Day 099, Monday, 6 July 2009

Distance travelled – 103.8 km
Avg speed – 16.6 kph
Max speed – 25.6 kph

Burke and Wills Roadhouse to Terry Smith Lookout

Another hard day against the wind. 113 km to Terry Smith Lookout and all uphill. Last night a car driver at the roadhouse told us we would have an easy day tomorrow as he could see in his rear vision mirror that the road was all down hill behind him. Non-cycling car drivers have a very different perspective to road conditions than the actual conditions. We always listen but never take it as gospel. Our elevation profile shows the real situation.

The climb is not extreme but add the wind and it makes difficult going. The rough road surface adds another level of difficulty but we quickly discovered the smoothest part of the road was on the centre line. Just as well we are only sharing the road with road trains and caravans that also drive along the centre line. Thank goodness someone invented mirrors.

5 km down the road we came across Kathy and Ray riding from Port Augusta to Karumba – Gulf to Gulf – in 4 weeks. Both were pulling BOB trailers but only the trailers – no panniers, so they are travelling a lot lighter than ourselves.

Today we travelled through very different country than the previous two days – rocky outcrops and hills. Lots of flowering trees and shrubs. Lots of smelly Gidgee trees. Lots of birds, wedge tailed eagles, whistling kites and flocks of budgerigars. At times the kites seemed to follow us, their shadows drifting across the road in front of us, sometimes swooping down to look at something. We suspect (hope) they are looking for prey scared out of cover along the roadsides by our passing. The only other explanation is they are an Australian vulture shadowing what they think is an ever weakening meal if they stick with us long enough.

We both pulled up with sore bums today.

Zoom into the map and use the 'Satellite' layer to see our new location.

Kathy and Ray with Mark. A passing road train has just blown over kathy's bike and trailer.

Denise

Rocky outcrop

Not much shade out here

Parked for lunch

Being shadowed by a Whistling Kite

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