May 14th, 2011
Iron Knob to Kimba
Distance: 98km
Total distance: 3049km
Last night I slept well, except once I woke up and checked my tent for mice because I thought I felt it running on my sleeping bag. Turns out it was just outside the tent. Phew! I’m starting to get used to spending my nights with mice but as long as they don’t make a hole and find their way into my tent, I’m at peace. Also, I was extremely glad that I get to pitch my tent in the camp kitchen. The wind was blowing all night but my tent was very much protected.
After bidding goodbye to John and Cherry, I returned to the Eyre highway. John and Cherry are heading to Ceduna today, which is where I’m heading, in 4 days’ time that is. The ride this morning was quite pleasant. Not a single blue patch in the sky which meant I need to keep riding to generate enough heat to survive the cold. But its better this way, I don’t get as much exposure to the UVs. More importantly, today I finally caught a tailwind! But it wasn’t a 100% tailwind, it was coming at me between 7 and 8 o’clock. Road condition was quite similar to yesterdays. Long undulations and few trees with saltbushes and bluebushes, and no livestock in sight. There was no town in between Iron Knob and Kimba so I stopped twice on the roadside to munch. There seem to be more road trains on the highway today. And they get bigger too! Many carry the label oversize and I saw a three-coach roadtrain for the first time today! I even saw a roadtrain carrying a truck and another road train carrying three caravans! These road trains are one hell of a transporter.
Not much entertainment on the road today so I created my own by bursting out on speed whenever there’s a downhill among the undulations. At one point, I was even pedalling at 45kmh instead of letting it cruise, felt so awesome! With incredible speed, comes incredible exhaustion so I tried not to do this too much, haha. About 15km to Kimba, I started getting flies hovering around my head and it starts to get above my nerve (no pun intended). This is particularly a problem when I ride below 12kmh. The mosquito head net Damo gave took care of it. On a side note, the flies problem occur when the temperature warms up as the overcast slowly vanish, perhaps these two are related?
As soon as I entered Kimba at about 3pm, I searched for a supermarket. Found two supermarkets but they both closed at noon on Saturdays! The town centre is dead on a weekend. Saw the big galah and the shop behind it sells hot bakery and cold drink. Good news, it’s open! Got myself a pasty and a sarsaparilla, yum! This is the first time I tried sarsaparilla and it tasted very much like root beer! Now I wonder if they are the same thing.
Checked in at a caravan park at the roadhouse here and got myself some Rosie’s Chicken (some local fast food only to be found in rural places from my experience) for dinner. The mosquito net did well in keeping the flies from reaching my skin, but it seems to attract even more flies which got me thinking maybe it’s got some sweat on it. I’ve soaked the net in a mixture of water and bushman insect repellant so we’ll see if it’ll deter the flies in the future.
