Distance: 114.8 km
Ridetime: 4:46:42
Average: 24.1 km/h
Max speed: 38.2 km/h
Total distance: 14456 km
When I woke up in my tent in the morning the sun was shining at it was raining at the same time. Mother nature could still not decide what weather to cast on me.
I wasn’t too sad about a bit of rain as it would keep the temperature down. As I have cycled in the Outback before I know I can handle the distance and the isolation. I also know I will easily be able to find a place to pitch my tent. What I’m not sure about is how will I will handle extreme heat over 40°C.
To my great surprise I had enjoyed a steady tail wind all day. This was different from the tough head wind I battled all the way from Darwin to Alice Springs.
I made a short stop at a Camel Farm and had a nice chat with the girl from Taiwan who handled the store. She had been there two months and enjoyed Outback life – just as I had when I worked at the cattle station.
Somewhere on the road a motorbike overtook me, and the driver gave a big thumbs up. At the next rest area I met Harry and his girlfriend from www.freedom-on2wheels.com. They had been riding their motorbike all the way from Austria and was also touring the world.
When Harry left I talked to some aboriginals. In my country small talk will often start with a question about the weather. The aboriginal way of starting small talk seemed to be asking something like “how is the water hole?”. I hadn’t even seen it, but just behind the rest area was a small water hole. My new friends came back and showed me there was about 3 cm of water in it. Obviously important information to them. I tend to rely more on the water tanks at the rest area for water, but it guess it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye open for the water holes as well.
Finally an Australian family from Alice Springs sat down at my table and offered fresh food and cold water. I love the outback!
With the nice tail wind I could have cycled longer today, but I thought I would keep to to around the 100 km and slowly increase the distances from there.
For the night I pitched my tent in yet another free camp site. When last cycled these camp sites where full of “gray nomads” – retired Australians touring the country in their camper vans. This one was empty. In the Australian summer people prefer to stay in the south rather than in the hot Outback.
