Day 117 | No particular place on the Great Central Road: a short day was called

47 km | zzOz total: 5,872 km

I often think I see cyclists on these Outback roads.

From a distance.

Then, as I approach, I find they are a mirage, a shadow from a mulga shrub, or a roadside sign, an unravelled tyre, a roo way in the distance.

Today I came over a hill, it was a bit bumpy, but I thought I could make out someone standing on the side of the road 800 m away. Might be a motorcyclist in the shade of a tree.

It was in fact another cyclist, no mirage this time, Mirjam, the Cycling Dutch Girl, the actual one. No trailer, her bike has bountiful attachments, including matching 5 litre water containers strapped to the underside of her rear panniers

I’d read her truly inspiring blog over the summer in Perth. To anyone umming over whether to ride the Nullabor, or the pissy Stuart Highway, read her blog and realise that there’s a whole other world out there.

She left Holland, well at least to travel to Australia, four years ago and arrived in Darwin 3 months after I had left Melbourne. We’ve since occupied a parallel universe, travelling on many of the same roads, and even meeting some of the same people. She had cycled with the Dutch guy I mentioned a couple of days ago over in India for a few weeks, his name was Wilbert. She’d been through Kakadu, on the Buntine Highway where she met my friend Ena, doing a similar solo trio, near Top Springs, then the Gibb River Road a month or two before me, Karijini, Mt Augustus, Mullewa. More recently Oodnadatta, Finke.

Now she’d almost finished the Great Central Road and was heading for a job with the wheat harvest back in Mullewa.

It was not quite Livingston and Stanley meeting in some dim location in Darkest Africa but it was, yeah, inspiring, to meet another passionate off the main roads rider, more staunch than me, having travelled even more obscure dusty roads.

The morning tea break, without tea, just the break this time, lingered into lunch as we munched similar apples presented to us 40 km apart by the same driver.

Mirjam had started at Yalara with another cyclist, Stuart, but after severe mosquito bites near Warburton, a couple of days later he had started losing his balance and the logistics of getting him to hospital meant he went to Laverton by a flagged down car but his bike went to Cosmo with the next driver. He’d been airlifted to Kalgoorlie now so Mirjam has to tidy up the bike part to eventually reunite them all.

Moral of the tale: keep away from those mozzies.

(The exact diagnosis turned out to be swine flu. Strange, there ain’t too many porkers out here.)

Later I realised how natural this life has become: neither of us were particularly interested in any precis of the track to come. Much more important the Docker River shop was well stocked, I might be needing more supplies by then.

Today’s smashed car count: 28 and a camping trailer.