What could have been better for celebrating my reporting partner’s 39th birthday than a feast of two microwaveable “pub-sized” meals at a lonely Australian roadhouse some 150 miles from nowhere?
Covered in dust, we’d arrived at the Tjukayirla Roadhouse — pronounced “Chook a-year-la” — and claimed by its owners to be the most remote stop on the continent. That seemed an accurate description. All was quiet save for a desert breeze as we started in on the birthday dinner of chicken Kiev, and bangers and mash. A dingo roamed the grounds as we ate.
So goes life on the loneliest stretch of the 1,700-mile Outback Way, the grueling route, often unpaved, that cuts across
