Day 57 | Bilung Pool, North Wooramel River: meeting place for raucous parrots

80 km | zzOz total: 3,021 km

After 10 am, ie, cycling a couple of hours, I note some statistics: average speed 10.13 km/hour, max 13.61.

The weather forecast for the whole state was for south east winds, favourable, but I’m heading due north for some reason straight into the blast.

Later the road turns 30° and all is forgotten as I trundle along, the road entirely to myself, no traffic, no livestock, a whole lot of nuttin’, excluding the struggling acacia trees and patchy grass.

The road surface is generally great, often like riding around a clay tennis court, without the net, sometimes hard packed red soil, that has a bumpy tendency, but occasionally, as I head through areas which are disconcertingly sandy, the road has been built up and it can be a little rocky.

Once I hit some sand, the front wheel slid sideways and it all ended up with the bike falling over, despite being otherwise stationery at the time.

There’s a couple of crossings, 250 mm deep through a creek on a concrete causeway, guess that’s what stops the standard car, but not your temporarily sandal-less bike tourist. Safety first, I realise the pedals will be under water if I ride.

The second was crossing the main Wooramel River, inches deep, no worries about churning through that one, although the river clearly gets up a bit on occasion. Floods hit here in December and January, at the same time as the destructive Queensland floods, and there’s plenty of evidence, flood debris high in large River red gums and up the river banks, I calculate about 12 m up, or a four storey wall flushing through. Unlike Queensland out here no one would notice, there’s not a lot to destroy.

The car count at the end of the day: 3.

I can cope with that level of traffic, maybe the road remains “Road Closed”.