Adam Seeby and Allie Sandars are happiest in faraway places. They are the only two residents on a long stretch of the Great Central Road in the Great Victoria Desert, where they manage Australia’s most remote roadhouse.
Petrol prices at the Tjukayirla Roadhouse have always been high but this week the couple were forced to increase them to an unprecedented $4.25 per litre for diesel and $3.75 per litre for Opal petrol.
This is the western gateway to the Central Desert and the easiest way – a relative term – to reach the stunning vastness of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.
It is a 1247km drive on bitumen from Perth to the Tjukayirla Roadhouse. People sometimes arrive via Alice Springs but that 1245km drive is mostly on dirt. The nearest supermarket, hospital and pub are 310km west at the historic pastoral and mining town of Laverton.
The couple laugh when asked what it is like living and working with your partner seven days a week with no other colleagues, friends or family close by.
“We do get divorced sometimes, for about 10 minutes, then we get over it because you have to out here,” Mr Seeby says. “We get on very well, always have.
“We can’t live in a town now. There are too many people at Woolworths.”
Since 2010, Mr Seeby and Ms Sandars have worked side by side in sparsely populated or hard-to-get-to places including the Nullarbor Roadhouse, a general store in the Gibson Desert community of Warakurna and a petrol station on Norfolk Island. For the past six years, the couple’s home has been a modest chalet at the Tjukayirla Roadhouse.
They met at a mutual friend’s birthday party at Border Village, the Eyre Highway quarantine checkpoint for travellers leaving South Australia for Western Australia. At the time, she was working at the Border Village roadhouse and he was managing the Nullarbor Roadhouse. They realised they were each other’s people – hardworking, no-nonsense – and hit it off. They say helping people is the most enjoyable part of the job. Sometimes this help is urgent and practical – wedding rings down roadhouse drains is a surprisingly common problem – while some customers simply need reassurance.
“You get a city person that’s in the bush – they get worried. They’re seeing old cars on the edge of the road,” Mr Seeby said.
“We just have a good chat with them, tell them a couple of stories, help them out with their car if they need it, teach them about driving conditions and safety. They leave happy, and we are happy because we are confident they know what to do if trouble happens.”
Mr Seeby’s favourite story about the goodness of travellers is from his first job out of school, when an elderly couple arrived distressed at the Nullarbor Roadhouse with $20 cash and no bank cards. The wife’s purse had been stolen. Mr Seeby gave them $200 to get to the next major town with a bank.
“I wrote it off but a couple of weeks later, I’ve got the money back in a card saying thank you,” he said. “Then I received a Christmas card every year from them.”
Ms Sandars says the key to remote roadhouse life is to “be adaptable”.
This could prove crucial if rising fuel prices cruel the coming tourist season.
When winter arrives in southern Australia, visitors arrive at the roadhouse on their way to the Ngaanyatjarra Lands for an unforgettable experience of wide open country – “the lands” are 160,000sq km of sandhill country, desert oak, salt lakes and rocky ranges. About 1200 Aboriginal people live in nine communities on the lands and their business arm – Ngaanyatjarra Council – employs Mr Seeby and Ms Sandars to run the roadhouse about three hours’ drive outside its borders.
The couple predict 2026 could be a quiet year for the Tjukayirla Roadhouse because flooding in the Northern Territory has prompted some to postpone cross-country holidays, while three couples cancelled their accommodation at the roadhouse this week citing fuel price hikes nationwide.
Tjukayirla Roadhouse receives a fuel delivery of about 20,000 litres of diesel and Opal fuel (a low-aromatic petrol that is helping to end an epidemic of petrol sniffing among children in remote towns and communities).
When fuel has run low well before the next delivery is due, Mr Seeby and Ms Sandars have been able to order an extra delivery at short notice. That is because their supplier frequently has road trains making deliveries in the WA goldfields, about 650km south of the Tjukayirla Roadhouse.
The Tjukayirla Roadhouse’s fuel supplier assures the couple there is no shortage for now. However, their most recent fuel delivery, on Monday, came at a higher price, which has been passed on to customers this week. Petrol rose from $2.90/l to $3.70/l and diesel – by far the most popular fuel for vehicles in the desert – rose from $3/l to $4.25/l.
Diesel also powers generators in the desert, and those generators power everything from fridges to schools to medical equipment in the nine Aboriginal communities. One of those communities – Blackstone – has begun installing solar panels it hopes can supply 90 per cent of its power needs. If it works, the eight other communities will follow.
While the Tjukayirla Roadhouse does not make a profit – even in busy years, it usually breaks even – its Aboriginal owners in the Central Desert believe it is very important for traveller safety.
And they have a long-term goal that the roadhouse will turn a decent profit one day. That is because the people of the lands are in an alliance of remote councils across Australia called The Outback Way. They all believe that one day adventurers will be able to drive diagonally from Perth to Cairns or vice versa without hitting dirt road. It’s a big dream but each year these far-apart shires make some progress by securing a bit more commonwealth and state funding to bitumise another stretch of road.
Extracted in full from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/at-australias-loneliest-servo-diesel-is-425litre-and-people-are-cancelling-their-trips/news-story/e73a679db91a1a24ef523fe765152a40
