Heat, flies, crocs and saddle sores mark epic ride

CAIRNS - After five months, 3600 kilometres and encounters with snakes, wild pigs and saltwater crocodiles, a young English veterinary nurse has become the first woman to ride a horse across the Australian Outback.

Anna Hingley, 24, and her Australian stockman boyfriend, John "Croc" Ostwald, 28, endured agonising saddle sores, extreme heat and swarms of flies as they rode from the coast of Western Australia to Queensland.

Their journey, which began on March 17, ended on Saturday when the couple led their six horses down a rainforest-clad escarpment into the resort town of Cairns, the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.

"It's been the adventure of a lifetime," said Hingley, from Worcestershire. "It's been tough both physically and mentally but there was never a moment when I thought, 'What the hell am I doing out here?"'

"I didn't realise when I started out how huge the country is. I didn't know what an epic journey it was going to be. As far as we can tell from our research no other woman has crossed the country from coast to coast on horseback.

"I thought people might think, 'What's a Pommy girl doing in the middle of the Outback?' But they were great, especially the Aborigines."

The trek took them round the fringes of the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia, across vast cattle stations in the Northern Territory and into the notoriously swampy Gulf Country of Queensland.

Rivers were so swollen that they had to spend up to two days clearing boulders and digging sand to make fords safe for their support vehicle, a horse transporter towing a trailer full of supplies. A section of the journey which should have taken five days took more than two weeks.

"If the truck gets bogged out there, that's it, it's over, because there's no one to help you," Ostwald said.

The vehicle was driven by Tom Guerrier, a British film producer whom they met by chance in Sydney.

Guerrier, 25, from London, filmed the expedition and reviewed each day's tape. He plans to make an hour-long documentary of the trip.

At night the trio slept in swags or in the trailer, with woolly hats and extra clothes to ward off the desert chill.

It was in the heat of the day that the snakes emerged, including death adders, king browns and taipans.

"I was riding at the front one day when this big snake reared up out of the grass. It was nearly six-foot long. It left me a bit shaky," Hingley said.

The couple met in late 2004 when Hingley, who has ridden since the age of six, was on a year-long backpacking trip and signed up for a tour of Kakadu National Park.

Ostwald, nicknamed Croc for his familiarity with the large "salties" living on his parents' cattle property in the Northern Territory, was the tour guide.

An accomplished horse-breaker, he had been planning a horseback trek across the continent for years, inspired by the example of the early stockmen and explorers who first ventured into northern Australia.

"My grandfather was one of the pioneers of the Northern Territory. I wanted to keep the legacy alive," he said.

Ostwald rounded up six brumbies, or wild horses, from the bush and broke them in himself.

The couple rode for six to 10 hours a day, sometimes having to lead the unshod horses through rocky gorges and boulder-strewn scrub.

They regularly changed mounts, with the four spare animals riding in the horse trailer.

They covered around 40km a day, at first riding beside desert highways and then along lonely Outback tracks where they would see only one or two cars a day, often driven by Aborigines from remote communities.

The toughest part of the trip was the first month, when heat and humidity gave them both excruciating chafing on their legs and backsides.

"Our jeans were saturated with sweat. We rubbed on paw paw ointment, which helped a bit, and bandaged up our legs," Hingley said.

River crossings were made dangerous by swift currents and large saltwater crocodiles, particularly in the swampy region around the ominously named settlement of Hell's Gate.

"They were in the water 25ft away," Ostwald said. "You'd have to keep an eye on them and sometimes chuck a big rock towards them."

Through sponsorship the couple are hoping to raise thousands of dollars for Angel Flight, a charity which airlifts needy people in remote Outback communities to hospitals.

Having survived the ultimate relationship test, Hingley says: "Who knows? Maybe we'll ride around the world together."