Route Map 6 August
[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 was 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.
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 the bike headlamp beam is not really all that suitable for night-riding out in the country – good for being seen by others, but not all that 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.
