Day 456 | Lawn Hill Creek: never a dull time

32 km | zzOz total: 14,188 km

Travelling across Australia is pretty boring, right?

What happens on a typical day? Not a lot, you might think.

Here’s today’s action.

15 minutes after setting off I suddenly found my seat at 45º, one seat rail had snapped through and with my full weight on the other that snapped as well.

That’s pretty much a catastrophe, I guess, of the major scale, I don’t want to ride the 350 or so kilometres to Mt Isa standing up.

Ever resourceful I saw that the clamp on the seat post was about 3 0mm long, what happens if I slide the seat forward on the rail and use the clamp to hold the two pieces of the seat rail together?

Does that work?

Sure does and suddenly there’s no longer the musical squeaking coming from my seat and what’s more I have some tension in the leather, the seat’s more comfortable than it’s been for a while.

Time taken: 20 minutes.

Seems to work so fingers crossed, it’s 9 am.

Next I avoid a large, ie, 1100 mm, snake on the road, black head and brown and gold banded body. I watch as it, eventually, it’s quite cool, slowly slides from my path. Looks like a Western Brown, rather nasty specimen, but will have to check, it’s a ridiculously varied species.

A chat to some incredulous Germans in a 4WD.

Smoko time I see a track leading up a conical hill with a large white cross at the top, so I have a few dates and sultanas admiring the 360º view, the hills of Boodjamulla National Park,like an enormous Tsunami wave down the full western side.

A couple of helicopters at work in the distance, mustering, and when I get to this lovely Lawn Hill Creek with a terrific camping spot I decide to cut short the day.

Later I make the acquaintance of 1000 head of cattle, almost a stampede as they run through the water, jumping, belly deep as they cross, followed by 12 Aboriginal stockmen on horses. We have a chat, the boys shaking their heads as they hear I’ve come down Doomadgee Road and am off to Isa, a long way they think looking at the bike.

So that’s the substance of the day that makes this little adventure still so much fun and I’m camped under a huge fig tree, surrounded by shady paperbarks with clear flowing water all around.