2009 Mini Cooper Across Australia Feature

"Turn around,"yelled the motorcyclist on the rust-red outback trail. We were in the southwest corner of Australia's Northern Territory, one of the most remote parts of the world's most deserted continent. He was riding toward us on a big performance dirt bike, the sort you see in the Paris-Dakar desert race, and his leather overalls and Darth Vader helmet were covered in dust.

"The sand ahead is terrible," he said. "You have no hope of getting through. Especially," he paused, nodding rather dismissively at our car, "in this."

At our Mini.

Turning around was unthinkable. Forty-four years after the first east-west crossing through the center of this massive country by car, there's still no paved road through the middle that connects the east and west coasts. The only paved roads that link the two coasts are far to the north or way to the south. Both involve diversions of well over 1000 miles. There was, for us, no alternative.

Why were we driving a Mini when we could have easily chosen a more sensible vehicle? Well, one of the four adventurers on that first-ever east-west crossing of Australia in 1965 was my dad. And he did it in a Mini. We were also commemorating the most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by the world's most iconic small car, on the Mini's 50th birthday.

My dad's journey was not without mishap. The Mini's front suspension collapsed on Western Australia's rough desert tracks, and to prop up the car's front end, they used pieces of wooden fence posts grabbed en route. The little car bounced across much of Western Australia without any effective front suspension.

Our journey promised to be easier. More than two-thirds of our route would be on proper roads, many sealed since my dad's travails. But that still left more than 1000 miles of gravel, dirt, deep sand, rocks, and ruts. The latest Mini is no more suitable for these than Gucci loafers are for desert trekking. Our Mini Cooper was standard apart from a steel sump guard (to protect the motor and other vital mechanicals from rocks). The rear seat had been removed to make it easier to carry two spare tires and two five-gallon fuel containers (the fuel supply on outback roads is at best inconsistent and in many places nonexistent).