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Journal: |
I was on the road by 1am heading south-west out of the sleeping
Halls Creek. The weather was mild and I only needed my
short-sleeved top. The weather forecast was for 37C for
Fitzroy Crossing, so I knew it was going to get hot once the sun
came up. I decided to break the day into sections – 60k, 60k,
50k, 40k, 40k, 40k – and looked for the kilometre posts marking the
end of each section before finding a place to stop. Early
progress was good and I again enjoyed a brilliant cloudless starlit
night at my first break. As usual, I got very sleepy as dawn
approached, but once the sun came up, felt awake again. Until
dawn, the only vehicles I saw in 4.5 hours were the Greyhound Bus on
its way from Broome to Darwin and one roadtrain. Once the sun was
up it warmed rapidly and the traffic increased, although still quite
light. For each break I was looking for a nice shady tree.
In the open savannah, this was not always easy to find. With
70km to go, the road descended to the Fitzroy River flood plain and
it seemed to get even hotter. A headwind for most of the last
50km meant that I arrived very tired and hot, but more or less on
schedule at 3:30pm. I checked into my motel and then had to
ride to a small supermarket and also to a roadhouse to get a pie and
sausage roll for dinner. Not much choice, although you’ll be
pleased to know I also bought some fruit salad. I’m not
looking forward to the 360km haul to Roebuck Plains tomorrow,
especially since the local temps are again forecast to be 38C.
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