Pannawonica

Upon arriving in Pannawonica I can remember the redness of the terrain and the parching dry heat which felt like placing your hand in an oven. A lady from the mining company showed us around the town in her vehicle, the tour lasted about 10mins. And then it was time to see what would become our new home in the desert.

The Town of Pannawonica

One of my favourite pastimes during the summer in Perth was to spend hours catching grasshoppers on the back lawn. I used to keep them in ice cream containers filled with grass, dirt and sticks for a few days and try and figure out what I could feed them to keep them alive. I remember the first time I went out the back of the house in Pannawonica to look for grasshoppers. It didn’t take long to find them but I noticed that they were unexpectedly large and scary looking. They weren’t the light brown colour like the ones in Perth but rather dark red/brown and very angry looking. They were also much bigger than any grasshopper I had seen before, as big as my hands were! Given that they were bigger they could hop further which meant they were harder to catch, formerly you would have as many chances to catch the small grasshoppers as you needed, with the big ones you would only get one chance because if you missed them the first time they would hop too far and quickly to have any chance of getting them a second time.

I was pretty scared of these monsters, their legs were spiky and the risk of injury from their flicking legs was a possibility. I sourced a container and readied it with foliage and red dirt and went after my first giant grasshopper. I tried in vain all afternoon to get anywhere near one but as the sun began to go down they seemed to slow their pace somewhat. I crept up on one unsuspecting grasshopper, jumped and grabbed him in cupped hands. Within a split second he started kicking his spiky legs into my palms and his escape was assured. I dropped the grasshopper and looked at my palms – the grasshopper had drawn blood and at that point I determined that my grasshopper catching days were over. There were to be  many other lessons that life in the desert is far more treacherous than the city in the coming months.

The Dreaded Spinifex

The next day our bikes had been unpacked and being pestering children whilst our parents were unpacking Ken told us to get on our bikes and go for a ride. Joel and I jumped on our bikes and off we went. What an adventure – so much to see! We rode for about 10 mins then realised that it was really hot (Pannawonica would still be routinely 42-44° in March) and that we were really thirsty and starting to get sunburnt. I said to Joel that we should turn around and head back. He was pretty upset due to the heat and decided to get off his bike instead of turning around. As soon as he stepped off the bike onto the road he started screaming. We didn’t have any shoes on and his feet were blistering due to the heat of the road. I can remember him dancing around on the road like a mad man and as any big brother would do I had a laugh...for a about 2 seconds before I clicked that this might be serious. I didn’t have shoes on either so didn’t know what to do. I had a thought that he needed to get off the road and jump on some nearby shrubs. I screamed at Joel to listen to me and said jump on that bush! He duly obeyed and jumped on the bush only to start screaming even louder than before. I shouted what’s wrong now and through his tears and desperation he screams, “this bush is spiky!!” I had unknowingly told him to jump on a Spinifex bush which is full of spikes that snap off and stay in your skin! It was at this stage that I realised the situation was no longer comical so I jumped off my bike onto the burning asphalt and put my brother on his bike and told him to ride with words of encouragement. We arrived at home to my mother’s dismay with blistered feet and Joel’s feet were full of spikes that needed to be removed! I would never go out in bare feet again.

The same model as Andrew's Supergoose

Within a couple of weeks of moving to Pannawonica I had found a mate in a guy called Andrew Maitland. Andrew was a kid who had grown up in Pannawonica and his dad had worked for the Robe River mining company for years. He was right into BMX when most of the other kids in town had motorbikes. He had a chrome Mongoose with blue mag wheels (as pictured). It was the coolest bike I had ever seen! He had a mate called Dion Bond and Andrew used to spend time with Dion building BMX jumps and cruising around town on their BMXs. I started cruising around with them on my 10 speed racer looking like a real city kid! I had a black 10 speed Malvern Star so couldn’t really join in the action.  Andrew came up with the idea that I should be the team ‘manager’ given my choice of ride. This meant I had to research and think of new tricks for Andrew and Dion to try and I had to locate the best spots around town to build and set up our jumps. I set all my energy into this new role – it was nice to feel like I was wanted and that I belonged in such a strange, new environment. We had some awesome times together making jumps and pulling off some awesome tricks. Our favourite film was BMX Bandits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwPbdYE9tZY and we felt like we were the BMX Bandits in our little town!

After a month or two of me being the manager of our bandit ‘gang’ I came up with the idea of making a BMX track. So I set about designing one and thinking about the best place to build one. We got a whole pile of papers from an old mining equipment manual and I started working on designs in pencil on the back of these pages. Andrew and Dion started doing the same; it took us about 2 weeks to settle on a design. Meanwhile I worked on getting a good location and trying to get enough tools like shovels and mattocks. The location needed to have a steep ramp to start and then we would build up berms by hand. In the next blog I will tell the story about the place we found and how our track building went.