Day 99 | Cattle Pool again: and on the 9th Day he rested

rest day

Somehow I’ve got into writing about what I was doing yesterday, rather than the day I’m supposed to be writing about.

For instance, yesterday I got off the bike and walked up to a National Park lookout, 2 hours return the sign said, but I was up there for way more than that.

I watched occasional 4WDs go up, or down, the road, don’t know where they came from, maybe the other way in might be less obscure. For a moment I’m concerned that someone else will start up my walking track but they made it to the carpark and without even stopping did the loop and drove off. What’s that all about?

It was the north, ie, the sunny side of the mountain and it remains a hard, tough country. There’s a preponderance of a certain shrub but it’s really like the opening sequence to MASH, without the helicopters, dry, rocky, just a battleground for the flies and ants. That’s a draw at the moment but no shortage of participants.

As for today, after 8 days riding over some taxing terrain I feel like a day off.

Actually I need a day not riding, there’s a few things to do on the bike, like repair the base of the trailer which is in the process of falling out, got some number 10 wire that should do the trick, and change over my tyres, XR on the front and Dureme on the back, which have done sterling service over the rocky, gravelly, parts of the road but are too slippery now that I am encountering sand.

There’s my 2.1” Nobby Nic for the front to try to abolish the abrupt jinking sideways motion when I hit a deepish patch of sand road surface and might resurrect my 2.5” Petrol, from old Tanami days, for the rear, just so I can wear it out and dispense with carrying the thing, who really needs to travel with 3 spare tyres? The alternative for the rear is my Maxxis Crossmark, a reasonable off road tread, which really should have been on there since I left that asphalt about 300km ago.

Speaking of road surfaces, it’s been more or less what I expected, just the last 40km where graders have been busy in recent times loosening up what is already pretty soft. Combine that with a steady uphill gradient and those thighs have been receiving a severe workout, particularly as I’ve often had 20 litres of water aboard.

But no stretch lasts too long, the road is surprisingly changeable, there has been the odd length of rugged chunky gravel to plough through doing damage to the tyres, the trailer undercarriage and the mind of your average cycle tourist.

In the main there’s been plenty of hard packed red clay, or yellow clay, or fine gravel like you find on a clay tennis court, making for easy rotation of the cranks and a goodly velocity, ie, 16km/hour.

But of course there are other days, going through undulating country where the average speed is less than 13km/hour.

Cattle Pool is an obvious spot to tarry, it’s about 2km long and has a profusion of the usual waterhole birdlife, lined with River red gums which signify a permanent water source and only suffers from one issue: you are not supposed to camp.

My defence is that the National Park is somewhat bike unfriendly, the roads are the least fabbo I’ve come across since Exmouth, in fact Perth, pretty sandy, and no clay or gravel has been dumped to give a solid consistency to the surface as is the case elsewhere, instead it’s like your average combover, shuffling around the loose surface across the road and fooling no one.

You are not officially allowed to camp either in the National Park itself or on the million acre station that surrounds it making it near impossible to do the the 6 hour climb to the top of the mountain when you have to do a 60km round trip ride from the official, $15 a person, I guess, campsite, that has nothing much to offer except that talk of means of transportation and nightly generator noise.

The strange thing is the waterholes have been traditional places to camp since time immemorial out here, it’s a fantastic Outback experience now slowly being ruled out across the nation, the ban is for the dopes who leave the rubbish behind, and just happen to wipe out the touch the earth lightly types such as myself who are just collateral damage.

The nearest ranger is a few hundred kilometres away in any case, it’s too obscure out here to have someone permanent, or even in “peak” holiday season.

At least I was able to have a proper splish about in the pool of a dubious pea soup colour, and rinse out, if not wash, a few of those filthy clothes.

The peaceful doves, or maybe the crested pigeons are full into the Saturday arvo attract-a-mate cooing, it’s reassuring that part of the world isn’t required to fall into line over where they place their bed in this isolated, totally underpopulated but somewhat over regulated environment.