Day 6 Birdsville

Mungeranue Pub

Gary giving us a big farewell in the morning

This is where Pete had his off. I took the left handside - ie the good line.

Just before Birsville you hit the border of Queensland.

View behind the caravan park

Finally made it. 

Have I mentioned the heat before?? 44 degrees this arvo in Birdsville. We have added a bit of luxury to the trip for the next 2 nights as we are staying in 2 rooms at the caravan park. The air cons are blowing and it's now pleasant.

What can I say about the trip today.. It all started around 4:30am when the bird life around the small lake came to life and decided to YELL to everyone - hey we are awake - pls join us. I didn't mind and it was great hearing so many different birds given we are in the desert.

We left around 8:30am and traveled a total of 315km's to get to Birdsville. Now that we have slowed down on the dirt, my fuel mileage is great and I will have no problem doing Cordillo Downs track on Monday 430kms with no fuel stops. (no nothing!!) My bike has been faultless so far, but I can't wait to get a 1200cc next year as travelling on bitumen on a single cylinder 660cc for over 500kms for the day is painful.

The Birdsville track is rough compared to the Oodnadatta Track and as a result Pete had a great off. He chose the wrong line into a small dip, let the power drop and it was all over red rover. I was on Pete's left appox 20 mtrs behind him, so I had a great view of the event. Thankfully I didn't plough into him or his bike with my emergency stop and then helped him and the bike up. I am amazed he walked away from this one. The rocks which contributed to Pete's drop, are around the size of your fist and hitting them at 60-70km's with a few scratches and some massive bruising is just luck. I reckon he will be sore tomorrow. After Pete's crash I took some photos but Pete was off. Took me 30km's to catch up :(

Another native addition to animals spotted on this trip and that is the aussie dingo. I just want to see a few more red roos.

This will be a short blog from me. I had a few pints (maybe 5-6) at the B'Ville pub and now relaxing with some sthrn comfort.

Looking fwd to tomorrow when we venture into the Simpson Desert.

Cheers - Richard



Peter's Bit
Well lets just start with an observation !!!  Mr Puffe (aka Buzz Saw) - snores - especially at about 2:30 am in the morning.

Great stay at Mungerannie - we communed with nature for a while and it was fascinating to see the abundant bird life.  The hot pool overflowed into an expansive lake supporting a wide range of birds including waders - Richard's picture of the bird with the green beak and legs was taken while he (she) quietly picked it's way along the lake edge in front of us ... delightful.  I went for a swim in the hot pool and in the words of Phil - the Publican it's "pretty good for a bush pool" .... translation don't expect anything too much  :-)
We spent a few hours watching old outback videos on the pubs TV ... Jack Absolom (Richard counts him as a fav) and Tom Kruse of Birdsville Mail Run fame - I well remember seeing the somewhat famous film featuring Tom in his heyday, as a youngster at school in New Zealand.  A good afternoon was had by all :-)  They laid on a great meal on Friday night as well.

Richard and I are both using Sena Bluetooth Helmet Systems on this trip - these provide a multi-channel capability and mine is set up for mobile phone (including iPod music) and bike-to-bike communication.  Richard also has his configured to work with the Garmin Zumo Bike GPS navigation System.  It an absolute amazing experience to be riding along at 100 kph watching the Oz Outback roll past, listening to music (tasteful of course) and simply be able to tap a dial and speak to Richard .... ain't technology grand.  Well it would be if life was perfect 'cos Richard is having problems with battery life :-(

My play list of 23 albums is a follows:
America America
Leonard Cohen The Best Of
Simon & Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubledf Waters
DireStraits Brothers In Arms
The Moody Blues Days Of Future Passed
Cosby Stills Nash Young Deja Vu
Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat
Road Stewart FootLoose & Fancy Free
James Taylor Greatest Hits
Linda Ronstadt Greatest Hits
Beatles A Hard Day's Night
Steely Dan Katy Lied
Van Morrison Moondance
Simply Red A New Flame
Carly Simon No Secrets
Clannad Past present
Fleetwood Mac Rumours
Carole King Tapesty
Cat Stevens Tea For The Tillerman
Police Their Greatest Hits
Michael Jackson Thriller
Enya Watermark
John Farnham Whispering Jack
Hmmm, just reflecting on that list - it probably says something about the writer but I dare say the youngsters reading here may not know some of the albums  :-)  Personal favourite listening varies and gets hard to chose ... Hmmm Simply Red, Beatles or Carole King maybe but Jennifer Warnes doing the songs of Leonard Cohen (with Cohen himselg handling backing vocals) is fairly hard to beat !!!

Ride to up to Birdsville today was fairly straight-forward except that I manged to spoilt the party and have an OFF - yeaph the bike and I had a little 'sleep' along the rode.  Barrelled down an incline into a dip and my side of the road didn't have any vehicle tracks so ended up heading into some relatively deep gravel at speed (yes David I picked the WRONG line) .... as I started to go up the other side the suspension unloaded and the front end developed a mind of it's own resulting in a reasonably serious tank slapper  :-(  Rather than risking a high-side over the top off (somewhat dangerous) I somewhat amazed myself and decided to drop the bike low-side and even managed to do it with some degree of control (yes David more power might have got me across the 5 meter distance to firmer road !!!).  Not something that I really want to do again and I'm very disappointed that Richard didn't video the event (sorry we won't be going back for a repeat either).  End result is no real damage ... bent crash bar and rear brake lever together with minor impact gravel rash on right forearm and right hip.  Have showered to clean body damage and applied Bettadine as a preventative measure ... no pain and should heal up nicely in a couple of days.

Richard rates the off as a 5 with a degree of difficulty rating of 3.7 so fairly low key but never-the-less slightly exciting.  Simply put ... just another adventure experience :-)  Still we rode into Birdsville side by side trying to do our best Ewan and Charlie impression (with the BMW 1200's of course) feeling that we had actually achieved something !!!

Have just come back from experiencing the Birdsville Pub ... yes and what an experience.
Yes it's damn HOT - more later ....  Cheers Peter