Day 3 - Hawker

315km's today through some lovely country. Look at all the green fields in the Flinders Ranges. When it rains the vegetation really does know what to do with the water. Looks beautiful.

As we packed up this morning, an aboriginal came over and chatted to us. Originally from Bundaberg and goes to small towns on the east coast and plays for the local cricket, tennis or football team for a season. He loves the lifestyle and meets heaps of interesting  ppl every season. Nice bloke. 

The first 200km's was pretty hard going. We had very strong head winds which made the riding very tiring. I had taken some photos of the runner / sneaker tree and the  underpants tree (pics below). Very rare trees indeed. (I think the locals get bored easily) I then had to catch up to Pete and I had the throttle full open (WOT) and I could hardly get over 110-115km's. It was very frustrating and became a little bit of an issue when I filled up. My fuel consumption was 14.5 km's per ltr. The whole trip I have been running at around 18-19 km's per ltr. Birdsville to Innmaincka will require a minimum of 16 - 16.5kms just to make it and that includes carting 5 ltrs and filling up during the trip (Pete taking 10 ltrs). We shall see. Pete's milage has been a lot better than me :(

You will see on the pics below, we past about +150 wind mills generating clean electric power. Mountain range after mountain range had the wind mills on. As we passed old homesteads which are now ruins but were houses for the great frontier farmers of 100-200 yers ago, I just wonder if they ever thought such hi tech equipment would be on top of their mountains. Wonder what the next few generations will do . What will they do to make the clean energy wind mills old hat tech??

It's mid 30's. Not too bad when riding, but when you stop, it becomes hot very quickly wearing boots, pants, helmet etc. So we are currently in the Hawker pub having a quiet ale (well maybe a few pints) and relaxing.  Tenting tonight again.

Till tomorrow - Richard

Peter's Bit

Birdsville or Bust - the No No No Tour - No Off's, No Punctures and No Problems.  Great riding so far - Mr Puffe certainly plots a very interesting route.  Not sure about that many windmills 'cos I only counted 32 but they certainly looked impressive.

At Morgan we were warned about Roo's and Emu's along the route and the recommendation was not to travel before 9 ~ 9:30 in the morning or after 4:30 ~ 5 in the afternoon and keep a good look out giving any animals a WIDE berth.  The Morgan Caravan Park operator told us a Big Roo had shot out of no where and landed right on the bonnet of his Corolla - we saw it this morning and well what a mess.  No real damage to the rest of the car other than a huge dent in the middle of the bonnet and each side was sitting up about 150 mm above the mudguards !!!  Another camping ground resident had hit an Emu in his  Jeep 4 WD  and made quite a mess to his left front.

We tend to ride with me up front and Richard behind - Richard will say this is because he can simply adjust his speed to suit my more leisurely riding style (or as I prefer to call it "slow and safe").  But I know it's just so that I get to the road hazards first :-)

My speed wobbles seem to be a combination of head wind and smooth road surface - I think that when the front unloads the knobbies tramline and induce the dreaded wobble.  So far I've only needed one quick change of unddies and today was much better - I've learned that a quick dab on the rear brake or just leaning right-forward to shift the balance seems to fix it.  Sure that the dirt won't be a problem.  Sorry Dave the Barfoot Family Mooto of "More Power" doesn't work.

Talking about dirt - we get a little bit tomorrow as a precusor to Birdsville.  We can hardly wait.

Cheers - Pete