Day 500 | 35 km NW of Hawker: another creek bed

73 km | zzOz total: 16,168 km

Somewhat unusually, at least to my way of seeing myself, I spend most of the day in gloom. Maybe, like a small child, I’m just over-tired, wandering vigorously around the hills here or walking the bike in parts may have drained me.

But I put it down to the sudden drop in temperature, it’s 10, 15 or is it 25ºC cooler all of a sudden, thick cloud has swept in, sun not immediately apparent and the wind, plenty of that, has swung southerly.

I’m off due south today.

A few kilometres along the track, you follow under the cliffs of the Pound on another fire trail, no tourists out here, I stop to do more fiddling with the rear derailleur gear cable. There’s no adjustment at the derailleur end on an XT and at the bar the toggle seems all rusted up, after all it’s a 2000 model bike, so adjustment is via trial and error, mostly error it seems, on the cable length itself.

Dunno.

Seems to be better, at least for the first 15 km but once I turn onto the Moralana Scenic Drive, it is indeed fantastically scenic by the way, the impressive Elder Range on the left and jagged edge of the Pound on the right, I hit a major bump on the dirt road and what had been for a while a slowly adjustable seat, courtesy of the now mobile saddle clamp, becomes an entirely rocking horse saddle.

My mood starts to imitate the colour of the sky, not quite charcoal.

I see why the Moralana had been a battle the first time around, it’s a rockin’, rollin’ ridin’ road, much of it downhill the way I’m now travelling, ie, opposite to down last time. It’s 3 pm when I get to the bottom and have a stretch of the Parachilna/ Hawker road to link to the next dirt section.

Stopping for a photo at the Leigh Creek 100 signpost, gee, it was 9 days ago when I got my No Helmet Warning just outside Leigh Creek, I don’t seem to have progressed much in that time, and looking at my sad caravan I’m towing I notice, finally, that the trailer tyre is flat, and has been for some time, the tube destroyed, the valve ripped out. When I remove the tube I see why immediately, the rim tape has somehow evaporated and the spoke nipples are sharp.

That all fixed it’s back uphill, this time asphalt but that southerly wind is ripping, grinding away, seat oscillating abruptly, I’m riding in my warm jacket, looking like it might rain. There is just no vegetation cover out here, the sheep have been hammering the landscape for 150 years, it’s as barren as much of Sturt’s Stony Desert but eventually, as always, a possible campsite appears, a levee bank has been built to protect the road from flooding, I camp in the creek bed.

Big drops of rain discolour the tent, the tent is emergency orange once more not the faded colour that blends so well with this environment, but it’s up and secured from that relentless wind, I’m tucked up in my sleeping bag almost immediately warming the bones.

I’ve been in or near the tropics since I first crossed that Tropic of Capricorn demarkation just before Coral Bay in August last year, now I’m back to 32º south of the Equator. There’s been the occasional cool day, starting out on the Great Central Road at Laverton, and Hughenden come to mind so I’m currently more adjusted to 40ºC than 15.

Considering I’m making for New Zealand and basing myself on the 41ºS latitude line I’d better get used to this gloom in a big hurry.