Woke as usual at first light (about 6:20am). It's very nice at this time of day, quiet and cool. Peaceful, but also the chance to see animal life and nice light. Sleeping on the concrete-like ground didn't do much for me, have to think more about camp sites in future.
Another 80km day so I'm going slowly and having lots of stops. Left about 7am, so I could almost walk it before dark... Stopped at an intersection where there was a bus shelter. No people within 10km, but a bus shelter all the same. Complete with solar powered street light. I take a panorama from the roof of the shelter after spending some time working out how to get up there. Amazingly stupid things Moz has done, number twelve million and something. Rock climbing an overhang with crap underneath and no medical support within 500kms. Despite this, I survive unhurt.
To further demonstrate my ability in that area, it's 11:30am when I leave the turnoff, and I'm a whole 20km from Nanutarra. So much for taking it slowly. But I get bored easily, is my excuse. Although I am going more slowly on the trike now, have stopped pushing to stay over 20kph and am averaging about 19, which is a surprising amount easier to do. Riding Jonas's bike was stupidly easy, I can see how he sits at 25kph all the time. Mind you, I used to sit at 25+ on my MTB when touring, and that was a lot heavier too. Hmm. Must be something wrong, obviously with the trike. Will contact the manufacturer about getting a refund when I get back.
I'm now thinking about what to tour on in future, specifically about building a better tourer. The dream of a fully faired bike is there, but I suspect it would be more fun to build than tour on. Being inside a fibreglass body really defeats the purpose of cycle touring I think, and it would be HOT. Perhaps a low racer style bike with a tailbox for putting stuff in. Go with a fairly steep seat (40 degrees?) and perhaps make it low-ish so it's OK in traffic, rather than low low low, which gets too exciting if you're in a town.
I'm very keen on a tailbox made of glass or something that is solid enough to hold stuff, thereby avoiding panniers as well as reducing wind resistance. And suspension to reduce bumps, maybe just elastomer rear suspension with a couple of centimetres of travel rather than full on 20cm travel MTB stuff. I sketch frame designs (160kb image) and details in my diary. (that's a scan of a page from my diary if you're interested in the notes I made or want to see just how atrocious my handwriting is)
Jonas is on support and came ahead in the van to tell me that there's a headwind. It's not immediately apparent on the trike, but maybe I'm only averaging 19kph because of that rather than because I've managed to not push as hard. Bugger. Anyway, he caught me at another turnoff (two in one day! Wow, this is civilisation) about 5km from Nanutarra. The group is not happy about the wind but will struggle on womanfully into it, but are having lunch at 57km rather than at the roadhouse..
I am deputised to check out the camping zone and laze around in the sun while the rest of them ride hard into the wind. "What wind?" I think as I pedal into it. Smug bastards on recumbents have been known to die horrible deaths at the hands of upright riders on headwind days, so I'm glad to be out of it.
The roadhouse is OK, but the river is pretty photogenic. I cross the one lane bridge and spend some time swimming and washing in the shallows where the water is warmer. It's very mineralised here, more so than I've seen in moving water before. I also eat the lunch Jonas gave me, which was nice of him. Unfortunately some lazy so and so didn't peel the pumpkin, they just chopped the bits up small. So the otherwise nice food is full of 1cm square chunks of inedible pumpkin skin. It feeds the fishes after I eat half of it.
I spent a couple of hours sitting with the trike near the roadhouse talking to people. I get approached a lot because of the trike, and people seem predisposed to be friendly. John arrives so we talk about solar power in various guises, and farm forestry. He's a forester, and I'm interested in that. A dairy farmer from Victoria spends a while talking about the rapid rise of forestry in his area, where dairy farms are converting to eucalypt at a great rate. Not a bad idea if they could persuade the bloody queenslanders of it. Australia sucks like a fool at a keg party when it comes to greenhouse gases and land clearing, largely thanks to the WA coalfields on one hand, and Queensland on the other. Both resources are running out though, so with any luck the stupid bastards will all die from the result of their industry before long, hopefully not taking the rest of us with them. This talk makes me think that miners (of forest as well as coal) are more of a plague than rabbits ever were.
The group arrive late, the van has been towing people along (so much for the bike ride part of the trip, eh). We stand round talking until a roadhouse guy tells us to move to their lawn, presumably so we're out of the way. We go past the "paying guests only" sign and make use of the picnic tables and hose (free water!). We camp by the river where it's free. People still choose to sleep on the gravel road/ car park bits despite whinging the other day about sleeping on hard ground. It seems they'd rather be near the fire than comfortable, which I find incomprehensible, especially when it still doesn't get below about 15 degrees even at 3am.
We're also under the bridge, or at least the fire is. So every hour or so there's a heinous racket as a road train goes over the big iron bridge. I sleep 20m or so away rather than directly under the bridge, and on some long grass which makes for a comfy night. Nice photos of the sunset and people swimming are taken by a variety of people. I get a reasonable image of Naima playing her flute. She can smile while playing, but I missed that. Such is life without a motor drive.
