Adelaide, South Australia, November 2017, and I decide to ride off in the general direction of Perth across the Nullarbor Plain. OK, so I didn’t quite make it as far as Perth in the end, and instead ended up just doing a quick 1,600 km (1,000 mile) loop of Eyre Peninsula and back to Adelaide. This post covers the first part as far as Port Lincoln at the southern tip of the peninsula.
Note: I didn’t have a GPS, so the above route is not my precise track. I just connected the dots for some of my overnight stays, up to the limit of 7 points allowed by Google Maps.
Sunday 29 October to Monday 6 November, 2017 |807 km|
I left my brother’s house in the Adelaide northern suburb of Paralowie at 11am and, buffeted by an extreme wind from the SW, I retraced my route of a few days earlier back to Tanunda in the Barossa Valley.
I managed to get lost around Gawler – just like I did going the other way – but eventually made it back onto the Jack Bobridge cycle path as far as Lyndoch, where I recharged the bike at the town’s rotunda, and thence cycled on to Tanunda.
This route would have to be a highlight of any cycling trip through South Australia, and I highly recommend it – it’s not at all difficult, very scenic and safely off the main road.
I pitched tent at the “Discovery Holiday Park” in Tanunda – for a rather hefty $34.50 per night – and because of the severe weather outlook ended up staying for two nights. The Barossa Brewery right opposite was a music hotspot on Sunday afternoon, and for dinner I bought a half-chicken from the Foodland store in town, a 1-kilometer walk away, and ate it in the camp kitchen with some more Back Country freeze-dried fare, together with my new tipple-du-jour, Baron Samedi spiced rum with Coke.
Met some lovely people in the very convivial camp kitchen over the two days: there was a French couple from Rennes, then there were Peter and Anne from Sydney, plus a delightful Dutch couple (all travelling by car). Not quite so convivial were the three boorish couples from Mount Martha and Sorrento near Melbourne, who arrived early on the second day and set up their vast complex of caravans and annexes next door to me. I found them unfriendly, pretentious and loud. So there!
The weather forecast was spot-on too. Three severe hail storms struck during Sunday night/ Monday morning, with the weather only beginning to clear by mid-afternoon Monday. My MSR Hubba tent took it rather well. I spent much of the day in the excellent camp kitchen, finally getting to grips with WordPress in starting this blog (although I am writing this part fully 18 months later!). Also, spurred on by memories of my favourite Dowe Egberts iced coffee from Holland after meeting the Dutch couple, I restarted making my traditional travellers’ iced coffee – in this case, Robert Timms coffee bags, condensed milk and UHT milk.
The weather was clear again by Tuesday so I got back on my bike and enjoyed an excellent ride to Kapunda, where I had a scrumptious Cornish pasty, then on to Tarlee to a not-so-excellent public toilet for an awful crap. Sorry, but that’s just life on the road – poops are important! Then it was on to the “Riesling Rail Trail” from Riverton, and on to Clare after a 1-hour charge-up at an upmarket café in Auburn. I gave the eBike-travelling group of 3 mature couples I was talking to at the café, and who were on a day’s return cycling trip from Clare, a 20-minute head-start and still beat them into Clare, only 27 km away.
The Clare “Discovery” campground costs the same as the Tanunda one, but is nowhere near as nice. Unmemorable, in a word. There was fog and mist at Clare next morning, delaying my getaway until 8.30, but I still managed to lumber in to Melrose at 6.15pm after a 151km ride, having charged-up at Gladstone on the generator for 2 hours. In the meantime, at the village of Spalding, I encountered a wasp that somehow got in through the narrow gap between my helmet visor and sunglasses and stung me right on the left eyeball – very painful! – and I suffered blurred vision for quite a few days afterwards.
The town of Melrose bills itself as the adventure bike capital of South Australia, and features MTB trails in and around Mount Remarkable that, at just under 1,000 m, is the highest peak in these parts and the beginning of the Flinders Ranges. I stayed two nights in the council-run campground down by the dry river-bed in the middle of town. There is an excellent bike shop in Melrose: “Over the Edge”, where I got my chain replaced. At the campground my very light-travelling neighbour was Andrew, who earns enough money shearing sheep to go on extended cycling trips through Africa, the Americas, and Central Asia. He was in his ‘ute though on this occasion, travelling between shearing jobs.
The first half of my day out of Melrose was an absolute breeze – a super downhill run into Port Augusta through Horrocks Pass with south-easterly wind-assist – and I covered the 72 km from Melrose in 2½ hours at 29kph average speed. Not too shabby.
I still had plenty of battery left in Port Augusta, with an indicated remaining range of 78 km – but, well, the trailer tyre was suddenly flat and so I decided to have lunch, fix the puncture and charge up some more at the same time down by the wharf in the newly-dressed-up town centre.
The wind from the south was only getting stronger and as I’d soon have it against me when I turned to go down the peninsula to Whyalla, I wanted that extra battery insurance. Just as well too, as it turned out. Port Augusta itself looks a bit of a dump as you come in from the east, with smelly salt flats and junk-yard dwellings, but once you cross over the Gulf bridge it shows a better side, with character buildings and upgraded public areas.
After Port Augusta, it was hard slogging into a buffeting side wind or outright head wind gusting at 35 kph, and I’d only travelled 50 km by the time I had to charge up again using the generator on the side of the road in a little wind pocket,
and then managed to get only as far as the outskirts of Whyalla where I had to charge up yet again using the generator, under the shelter of the town’s Information Office that was already well closed for the day.
It was going on dark and raining by now, and rather than face the misery of putting up the tent in the rain (and being totally drained myself after 152 km), I checked into the $100 a night Foreshore Motel and had a terrific cheap meal ($10 Rogan Josh) washed down by a nice, but stupidly expensive by my standards, bottle of red wine.
Lets face it, Whyalla is inherently drab. To be fair, they are trying their best to overcome the negatives of having a red-dust-shedding steelworks right in the middle of town – the beach front down by the motel, for example, is rather nice, and if you close one eye you could easily imagine yourself to be in some tropical resort. Maybe?
The next day I took it a bit easy and enjoyed a nice ride on to Cowell – chased along behind a ‘roo for a while that 
didn’t have the sense to keep off the road, and saved a sleepy lizard from a squishy death; sore bum, same head wind, no hills…yeah, that kind of day.
Achieved a range of 90 km too, which wasn’t too bad considering the head wind, but evenso still had to park-up for 2 hours in a rest area to recharge the batteries using the generator in order to make it into Cowell. I stayed in the very poor standard caravan park there – a complete rip-off at $31 – and of the two hotels in Cowell, I went to the more family-oriented Commercial Hotel for a seafood basket meal. There, I was dismayed to find the exact same Inigo Cabernet Sauvignon as last night’s $43 effort for only $19!
Didn’t really like Cowell though. For one thing, at 23 m, it’s got the weirdest wide streets you’re ever likely to see in a sleepy village, and that helps to make the place look empty and forlorn.
And so on to another one of those days in two halves: absolutely lovely ride with no wind for the first 80 km on into Port Neill, then into a blistering side wind from the east that dragged me down to 19 kph and 50 km range, and I got a slow leak in the rear tyre to round off the day.
Port Neill was my favourite town of the entire east coast of Eyre Peninsula. I could feel a real civic pride in the place, but unfortunately it’s probably only staving off inevitable decline, and that’s because the retirees in their holiday homes who keep the place going, are now beginning to move on to Tumby Bay where all the government services, especially medical, are located. I moved on to Tumby Bay as well.
It was then an easy and enjoyable run on down to Port Lincoln the next day from Tumby Bay, although the side-wind persisted throughout. I actually did see another touring bike in a rest area 22 km before Port Lincoln. It was parked up against a tree next to a tent, but intriguingly the cyclist was nowhere to be seen. Presumably, he or she was still in the tent – but at 10 am! – and it did make me curious as to what ailment may have detained them so long.
Port Lincoln was nice to me. I got the velcro straps on my Ortleib handlebar bag restitched at an upholsterer and I won a decent-sized bet on the only horse race of the year that I ever wager on – the Melbourne Cup [although later on that same day I did sign a 2-year contract with Telstra for a modem that cost exactly the same amount – $1080. Easy come – easy go, eh].
-ends-
#34 Eyre loop, Stage 1: Adelaide to Port Lincoln |807km|