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Journal: |
The party music from the Camooweal Pub echoed over the small
settlement until midnight, along with lots of shouting and laughter.
The Camp Draft was obviously a great success, but I’m sure there
were going to be some sore heads for Sunday’s events. The
noise woke me a few times, but not enough to prevent me getting
needed sleep and when I woke at 1am to begin my day, the town was
deadly quiet. I quietly packed and was on the road by about
1:50am. It was cool and cloudless with a slight headwind that
forced me to pedal a bit harder than I would like. The quarter
moon had not yet risen, so the stars were particularly bright.
I passed into the Northern Territory after 15km and continued on
without stopping until I reached the remote Avon Downs Police
Station. It’s opposite a wayside rest area and I remembered
from my last trip that they offered free self-serve coffee for
travelers. Even at 5:00am the water urn was hot and the picnic
table lit and I helped myself to a reviving cup of coffee in the
quiet of the night. Unfortunately, I managed to get sprayed by
a sprinkler that came on to water their grass as I was leaving, but
didn’t get too wet.
I had another minor mishap as I was
riding out of town. I reached into my coat pocket to retrieve
my radio and accidentally flicked out the little plastic bag
containing a spare button and material that sometimes comes with new
clothes. It disappeared into the darkness behind me and I did
an emergency U-turn to retrieve it, almost falling off in the
process and having to step particularly hard on the pedals to
maintain momentum. Anyway, I couldn’t find the little bag on
the road and resumed riding. When I changed into my highest
gears a little later the chain began slipping and I guessed that my
little U-turn stunt had misaligned the rear derailleur. I
toyed with the idea of returning to avon Downs to try and adjust it,
but decided to continue riding using the gears I had in the hope
that it would sort itself out or, when daylight came, I could try
and make the necessary adjustments. An hour later there was
enough light to see and I discovered my little missing plastic bag
tightly wrapped around the rear sprocket. It took a few
minutes to remove completely, but that solved the problem.
I
stopped around 8:30am after 135km at a rest stop and ate some
sandwiches for breakfast that I had bought the previous day in the
warmth of the early sunshine and spent some time chatting to a young
backpacker who was touring in a minivan with a mountain bike on a
rack.
As the sun rose, the wind swung round to come from the
south-east and I made good time for the balance of the journey to
Barkly Homestead Roadhouse despite some long gradual climbs which
yielded good views across the dry scrubby savannah. In some
places it was more dry grass prairie with almost no trees in sight.
I reached the Roadhouse at 2pm and checked into a motel room
where I spent the first 45 minutes changing my rear tyre, tube and
internal wheel taping, using the new tyre Sharon had mailed to me in
Mount Isa. It may have been my imagination, but the rear tyre
seems to have had a very slow leak since the punctures back during
the first week. The old tyre had done plenty of kilometers
anyway, so I felt I had got my money’s worth and I wanted to stop
worrying about the rear tyre pressure all of the time. I have
a very big day tomorrow (374km) to Cape Crawford, although I’ll camp
beforehand if I need to, so plan to leave before 1:00am.
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