Today we did another school visit, this time to a "town" school with a lot more white kids. And they only spoke English. It's strange noticing that I notice things like that. The school seemed a bit bland, they have just done a bike course and seemed quite blase about the whole thing. The teacher also quite firmly pushed the bike idea, we were there to emphasise the importance of riding safely and definitely not to mention the "n" word.
Camping on someone's lawn in the middle of town is a strange experience, but I suppose I should get used to it because we're heading for "civilisation" now, it definitely feels as though we're round the corner or something and on our way back.
The trike steering has also broken again, right where it was "fixed" in Tom Price. I track down a MIG welder and get a bigger plate welded on under the existing one and some other reinforcing done. It shouldn't break now.
Most of the group drove to Jigalong and got back about 9pm. I'm not a fan of cramming into Alan, there are only two seats (and seatbelts) and the van is not really built to take 15 people. We ride out to the Tropic of Capricorn, a good 20kms out of town. Bindi joins me on the trike, and we tow the trailer with her bike on it as well as most of our gear. For reason which elude me, I had the trailer upside down in it's flatbed mode. This meant that the dropouts we were using were not the best, and consequently the wheels fell off at one point. We also got to the tropic and discovered that we'd lost Bindi's tent along the way. Presumably when the wheels fell off.
That is a bit of a bugger, as it was a nice Macpac tent and kind of expensive. Bindi rode back to look for it but no luck.
We partied at the Capricorn Roadhouse until the usual late hour, after midnight I suspect given our town-like habits at that point.