Think back on your most memorable road trip.

During my lifetime I have had many very interesting driving experiences. We have driven around Australia in hole and then part at least six times.

We have crossed flooded creeks, run into plagues of locusts, driven against an army of advancing cane toads, and had to dodge cattle.

By far and away the hairiest and most frightening drive I have ever undertaken was one Christmas holiday period around about 15 years ago. This was in the year or two just before I retired.

The wet season had come early to the Northern Territory and also to the top end of Western Australia. We were driving down to Perth from Darwin, a distance of just over 4000 km.

It was raining the whole time from Darwin until we got down to Carnarvon, 3000 kilometres into our journey.

On our first night out of Darwin we stayed at Halls Creek. It was raining when we got there and raining when we left early the next morning. We had come through a number of flooded road sections in order to get to Halls Creek and were anxious to be on our way early the following morning, heading toward Fitzroy Crossing. This was on the great Northern Highway.

We left Halls Creek just a wee bit before sunrise at 6 am.

The light of the day was just dawning, hindered by the fact that overhead were very heavy rain bearing clouds.

In fact the road and surround were so dark because of cloud cover… natural light at best, was penumbric.

Neither were we sure when we’re going to run into water across the road, or how deep and fast running it was going to be.

When we were about 60 km south of Halls Creek, a very large car with an eight cylinder engine passed us, going the other way toward Halls Creek.

A couple of minutes later I looked into the rear vision mirror and saw the car had turned around and was closing on us at breakneck speed. Without the shadow of a doubt they were trying to catch up with us, to do some sort of mischief.

There were six or seven adult indigenous persons in the car and as they gone past us in the other direction it seemed more than obvious that the impact of alcohol or drugs was. That kept us at some distance ahead of the car following which was gaining on us but it is much slower rate.

My heart was in my mouth because it was hard to tell whether there was water across the road or not and certainly the rain was still falling. I finished up doing around about 170 km an hour and wondering what might happen next.

Fortunately, a road train coming the other way and going toward Halls Creek passed us heading north.

Then came the second road train about a minute later. The two road trains must’ve deterred our pursuers, who gave up the chase.

That was the worst, most explosive driving experience I have ever had.