Day 121 | Near Baker Lake turnoff: not that many vehicles appear to choose that route

77 km | zzOz total: 6,189 km

Another couple of hours in the sandpit, less than 9km/hour, then suddenly it was all over, I was out on a substantially firmer track.

After that it must have been 50 km on a slight incline. This turned out to be the slowest day’s grind since I left Perth, 6.5 hours in the saddle for less than 80km.

I’m, however, going to stick my neck out on this one: the western part of this road is the least interesting, scenerywise, since I left Perth.

The mulga and spinifex is quite stunningly beautiful, if you appreciate austerity of vision, the flocks of Wood swallows and budgies provide some movement and colour, and there’s plenty of wrecked cars and occasional troupes of camels to keep the average bike traveller alert. But the vegetation in the last few days has been less pristine, just burnt off too many times, only grasslands can recover quickly from that so the mulga can be a long way from the road.

Most of the parked cars have been collected from this stretch: someone in the recycling business thought there was money in the steel for a while, so my mantra is required to remember the day’s sporadic count.

But enough of that.

At least there’s some undulations.

Picked up some more water from Harry, a grader driver, so hydration is sorted until Warburton, not the same urgency to power on down, err, up the road.

I mentioned how the drivers fail to slow for the bike, clouds of dust and flying stones as they shoot past: Harry said ditto for the grader. I spoke about a big bloke proudly stating he’d done 1200 km for the day back at the roadhouse: Harry couldn’t see the point either.

He’s on a 4 week on, 2 week off, roster, flying in from the lovely Albany. You have to like the bush and camping and with only 3 companions for your month it can be a trial if you get a dud, but they never last long. His camp setup looks reasonable, all brought in on a roadtrain, three 40’ carriages long.

The team is building up a 6 km stretch of the road, adding countless double truckloads of gravel to the existing sandy surface and with the addition of water from the closest bore, a 70 km round trip, it creates that better, harder, road surface.

For those who like the bush, the open sky, an absence of stress, jovial company, it’s not a bad existence.

I count myself among them even if it’s only temporary.