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 31.03.2001

Day 12 : Saturday – From Yunta to Orroroo (123.22 km)

Yunta (A) to Orroroo (B)

I left Yunta in the now familiar cool calm and cloudless conditions, but it got hot fairly quickly and I had my long sleeved top off by fifty kilometres. The temperature climbed throughout the morning and it was very, very hot by lunchtime, with not a cloud to be seen.

Not long after leaving Yunta we entered the Flinders Range of hills, which provided a number of climbs, some of them quite long, but none of them really taxing. As far as wildlife is concerned, we saw a few emus and an absolutely stunning pair of wedgetail eagles, but little else.

We passed through a fruit-fly inspection point at a place called Oodla Wirra (can you believe these names?), where the fly cop on duty waved me through with a friendly wave. He obviously thought there were no flies on me and didn’t ask me to stop.

A town called Oodla-Wirra

Shortly before Peterborough we turned off the Barrier Highway. At the entrance to Peterborough I was brought up short by the display of a model train emblazoner with an “SAR” logo. It took a moment to recall that we were in South Australia and that SAR did not signify South African Railways! Peterborough appeared a very pleasant spot and was quite busy on this Saturday morning. Well, busier than some of the other towns we had been through recently.

I had done about one hundred kilometres when I passed an Italian cyclist heading east, pulling a little trailer carrying his camping gear and personal effects. Jane stopped him for a chat and he explained that he had been on the road for thirty-nine days and had travelled south from Darwin to Adelaide. He was now making his way to finish in Sydney. Judging by his deep tan he had had a lot of sunny weather on his way through central Australia.

I rode on to Orroroo, lying in the foothills of the Flinders Ranges, where Jane had booked into a rather forlorn caravan park. A proper park, though, serving this community of about 800 souls, and as such quite an improvement on the previous night. There was no resident caretaker at the park, the previous caretaker having gone walkabout, and Jane went off to find a phone to call the caretaker and arrange a site for the night. That arranged, we took a stroll on the Orroroo golf course, on which there was not a soul to be seen although it was a Saturday afternoon. There was also not a soul was to be seen at the clubhouse. The course itself was a nightmare of mowed bush for fairways and black oily sand for greens. Greens? Black greens? Little wonder that there were no takers.

The golf course

Do they really call these "greens?"

01.04.2001

Day 13 : Sunday – Orroroo to Iron Knob (163.17 km)

Orroroo (A) to Iron Knob (B)

 A  scattering of clouds greeted us for the first time in several days as I left Orroroo in the early morning light. The road wound through the Flinders Range, which presented a stretch of rolling hills and also some pleasantly long downhills.

After fifty kilometres I passed through the little town of Wilmington, a quaint settlement of just 300-odd people that, somewhat surprisingly for such a small spot, supports a toy museum. The district is also home to Mount Remarkable. Reaching some 960 metres above sea level this mountain of quartzite is said to glow a brilliant red at sunset.  We were not to see this, though, as we still had a way to go before we would stop for the night.

Leaving Wilmington the road climbs into the hills of the Flinders Ranges almost immediately and threads its way through some of the most magnificent scenery that we were to see on the entire trip. A steep climb known as Horrocks Pass in honour of the explorer John Horrocks who descended though this pass in 1846, presented a fair challenge as I wound my way to the crest. From the high point there were long, sweeping downhills as the road dropped down towards the coast. As pleasant as it was to freewheel, courtesy of gravity, I took the downhills at a rather sedate pace to as I soaked up the glorious scenery.

Spencer Gulf hoved into view, our first glimpse of the sea since leaving Ballina, and shortly thereafter the R56 joined the Eyre Highway for the last few kilometres into Port Augusta. I loaded the bike into the campervan at the outskirts of Port Augusta and we drove into town for breakfast and to do some sight-seeing. We also visited a grocery shop and stocked up for the week ahead, not knowing what facilities would be available once we entered the Nullabor Plains.

I would be on the Eyre Highway for a long time. It runs from Port Augusta to Norseman, a distance of close to 1700 kilometres, much of which is across the Nullabor Plains. It winds through an area rich in its history of explorers and pioneers, folk who displayed unbounded courage in opening up the region and making it possible for the likes of myself to cycle across it in relative safety.

By the time I climbed back onto the bike in Port Augusta for the balance of the day’s ride the wind had gathered in strength and met me head on. The speed of the earlier part of the day (I had averaged marginally over 30 kph for the first one hundred kilometres) was bled away as I was forced to use gears that hadn’t seen the chain for days. Luckily it wasn’t to last, though, and just twenty kilometres after leaving Port Augusta the Eyre Highway curved more to the west and in consequence the wind was changed to a cross wind and my speed picked up again.

It was very hot by this time, in spite of the wind, and it was something of a relief to reach Iron Knob, the agreed stopping place for the day.

Iron Knob, just 152 metres above sea level, is a very dry area, receiving an average of just 200mm of rain each year, but it is the minerals that are found here that have given birth to the town and over the past hundred years the height of Iron Knob Hill has been reduced by more than 150 metres, although it still looms over the settlement below.

Alas! We found no caravan park at Iron Knob, the closest being the one that we had passed earlier, some thirty-five kilometres back towards Port Augusta. We toyed with the idea of bussing the bike back, but this wasn’t really an appealing thought in the hot midday sun. The owner of the motel at the edge of Iron Knob suggested that we park adjacent to one of the motel cabins and link up the van’s power to the room, a very gracious offer indeed. In the end, though, we decided just to book into the motel and enjoy the air-conditioned comfort of a cool room, a proper bed, and even a TV set. Five-star luxury after two weeks in a campervan!

But the five star luxury lost its sheen quite rapidly as the shutters of fatigue lifted from my eyes. In fact the room was hell. The air conditioning brought the temperature down to a more comfortable level, which was a blessed relief from the van parked in the unrelenting sun, but for the rest the motel comforts fell well short of expectations. The TV had but a single channel, with a series of programmes drawn from the gold medallists in “The Worlds Most Boring Videos” competition. The bed linen hadn’t been changed since the last pubic-hair-shedding residents had left, and there were creepy-crawlies of outback origin living in the bedclothes. The plumbing was noisy and the thin panels of the walls were in the process of parting each other’s company.

But the motel was cheap and I must concede that it was a pleasant change to have enough room to move around without tripping over each other.

02.04.2001

Day 14 : Monday – From Iron Knob to Wudinna (190.39 km)

Iron Knob (A) to Wudinna (B)

There was some early morning excitement when the motel toaster burnt the breakfast toast, raising enough smoke to set off the fire alarm. I had no idea how to switch this off, but it eventually switched off of its own volition. Perhaps this was a common occurrence, because no-one came to investigate.

The wind was already blowing quite strongly when I emerged from the motel room at first light, a cold wind that made conditions rather unpleasant for the first few kilometres. In keeping with the recent weather pattern we’d experienced, it warmed up fairly quickly and the wind dropped at we moved away from Iron Knob. Within an hour or two the ride became enjoyable.

Eighty-six kilometres from Iron Knob and a gradual climb of about one hundred metres brought me to Kimba, lying at 263 metres above sea level. Kimba proclaims itself to be “Halfway Across Australia” and we stopped here for a photo session. It was something of a morale booster to pose in front of the publicity boards proclaiming that we were halfway across Australia. A huge galah at the side of the road allegedly marks the exact halfway point between the east coast and the west, but I knew that on the route that we were following we were still a few hundred kilometres shy of halfway.

Signboard at Kimba

Officially, halfway across Australia

 When I had covered one hundred kilometres for the day we stopped for lunch and then pressed on westward towards Kyancutta. Kimba is the centre of a vast wheat growing area, “in the driest state of the driest continent on earth”, and for much of the ride to Kyancutta we were accompanied on both sides of the road by wheat fields that stretched off into the distance. Surprising the amount of wheat that is produced in an area that sees just 200 – 350 mm of rainfall each year.

There were quite a few hills along the way as the road skirted the Gawler Ranges of the Central Eyre Peninsula, also labelled “Granite Country” by those whose job it is to think up these things. There is certainly plenty of granite about so his imagination wasn’t strained in this case. Kyancutta, which is virtually a ghost town now – the airport was closed in 1935 – provided an opportunity to stop and enjoy an ice cream at a roadside café, then it was a matter of covering the last thirteen kilometres down the Eyre Highway to Wudinna.

After checking into the Gawler Ranges Caravan Park, we wondered off to look at the sights of Wudinna. Not much else to record.

Correction. There is something else to record. The flies. The flies are incredible. Unbelievable. Little ones. Big ones. Really big ones. Possibly crossbred with wedgetail eagles, they are capable of carrying off pigs and small children. They swarm over everything. And there are biting flies as well. They should exhibit these vicious specimens in the wildlife parks, behind thick bars and with warnings for the kids.  Well, okay, I exaggerate, but only a little. They are nasty. A comment in the visitor’s book at the caravan park proclaimed that they found “More ants than at a confectioner’s picnic.”  We added, “And more flies than at a stableboy’s convention.”

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