The Great Northern Highway Experience

I used to live in Newman, and as of writing have been living in Geraldton for only a short while. I have only ever lived in between those two places, which means that most of my travelling experience has been through the Great almighty Northern Highway.

Stretching almost 3200 Kilometres, the Great Northern highway is the longest highway in the nation. but I will only be talking about the 600 or so kilometre stretch of road between Mount Magnet and Newman. I will not be talking about the Geraldton-Mount Magnet road which I travel to reach the Great Northern Highway (GNH), as I once encountered a secret military satellite station by accident there and am now sworn to secrecy.

I didn’t document much of my last trip on these roads in November of 2021, but I did manage to take pictures of every second car wreck I saw on the way down. I took 8 pictures. Most of those care wrecks I believe have been there for years, many were burned and vandalised. I don’t know the origin of these car wrecks, but I am sure they are not an ominous sign of danger or anything, why would car wrecks cause me to fear for my safety on a highway right?

I am not the only person to encounter these cars, as they are all, much like the boulders of the Great Northern Highway, plastered with random graffiti like the back walls of the Eastern Perth suburb of Kelmscott.  

There is also a SpongeBob letterbox placed somewhere in the middle of the highway. I don’t know what SpongeBob is doing there, perhaps he rode the mossy rocks for a few too many miles and tried to plunder the Pilbara resources from them Hancock style.

When I was in primary school a substitute teacher told us about a game their partner played on a road trip once. They would count the amount of dead kangaroos they spotted along the way and see how much they got by the end of it. Often the numbers would go into double digits. You may think the Pilbara is a deserted place with sparsely populated wildlife, but one look at the roadkill and you will believe it's blooming with life! Or former life anyway. Kangaroos are notorious roadkill, doing serious damage to cars, though unlike bulls they don’t kill you. Bullbars are such false advertisers, they simply do not bar bulls from hitting you. Smaller animals fall privy to death too, such as rabbits or foxes.

Driving from Geraldton to Newman is a fantastic experience that sometimes involves accidentally sniffing petrol for 9 hours because your jerry can doesn’t seal properly. I would seriously recommend people check out the north by car if they can. Not only are you rewarded with the likes of old mining towns both small and deserted, something like 5 of the biggest Iron Ore mines in the world, and the 1:1 scale model of the Minecraft cave and cliffs update that is Karijini, you will also experience a truly borderlands-esque environmental experience along the way. I mean the drive is so mad max that if you replace the guitar guy on the truck in fury road with 4 trailers of miscellaneous mining tools that stretch towards two lanes of road then your entire drive would be like a free AAA movie. 

This article is based on a video I made retelling my experience of the Great Northern Highway. I appreciate you for reading it. If you wish to know what I am up to in the modern day then feel free to check out my Facebook meme page or discord "fan club" for more updates.