For my ongoing journey north, I considered heading further west to Cunnamulla via Goodooga and on then north via the Mitchell Highway, but the locals dissuaded me – miles of “wash-board” dirt, and too many grey nomads out and about to make riding safe, they said. Well, they could be right – it’s not called the ‘Mad Highway’ for nothing – so I took the ‘middle’ option of the Carnarvon Highway instead. Anyway, I could always change my mind and swing out further west at any time later.
Monday 30 September 2017. Grawin · Lightning Ridge |100 km|
[A hot day. Flat and not much traffic, but no shoulder either. Saw lots of emus and feral goats, and far too many dead kangaroos that had been run over by humans in their travelling machines]
After my 3-weeks sabbatical in Grawin, I decided it was finally time to take another look at the real world again, and without much ado, I just packed up one day and biked over to Lightning Ridge to consider my next move.
I booked into a motel, ‘Chasin’ Opal’, for the night and treated myself to lamb cutlets at the pub. How exciting is that!
Here’re some more random pictures of Grawin.
Tuesday 1 August, 2017. Lightning Ridge · Narran River |100 km|
[Hot and exhausting, but the road was safe enough and there was not much traffic anyway]
Hebel wasn’t exactly the blooming oasis I’d been eagerly anticipating for the previous 50km, but at least I got a cold beer and a nice steak sandwich in the pub.
I moved on after a pleasant hour or so, and got as far as the Narran River which looked like a nice place to camp.
The feral pig hunter who came nosing around in his flat-bed 4WD with his vicious caged pig dogs was a bit of a worry – I was worried about a wild pig chase marauding through my camp late at night – but there was no such trouble in the end.
Wednesday, 2 August 2017. Narran River · St. George |135 km|
[The longest day’s ride I’ve done so far: narrow tar section, poor shoulder with drop-offs in places, and plenty of big trucks to keep me on my toes. Coming into St George well after dark felt especially dangerous]
I had to stop in the lovely country town of Dirranbandi for a full 3 hours to charge-up the bike batteries using the generator, but mainly also to fix 2 punctures in the rear tyre. Pinch flats they were – caused, I’m guessing, by diving off the road into the rough when a big truck came up behind me too fast and too close for comfort. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not blaming the truck drivers here. They’re very good, and give a wide berth if they can. If, from their elevated position, they see something coming that I can’t, they give a blast of their horn and that’s when its time for me to move over. No ifs or buts.
Unlike Hebel, Dirranbandi is a pleasant little oasis of a town, and has a mighty fine bakery too, run by a German lady, and where, between patching attempts and with my bike’s guts all spilled out across the rotunda next door, I over-indulged on a pie, a sausage roll and a vanilla slice – supplementing my normal daily intake of a couple of bottles each of coke, iced coffee and ‘V’ energy drink.
I was well and truly knackered by my long hot ride and still traumatized by that last hour of night-riding, so I took a room at one of the many motels in St George strung out along the main drag. I chose the Balonne Motel, which is pretty ordinary but was OK value at $85 for the night. So knackered in fact, I forgot to get my camera out, so you’ll have to content yourself with a picture of my last night’s Narren River campsite again.
The town itself looks prosperous – I suppose that’s because of the huge cotton-growing industry it is the centre for. The largest farm of all, the controversial Cubbee Station (controversial because they’re nicking too much water out of the Murray-Darling irrigation system according to some) is nearby.
If I were looking for adventure, St George on a winter’s Wednesday night would probably not be the place to find it. I settled for a (very ordinary and not cheap) lamb shanks and 2 beers at the St George Hotel.
Thursday 2 August 2017. St. George · Basin Creek |82 km|
[Though not far in distance, this was the hardest day yet, both physically and psychologically]
Well, I got more than I bargained for today – and not in a particularly nice way, either. It was the damned wind – a constant buffeting northerly gale gusting directly into my face at 30 km/h at 8 o’clock when I left St George, and getting progressively stronger all throughout the day. I’d only covered 50 km by 11 am (15 km/h in full-power TURBO mode, 7th gear) before I had to stop to recharge the batteries for 3 hours using the generator out in the middle of nowhere. By the time I got going again at 2pm, the wind had only intensified, and by 4 o’clock I realised I wasn’t going to make it into Surat before dark and I would need to find a place to camp the night.
After many anxious kilometers eying off the deteriorating weather and the depleting battery while looking for a suitable campsite, I finally settled on a nondescript spot on a washaway track off the main road near a low bridge – maybe not ideal, but at least semi-discreet and out of harm’s way.
I pitched tent on a grassy knoll (well, on a few blades of grass on a patch of ground about 2-inches higher than the surroundings, squeezed in between the washaway and a dry creek bed), and no sooner had I done so when it began to rain heavily in short bursts, as drought-breaking thunderstorms rolled on by. By 7pm I was miserably marooned in my little tent on a tiny island with about half an inch of freeboard above a gushing torrent, eating my miserable dinner of M&Ms (crispy ones!) and canned tuna. And I badly needed a pooh, too. But that’s another story. Oh Well, ok then: I nearly rolled over in my own steaming hot turd when the old camp chair I’d found and was using as a pooping-prop suddenly gave way at the critical straining moment which caused a sudden expungement of said pooh that I ended up looking squarely in the face from about an inch away.
But, happy to say, the tent stood firm and dry, the rain stopped, the wind died down and I did get a good sleep eventually. No more pictures, musta been too traumatized.
Friday 4 August 2017. Basin Creek · Roma |119 km|
There was a magical swirling mist rising off the unseen Basin Creek this morning (OK, call it a fog then, killjoy) when I poked my head out the tent at 06.00, all eager to pack up and get going, but I had to wait until 8.45 for the mist to clear before it was safe enough to venture back onto the highway – not that there was any traffic to worry about.
My mud-spattered tent and the soggy ground were reminders of last night’s tempest, but the wind had died down at least and I positively zoomed in to Surat by 11 am, where I immediately stuffed myself with the usual pie/ iced coffee/ energy drink combo. Its a nice little town, Surat, and my positive view of it was hardly diminished by having to repair a puncture in the trailer tube under the awning of the Wagon Wheel café/ hardware/ supermarket (the town’s marquee business) – its an easy job, anyway, fixing a trailer puncture.
And so on to Roma. When you think you’re nearly there, it is still a long way to go. Its a big place – it even has one set of traffic lights (entirely superfluous, in my opinion), uh huh and, btw, also the widest streets per capita of any town in the world, I’d venture to guess – why is nobody else amazed by this.
The railyards, cattle yards and industrial areas seem go on for miles (or kilometers even). The biggest cattle yards in the Southern Hemisphere, apparently. Yaddah yaddah. Anyway you’d know what I mean if you’d been there – I was quite bloody exhausted by the time I got into the town proper and made a promiscuous motel choice (its OK, PC-Nazis, I do believe that particular adjective can quite legitimately be applied to the random selection of motels, or any other random selection, for that matter). It was the quixotically-named Roma Motel, where I stayed for the next 3 nights for some R&R.
Not that there was much R&R to be had in Roma, even on the weekend. Think takeaway Chinese, takeaway KFC and takeaway Jack Daniel and takeaway coca cola and you’ve just about summed it up. I did buy a camp stool though, to replace my beloved Helinox number that got wasted in the fire at Grawin.
Roma. See what I mean about wide (and empty) streets.
Sunday 6 August 2017. Roma · Walleroo Truck Stop |163 km|
[Hot as hell, narrow bitumen and crumbling edge. Not for the faint-hearted!]
Well, that’s another new daily distance record – though it went pretty much unheralded at the time. Easy kilometers, I guess, except for the last 25, which I had to negotiate in complete darkness on a narrow crumbling tarred road with no shoulder, and a horrible camber on a rough verge to boot. Hardly any trucks, but some jerk driving one did force me off the road going up a hill.
After the therapeutic affects of my Roma R&R, I had been able to get away to an early start (7.30) and reach Injune, 92km away, by noon.
Injune information office is air-conditioned and has friendly staff. I used their power outlet to charge up the batteries for 2 hours then loitered over at the pub for a beer before making the long haul to my overnight stopping point at the well-known Walleroo truck stop.
I probably shouldn’t have attempted it in one go, as it was quite dangerous on that road at night, and I didn’t arrive until nearly 7.30 (a good 2 hours after any right-minded person’s poor light declaration). The timing error had been compounded by my miscalculation on battery management, as I had to give another half-hour roadside charge-up using the genny.
Fortunately, the ‘roos didn’t panic too much when confronted by my bike headlight, and I only had a couple of near-misses. I was discovering that my Supernova M99 Bauch and Lomb bike headlamp beam – even though touted by the manufacturer as the brightest in the world – is not really suitable for night-riding out in the country – ok, good for being seen by others, but not great for picking out animals that might dart out of the bushes at any moment. Scary.
The truck stop is great! After a lot of vacillation concerning convenience over security, I ended up pitching the tent well away from the shelter/ picnic table/ benches/ toilets/ water tank area, and consequently got to pass a largely uninterrupted night’s sleep – even though it did rain several times (I actually started to set-up the tent under the shelter because of the imminent rain), and even though a couple of thundering big trucks did pull in during the wee hours.
Monday 7 August 2017. Walleroo truck stop · Carnarvon Gorge |84 km|
Rain threatened early but did not eventuate, and I had a dream run – a beautiful ride with no wind – for the first 45km to the gorge turnoff. I exchanged photographer duties with a passing German tourist in a hire car. Result as shown. OK, a bit stilted, but he was so slow. That was quite funny – he came onto the park turnoff behind me, went a good way past me and stopped and stood by the side of his car, making camera-clicking motions at me as I went by. “Oh, nice” I thought, he wants to take a picture of the intrepid cyclist. But no, he wanted me to take a picture of him, and I had to pointedly ask him to take a snap of me.
The remaining 40km into the gorge itself were a bit more difficult due to a headwind, but not too onerous, and I arrived into the Takarakka ‘Resort’ caravan park by 2pm. I was allotted a nice tent spot near the bar – clever thinking on their part – and I made the most of the 4pm to 5pm ‘Happy Hour’.
So too do the kookaburras who are adept at swooping down to steal the cheese and bikkies that come free with the drinks.
Tuesday was a rest day – from riding anyway – but I got up early and did the standard 12km hike in to see the gorge’s more popular features.
It was pointed out to me by my camp neighbours that my rear tail-light cable had come adrift. The connecting pins set into the unit had snapped clean off due to vibration, and are impossible to fix – not a good design! My first mechanical failure, at 3,282 km on the odometer, and fortunately I carried with me a spare battery-operated light.
– ends –