey, a sinking realisation – my iPad is not with me! The thought of surviving 80 days without my digital companion is unthinkable. We turn back adding an extra 300 km to our day and an extra hour and a half of charging time. Not auspicious.
We make Jurien Bay about dinner time: the fast charger is avalable and conveniently located across the carpark from a friendly fish and chip joint! There used to be an Ampol charger at the station across the street – but has been broken for 6 months (Non-functional chargers might turn out to be a bit of a theme – but let’s see.)
Day 2, Geraldton to Carnarvon is smooth. And Overlander Roadhouse, run by a Samoan woman and staffed by a group of awesome Vietnamese Australians, offers unexpectedly good food and a fast WA EV Network charger.
But somewhere along the way an 18-inch crack has appeared on the windscreen.
By the time we reach Carnarvon, the one windscreen repair place in town is closed and remain stubbornly shut the next morning. Though it is reassuring to learn that locals think ‘if you ain’t got a cracked windscreen you ain’t driven in the Pilbara.’
From Carnarvon it is 700 kms to Tom Price where we are booked for the night – it will be less than 2 hours drive into Karijini the follwing morning. We are almost there.
But not quite. The plan was to charge at the newly installed WA EV network charger at Minilya, 140 kms along the way. According to the Plugshare app, it has been working some of the time, even though there is red tape around it clearly asking people to keep out! For us it would not work🙄
Co-Pilot tried pleading. I tried abuse. C-P rang the operator. Man at the other end sounded unconvinced by our assertion that anyone had been able to use it. Officially, the charger is ‘not yet active’ – no amount of ‘but we are desperate’ would move him.
Next charger: Nanutarra, where we arrived having driven 368 kms on a single charge with just 22 km in the tank and frayed nerves. Neither of us felt like driving another 300 kms to Tom Price.
We stopped for the night at Cheela Plains Station just in time for a magnificent sunset. We got the last room and, yes, they could add us in for dinner.
We are almost there – one sleep, less than 200 kilometres and two perfectly dependable, free chargers provided by Rio Tinto – our next sunset will be at Karijini.
As they say (may be they don’t yet, but soon will): EVs are great for going places. But they won’t compensate for human follies.
Hurry Krishna is Indian by birth, Australian by accident and a slow traveller by choice. She is an occasional travel blogger and has recently joined The Driven’s team of writers. She speaks a number of Asian languages, including English, and hopes to walk, cycle or drive her trusty Kona EV far and wide around the world. Under a different name she is a professor and has written many academic books and papers in her areas of specialist research in Media and Cultural Studies.