Day 136 | Yulara Campground: one more day before the road

rest day

In a previous life I was quite the ferocious listmaker and despite the passing of time it still seems uncanny not to be writing down, and crossing off, items on some urgent To Do List.

Since I’ve done nothing much while here, except blog on, the washing, talking to various stray members of humanity who have crossed paths in this obscure location, eaten, done a bit of food shopping, wandered around a bit, caught up on emails, etc, and drunk a few too many cups of coffee, I realised that I haven’t managed to find time to finally list my sightings along the Great Central Road.

But first, my thoughts on the trip: it was more or less as expected, a bit more difficult riding the road than I’d anticipated after those great roads from Exmouth to Meekatharra, or the Carnarvon Mullewa Road; much less scenic prior to Warburton, more scenic through the hills after; I ended up having a relaxed 22 days to traverse the approximately 1200 km of dirt road rather than the 16 days I’d initially targeted, but when you are on a good thing why hurry muchly; cooler, a lot cooler, but also windier; all in all good, but not essential, Outback bike touring.

But handy for cutting through the heart of the country and crossing a couple of biggish deserts: the Great Victorian and the Gibson.

The highlights, the camels, the hills around the border area, Kata Tjuta, umm, anything else?, were hugely spread out, nothing like the historic railway detritus of the Oodnadatta, the waterholes of the Gibb River Road, the gorges of Karijini, the sea and big trees of the south west corner of the continent, the Aboriginal rock art, and crocs, of Kakadu.

Much less compelling than any of those routes, just austere beauty and an underlying sense in which a major part of the continent is constituted.

Final tally:

Smashed cars: 367, they almost disappeared after Warrakurna. My memnotic system worked out well to reliably score each day.

Camels: 87, a real nerve wracking delight at times.

Snakes, live: 1, that’s one, probably a young King Brown.

Dingos: 1.

Feral cats: 1.

Nights in paid accommodations, but not $150 a night donga style: 3.

Total distance walking the bike: 100m is a guess, mostly sideways across the road.

Total dirt road kms, including darting down various gravel pit, or old road diversions: 1206 by my computer.

The Great Central Road ain’t an easy one primarily because the overall distance, the distances between some of the waterpoints, and the unrelenting averageness of much of the surface.

Just have to get to The Alice now, I’m thinking that will be stretched out for another 11 days, via Kings Canyon, the Mereenie Loop, Grosses Bluff, Mt Sonder and the West McDonnell National Park. No internet access along the way.

Then I’ll have the task of scratching out another of those massive blog updating tasks.

See you soon.