Day 59 | having another sickie in Hawker: what else can you do?
Sickie Day 2
OK. So it’s not the best photo but I haven’t been feeling like getting out the camera in the last couple of days.
For some reason I felt I should limit myself to picking the best photo of the day to head each day’s blog, ie, it is required to be taken that day.
This is the only photo I’ve taken today so there you are. (So far I’ve taken about 3800 photos on the trip. There’s a few movies as well. I’m going to have to ditch a few or I’ll run out of space on the hard drive.)
The thought processes have continued unabated however.
Issue the first: I’m travelling a lot slower than I had anticipated. For some reason I had thought I would have made 100km on the seal average a day and going at that rate would have made it to Western Australia by now. But, instead, I’ve managed to slow right down and on the dirt roads 60km is a reasonable day. That’s no big deal, I’m very happy to travel on these back roads and slow travel seems to be good travel.
Issue two: It’s been pretty cool, around 9°, in the last few mornings. With the arrival of the much cooler weather, it’s 23° max in Hawker today, I have come to the realisation that my travel plans have been a little counter intuitive. The reality is that there is not much point staying in the southern regions of Australia during winter time, particularly around the coast. The dry season, from April to October, is the time to be in the tropical north part of Australia when there is little, or no, Dry Season rain and the temperatures are more conducive to camping.
There seems more sense in heading directly north and then slowly moving down the west coast of Western Australia. This would mean I would do more of a figure ∞ as I go around, so now I should be heading for Uluru and Alice Springs and I guess to Darwin. I might even find a job for a couple of months. So that’s the latest thinking.
Somehow, as I sit here at 3pm with my beanie on, inside the library, it seems much more sensible to be heading somewhere warmer.