The roads are surfaced with a red earth called nurram. this red earth is laid down, partially flattened by hand shovels and then left to be further hardened by traffic and heavy rain. As you might imagine , this soft road surface is very quivkly rutted. To make matters worse corrugation appears quite frequently . These are rhythmic wave marks on the surface of the ebbing tide on hard wet sand.
The corrugation are caused when a car has bumped along the rutted road, each bump down deepening a crossways trough . each car that comes along is similary bumped but deepens the ruts for the following vehicles. you may also be interested to know that not only does one suffer a bone jolting journey on such a road, but within a very few miles one is covered from head to foot in red dust.
The inside of the car is of course dust covered and so are all ones possession.early on in life here one learns to travel with luggage as deeply packed away as possible , and one dresses in ones oldest clothes with a scarf or a hat firmly pressed down to cover ones hair.
When it rains, as it does most days for an hour or two in the afternoons, the dust no longer troubles you but the car begins to develop a gentle waltzing movement as the wheels slip from sides to side on the soft , wet murram.
