Late last year, Don and Glad Macreadie spent 26 days on a 10,000 km round trip to Western Australia. Along the way they pulled up to spend the night at a caravan park at Ceduna. The two cabins next to them were occupied by aboriginals and one of the aboriginal ladies approached Don wanting to sell him a very large original dot-painting for $50 (about 1 m x 1.2 m). Don looked at it and told her it was lovely however he was just starting his holidays and had nowhere to put it and besides, he couldn’t afford it. After awhile the woman returned, offering the same painting for $10. Don weakened and bought it but before long she returned again, asking for $5 to send her sister home in a taxi. Don brought the painting along to the meeting to show us. Since buying it he has had it critically appraised for between $500 and $800, and depending on where it was sold, as much as $5,000.

They continued on to attend a field naturalists convention in Perth and on the way home, headed north along the coast as far as Cervantes and then due east across the country to Laverton. From Laverton they took the Great Central Road, which has 1,056 km of dirt track, to Ayers Rock. About 200 km out they saw where somebody had been ploughing up the road. It wasn’t long before they overtook a vehicle that had broken down. It had no tyres and had been running on the rims, the radiator had boiled, and there were 12 aboriginals in it. They were desperate and thirsty, saying they’d been there for two days and no-one would stop. Don gave them water and some tins of food, and when he went to leave they were keen to fit as many as they could in with Don and Glad. Glad ended up sitting on the arm rest with her head against the ceiling, a chap climbed in on the seat beside her, and a lady climbed in and sat on his knee. He told Don that the next place was ‘just around the corner’ – another 250 km around the corner! Along the road there were burnt-out, dead cars – it’s 500 km from Laverton to Warburton and Don estimates there were more than 100 dead cars along the road. He counted them for awhile but it got beyond him. The way Don understands it, the aboriginals drive the cars until they break down and then they burn them as a smoke signal to the people in Warburton to say "we’re in trouble, come and get us" .

The first service station they got to was 50 km up the road (Tjukayira Roadhouse). It was run by an aboriginal family who treated these aboriginals the same as the whites would treat them. You couldn’t help yourself to the grocery items as they were ‘fenced-off’. The bowsers outside were in steel cages. The steel cages were locked, as were bowsers inside them. You couldn’t buy petrol, only diesel and "Ab Gas". Don enquired as to what "Ab Gas" was, and was told that it’s aeroplane fuel. He wasn’t satisfied and later found out that it’s refined diesel that petrol cars all run on, and you can’t sniff it. They filled-up with fuel, bought a couple of souvenirs, and were each given a hat badge by the shop owners "in appreciation".

They went on to Warburton and stayed the night at a caravan park. The caravan park and Shire Offices are outside the town. White man doesn’t go into the town unless he has a special permit. Don and Glad had a permit to travel through the area but it didn’t allow them to go into the town. The town has about 1,500 aboriginals and 30 whites. Don spoke to a man at the caravan park who lived in Warburton in 1946 because his father was missionary. Don also went to the Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku offices where he interviewed the C.E.O. and found out that the shire covers an area of 550 km2 and joins on the borders of Northern Territory and South Australia, and takes a square out of Western Australia. There are nine communities within that shire.

When they left they went to Docker River, which is just across the border in the Northern Territory. Again, you don’t go into the town and there’s a camping park outside of town. The camping park works on an honour system where you put your money in an envelope and place it in a box, but when Don tried to put up his tent he couldn’t because the ground was all rock. They decided it was a lost cause, but on the way out Don thought he’d leave another envelope with a note about why they were leaving – three weeks later he got his money back!