Cycling Australia Diaries

After a late start restocking our supplies, we set out after lunch. Only 5km off the sealed road (the Cape York Peninsula leg of the ride) Tim's middle tire blew out on the rough surface. He now has to do the rest of the ride on the road/slick tires. At about the same time, Dan lost a screw from his trailor suspension and by the time he noticed, it had caused a weld to fracture. Luckily, a bloke in Laura had a screw which fit and we were able to keep cycling on. We only made another 5km before stopping to camp where we had our last camp fire.

We were away pretty early this morning and we reached the Hann River roadhouse in the early afternoon. The two of us had food and some beer, then took our time getting back on the bikes. The roads have now become extreemly corrugated, dusty, sandy, rocky and we are crossing through many deep dips. We setup camp just before sundown in a rocky stack site, both feeling extremely fatigued.

Once again the alarm went off before sunrise. After 3 hours of cycling/falling over on the sandy track, we reached Musgrave roadhouse in time for lunch. Apparently the road is in the worst condition its been for years as it hasn't been graded since 1995 as a result of lack of water from drought. Corrigations run from left to right for kilometers at a time and 4WD vehicles fly by us gliding over them, choking us with dust, while we feel every bump at about 8km/h.

The road condition seems to be getting worse up here as each day goes by. After many slow and difficult hours, we arrived in the town of Coen very exhausted and suffering from sun exposure (approx 37°C - 40°C every day). We had covered 73km so we both decided to stay here for the night as we wouldn't get far after restocking our supplies.

Luckily, there was a garage in Coen and Dan was able to get the fracture in his trailor welded. We met a friendly couple on the road today who offered us to stay at their house in Bamaga. By the time we reached the Archer River roadhouse it wasn't worth riding on as we wouldn't have got far before dark, so we camped out the back of the roadhouse.