Plain

Day 65: 23 December 2014, Tuesday.

I packed up my stuff and headed back into the town centre of Belranald. I needed to buy some food for a couple of days as I planned to spend one night at a rest area on the side of the road but I always like to have enough food for a few days as you never know what may happen…

Then rode out of town crossing the Murrumbidgee River which was the same river that the ‘Caravan Park’ of last night was located beside.

The Murrumbidgee River

It was another hot day but the sky was not as clouded. After ten kilometres I stopped at a rest area to eat my apple I had bought in Balranald and ended up conversing with a young European couple, nice folks. They pointed out to me the fact that there were some other people with a caravan at the rest area who had arrived after the youngsters and parked under some trees and pulled out some chairs to relax in. the point the couple were making was that the caravan people did not come over to the covered area where they were sat and had in fact made no effort to even say hello. They said this was common for them. I had not really noticed this phenomena but then again I tend to approach anybody at rest areas and say hello….

The days ride was dull. The Hay Plains are truly plain. There were not many rest areas either after an initial flurry of them for the first twenty kilometres. The wind was near enough non existant so again I was making good time when I reached a rest area and forty-one hundred kilometres.

The Boring Hay Plain And 4100km

At the rest area there was a grove of trees which had enough space for my tent to live in. I had only rode sixty-six kilometres (there were seventy more kilometres to Hay) but I decided to stop here for the night as these trees may be the last I see for the day!

Typically as I sat there pondering if I had made the correct decision the wind picked up, a tail wind too! I stood firm by my decision though and remained at the rest area. I had a lot of time to kill waiting until it got near dusk and I could set up my tent. It was a horrible time, so many flies, I tried to read but the flies were just too much.

Another thing that I noticed, after this mornings discussion with the young Europeans, was that every car that stopped always stopped a long way away from the only shelter which I was under. Even a motorcycle pulled over and stayed away and when the motorbike left I could hear it making a horrid noise, the chain was very loose. The rider had been looking at the bike as if something was wrong and if only he had approached me I could have helped him out!

At seven-thirty in the evening I finally set up my tent in the wind which was now properly strong. I did not dwell long outside of my constructed tent as the flies had done my head in. It was another hot night in my tent…

66.65km 3:08T 21.2A 32.9M total = 4101

Muggy

Day 64: 22 December 2014, Monday.

It was a hot start to the day but not as I expected. It was difficult to get to sleep last night, it was very muggy and in the morning it was overcast so my tent was not in the sun after all, but it was hot. The temperature at nine in the morning as I was leaving the ‘Caravan Park’ in Euston was thirty degrees centigrade, with high humidity.

The wind was coming from the north-east so it was a bit of a headwind but not to debilitating. The problem was that I was told about the hot winds like this one, the wind does not refresh at all, is that it carries flies. After twenty kilometres I stopped at a rest area and this fly-wind thing proved correct. It was horrible, nearly as bad as in the south-west area of Australia. I did not stop long.

That fifteen minute rest was the longest I had all day, every other time I wanted to stop there were just too many flies. I was not a happy chap. I was back to riding with the fly-net over my face which stops the flies getting in your mouth, eyes and nose but they never stop buzzing around.

It was about eighty kilometres to the town I was attempting to get to, Balranald, with nothing in between, just the same old dull landscape…

The Dull Landscape At 4000km.

I arrived in Balranald at two in the afternoon, I was quite knackered as I had been on the road for five hours and four-and-a-half of those I was cycling in the humid heat surrounded by flies. As I reached the outskirts of Balranald I saw a park so I pulled over to rest as I had noticed about three kilometres before the flies had ceased to be a bother. I do not understand why but in Australia the flies tend to be more common in the countryside not in the towns!

After a half-hour rest I cycled the remaining kilometre to the information centre and got informed. That was when I found out about the Hay Plain. The next town I will be heading to is called Hay, and to get there will require a night on the side of the road as Hay is too fa for one days ride. The road to Hay crosses the first half of the Hay Plain, the second biggest plain in Australia after the Nullarbor! I thought all that flat boring nothingness was behind me but no, the Hay Plain has very few trees too.

Oh well that is tomorrows problem.

I went shopping and then to the local ‘Caravan Park’, the information centre said it cost twenty dollars but on arrival I was happy to learn I needed to pay only ten dollars. The ‘Belranald Caravan Park’ is a nice place, good facilities and good staff. I decided to fill both of my water bladders and put them in the fridge overnight as I had drunk a lot of water on this day due to the heat and humidity.

Later I went to get my bottle of water for overnight out of the freezer and checked the water bladders and found the large one was leaking! I must backtrack a bit as I neglected to mention that during the days ride I had noticed a small leak from the water bladder from the tap and as I had kept a spare liner for the bladder I had replaced it. The replacement had a small hole in it! I had to go to the rubbish bin I had chucked the old liner and retrieve it and just replace the tap. Fortunately there was no other rubbish in the bin!

Tomorrow it will be back to a road with no trees…

84.68km 4:26T 19.0A 33.5M Total = 4034