Day 96 | Lyons River, on the Cobra Gifford Creek Road: might be a river but don't think there's any water

79 km | zzOz total: 4,545 km

The road is variable, great riding in parts, not so great in others, some loose stuff turning into corrugations, now that no one knows what a washboard is let alone used one, or rocky.

A fair amount uphill and just an occasional easy kilometre.

It’s starting to heat up so I stop for an early lunch at a river bed, no sign of water of course, just sand, and pretend to have a short sleep. It’s that kind of day. The ants make sure that ain’t going to happen.

I’ve come out on the Gascoyne Junction Road, sound familiar, well, if I turned the other way, and there’s a few GJ signs, eg, with 160 km on them. Somehow feels a whole lot further than that, I was there back in early August.

It’s full moon and last night, tucked in my snake free tent by 6pm I started rereading Shane Keating’s magnificent Off that I’d downloaded for off line viewing at times such as this.

It’s polar opposite to my trip: he was wet fairly often, in the last month I’ve scarcely seen a cloud; he has a choice of roads, guess I have too but there’s really only one road heading east; he has occasional solitude, I have very occasional company, yesterday one caravan went by, that was it for traffic in a full day on the road; he has fears and insecurities, for some reason I can’t seem to find anything to worry about.

As I said to someone as I was checking into a caravan park recently: no car, no phone, no women, no worries.

I’ve always managed to enjoy my solitude, eg, walking the 165 km Northwest and Southern Circuit around Stewart Island in NZ, I managed 10 full days without seeing anyone else, 16 days in total, until I ran into some deer shooters and my vegetarianism was put on hold.

Here there’s a lot to do when making camp: put up the tent etc; cook and eat dinner; write diary and blog, by then it’s pitch dark, well until the full moon rises and you just about need sunglasses.

Bit of bird squawking but once that tent is zipped up, I’m in my exclusive palace, my head meets pillow, well, scrunched up clothes and before, err, minutes, sometimes seconds, I’m disturbing the nocturnal animals, ie, everything non-flying, with my snoring.

No worries at all.