Day Six
Someone told me at breakfast that
we had actually lost a rider at Emerald.
One of the blokes had damaged his back kick-starting the bike. It's easily done. A back can go just bending over and tying a
shoelace. Poor devil, to have to leave
the group after not even experiencing the high-flying excitement of going over
the bars of his bike. That must have
been a real bummer. I'd have been
spitting bull dust.
A few of the
lads found some skulls the previous day and had mounted them on their bike
bars. These were the pure white
headbones of dead rams, with beautiful curling horns, but they looked kind of
sinister and cool as trophies on the front of the bikes. Big, bad riders and small mean-looking
bikes. One rider had found a set of
horns – ox by the look of them - and they too made a statement. The Wild Ones.
After a
massive breakfast that would have fed an army, we gathered around Dan for the
daily briefing. Today was another
loooong ride. 459.5 kms. I was looking forward to the last .5
kms. I ached a bit from the previous
day's battle with the bull dust. Perhaps
it was my inexperience, gripping the bars too tightly, holding my body rigid
instead of loosening up and going with the flow? Anyway, I was not looking forward to leaving
Proa. We still had a few kilometres of
dirt road and loose dust before we hit any solid ground. However, Dan told us the road out of Proa was
better than the road in, so I thought to myself, 'Gotta learn to relax when I'm
riding.'
We went out in
our usual stream, 46 bikes now, all in a line, until the overtaking started and
the wild ones went flying out in front, leaving their dust to be eaten. The headwinds were ferocious that day,
forcing down the speed. Temperatures on
the other hand, had risen, to around 35 degrees centigrade. There were kites and hawks feasting on
kangaroo carcasses every few hundred metres.
A bike passed me, with SQUIRTER written on the rider's back. And then TRYPOD, who was another Pom like
myself. TRYPOD owned a good expensive
camera and took some great photos with it, including some eagles and hawks
which I'd specifically requested him to get for me. My own little camera was fine for most
things, but photographing wildlife is an art and science in itself, and
requires something more than a point and shoot.
YOU'VE BEEN
PASSED BY ROGER was the next to throw dirt into my face with his back
wheel. I said to Roger afterwards that a
more penetrating statement on the back of his coat would have been YOU'VE JUST
BEEN ROGERED, but alas they can't all be literary geniuses like moi. When I was thinking of writing something on
my own back, I eventually put MONKEY CATCHER, the idea being 'Softly, softly
catchee monkee', in that I would eventually finish the ride, no matter how
slowly I went. In retrospect, I wish I'd
put my other choice, which was MARVEST HOON, a spoonerism of HARVEST MOON. Australian 'hoons' being wild youths who
drive bad boy cars at reckless speeds.
However, this convolution seemed to erudite at the time.
I decided to
ride alone again, given that we did have a good stretch of dirt road, and so
let John and Pete shoot off. They were
very competent riders, both of them, though John was ever impetuous and was
known to leave the road and hurtle into paddocks to say hello to horses and
other livestock. John is a wonderful
talker and when he hasn't got anyone to listen, he probably talks to himself
and his attention strays. There is
nothing so cheery as John in the morning and he sort of bucks you up from the
moment you rise. Good lad that he is.
However, our
John is also fastidious. I'm amazed he
was never a regular soldier in the army.
I spent 18 years in the RAF and have some excuse for folding my shirts
just so, but alongside John I'm a slob.
Pete and I would stand waiting for John in the morning, as that man
spent eons taking down his tent, packing his kit, and polishing the grass
afterwards. Tent pegs would be lined up,
poles standing to attention, clothes laid out just so. We all had to cram our gear in the army style
kit bag – there was never enough room for tent, air bed, underwear, spare
shirts, camping towel, air pump, and all the personal items – so even if stuff
went in neatly, it came out looking like a jumble sale at the village hall.
Pete on the
other hand is one of your taciturn Aussies.
He would stand there watching John pack, shaking his head slowly and
thoughtfully. Sometimes he growled. Sometimes he cast his eyes to heaven. We all have our foibles. I probably exasperated the pair of them, but
heck, I'm lucky because I'm the one writing the book, and as far as I'm
concerned, Kilworth is the perfect buddy to go on a bike ride with.
I got a bit of
stick from John for not shaving and keeping the standard up – in Leicestershire
they wear blazer and tie to the pub – but I did that anyway, later, because the
bloody beard threatened to stifle me inside the helmet. It was one of those nightmarish imaginings,
the hair growing and growing and filling the helmet until it finally suffocated
the wearer. So I did shave, and I did
wash out my underpants once or twice.
Underpants! Now there's an interesting subject for a bike
riding challenge. Pete had warned me to
get t-shirts and underpants that would dry quickly. You can get quick-drying clothes, towels, etc
at any good camping shop. I'd got the
towel and t-shirts, but not any underpants.
Pete had also told me to bring boxer shorts, rather than briefs. I didn't know why and ignored the advice,
bringing (it has to be said) mostly boxers, but two pairs of briefs also. I found out why.
On a bike you
wear so much clobber you feel like a
knight in armour. Once the stuff's on,
you can't reach things like underpants without calling for your squire and
having him assist you in de-armouring. I
went out from Proa wearing briefs for the first time. Within two hours, having crossed the dreaded
dust and found blessed tarmac again, I was writhing in agony. The briefs were cutting into the inside leg
of my crotch like cheesewire. It was
excruciating. I knew if I didn't stop
soon I would sever both legs at the joints with the pelvis.
The motion of
the bike – not the velocity but shaking and rattling – judders the rider
forward all the time, while on the other hand for some inexplicable reason
which has puzzled Greek philosophers from the beginning of time, underpant
briefs remain static on the saddle.
Rider shuffles forward, pants stay where they are. Pants then become a cutting instrument,
trying to sever limb from torso.
I stopped to
top up the fuel tank, but was exposed to girl bikers and cars going by every
few minutes, so I couldn't strip and get rid of the offending item. There was no real cover off the highway. The bushes were pathetic little things that
wouldn't have hidden a modest elf. The
arboreal landscape was no better. The
trees were stunted eucalypts – known
affectionately as 'gum trees' in Oz – and acacias – known affectionately
as 'wattles'.
Aussies, as
you probably know, like to smooth awkward words – if they can't add an 'ie' to
the end – sunnies, Pommies, etc – they give it a nickname. This has nothing to do with any lack of
intellect. Aussies are at least as
bright as any pommy bastard, most of them coming as they do from the same
stock. It's more to do with liquidity of
speech, having the words flow off the tongue.
After all 'sunglasses' is not a word that poets instinctively find easy
on the ear. 'Sunnies' is much more
fluid. Americans call them ‘shades’ but
they go for drama, rather than smoothness of speech.
I got back on
my bike and rode on. Within the next
hour there were genuine tears in my eyes.
I became convinced that the Gestapo must have made their captives wear
briefs, forcing them to ride small motorbikes until they burst into tears and
spilled everything they knew about troop movements.
By lunch time
I was desperate. The fuel stop for the
day was a patch of stunted gum trees and wattles. Bugger, I thought. Not even an old oil drum to hide my white
British bum. Then I had an idea. In with my compass and map (insurance against
getting lost in the bush, like some tourists and even locals, who get out of
their car for a toilet stop and end up lost and walkabouting until they die of
thirst) I had a Swiss army knife. I got
this weapon, reached down inside my rider's trousers and pulled up the edge of
my briefs.
I slashed
through one flank of the offending undies, then the other, and with great
relief pulled the buggers out and threw them into a waste bin. Job done.
Then I looked up to see I was being observed, with amusement, by one of
the Aussie women riders. I grinned and
shrugged. She laughed and turned away,
and I saw WIND on her back.
I supposed she
rode like the wind.
Going commando
for the rest of the day was like having six birthdays all at once. I couldn't have been happier. The relief from pain was tremendous.
Regarding my
map and compass. These were security
blankets. I'm sure if someone gets lost
out there, where there is nothing but empty red space, it's better staying
where you are and waiting for help. As
mentioned earlier, in my more anxiety-ridden moments I'd thought about bringing
a GPS, but the expense did not justify the purchase. How much is your life worth, I asked myself
before leaving England? Well, at least
the cost of a compass, but a GPS? Not
that much mate.
Two young
bushmen who didn't get lost were Duncan and Donald McIntyre, mere youths at the
time, who founded the town of Julie Creek in 1862. They named the town after their aunt after
travelling from the south with 10,000 sheep and twenty-five horses. It's flat country around Julia Creek, once
good cattle and sheep land, but now silver, lead and zinc mining has taken
over. The area boasts a local marsupial
which I did not see hair or pouch of, perhaps because it's nocturnal. It's called the dunnart. I would have liked to have seen a dunnart,
simply because I'd never heard of the creature before passing Julia Creek. Also around the region somewhere is the Combo
Waterhole, the billabong in Waltzing
Matilda, but I didn't see that either.
They've had fire, flood and drought in Julia Creek, and I wouldn't want
to be there in mid-summer, that's for sure, because the temperatures climb to
the forties.xxx
I caught up
with Pete and John at Julia Creek, joining them for coffee at the local
cafe. Pete always likes a double-shot
long black which takes the roof off your mouth.
I don't like flat white (a sort of latte) but I like my coffee a bit
less system-shocking than double-shot long blacks. In Spain I usually order an 'Americano with
milk on the side', so I can mix my own brew and get the strength to my
liking. I tried to do that in Oz, got
into all sorts of muddles, gave up and joined Pete.
'Did you see
the road sign about planes landing?' I asked.
John said,
'You mean the one that said, ROAD MAY BE USED AS AN EMERGENCY RUNWAY?'
'That's the
beggar. I kept looking over my shoulder
for Jumbo jets.'
'Hercules,'
muttered Pete. 'Not Jumbos.'
'Well they're
big enough to knock me off my bike,' I argued, having flown in many a Charlie
130 in my time in the RAF. 'Hercules
aircraft are no microlights.'
'True.'
One of the
lads, Cam, told us the clutch was slipping on his bike. My 21 still purred along, or rather screeched
along, without a sign of a problem. I
felt very privileged to own her. I loved
her as I love my own children. It
troubled me that at the end of the ride I would have to sell her into slavery.
After Julia
Creek I headed for our destination for the night, which was a pub at Gregory
Downs. I'd been told there was a river
there, running past the pub, where we could all have a lark about and a swim. I'd not done any scallywagging up until then
and was looking forward to it. The Gulf
of Savannah seemed like a good place for larking around. The river at this point was supposed to be
quiet tranquil water. I also thought to
look out for the unique and spectacular Livistonia palm tree, but I must have
missed it, both going and going out.
On the way to
Gregory Downs we passed thousands upon thousands of termite mounds, like
traffic cones covering a vast area. It
was an amazing sight for a Pom, though the locals were not that impressed,
having seen as much many times before I suppose. At a ten-minute stop later on, I spoke with a
retired couple driving an RV, or campervan.
There are hundreds of them in Oz where they're known as Grey
Nomads. This pair were heading for the
camp at Gregory. I was feeling frivolous
and pretended I didn't know about the mounds.
'All these
grave markers,' I said, 'there must have been quite a massacre here at some
time.'
The man
frowned. 'Termites,' he said.
'No,' said I,
'that can't be. Termites are little
creatures, like ants. You wouldn't have
big grave markers like that for termites.'
He closed one
eye and I think he would have thumped me if I hadn't got on my bike and shot
off down the road.
On the subject
of termite mounds, we had a lass with us, Josie from the Sunshine Coast I
believe. A schoolteacher. Josie decided
to ride by one of the mounds and kick it, presumably to watch it disintegrate
into dust particles. There were two big
guys who watched out for others a lot of the time – I believe they too gained
helper caps - but they failed to keep Josie out of trouble on this
occasion. Josie found that termite
mounds are as hard as concrete and she broke some toes. One more for the doctor at the next available
clinic.
Gregory Downs
pub was pretty good. There was
vegetation down by the Gregory River.
There were birds and signs of other wildlife. I liked the place. I tried to reach Annette again, but still no
signal on my mobile. Pete's mobile
worked fine, but it seemed that Annette's phone was still not in a state to
receive the call. I knew she would be
upset by this, but there was little I could do.
Since I wasn't
going to use the bike again that day I decided to fill out my Running Sheet for
the following morning. This was a
horrible mental exercise for someone like me.
I've never been great at arithmatic.
In fact I'm crap. I'd got it
wrong once or twice and had to use the rubber and start again. It was agony having to do it once, let alone
twice over, so I furrowed my brow in concentration and used a piece of scrap
paper to write down my calculations.
Gregory Downs
to Normanton, past Burketown and over the Leichhardt River. My speedo read 38, 136 kms at this point in
the journey. I added 93 kms to this
figure which was the first stretch in the morning, making 38, 229 kms. When my speedo registered that figure I would
have to Right turn to BURKETOWN according
to my sheet. The next stretch was 119
kms, which again I added to the original 38,136 kms (not to the running total 38,229 as I had done once at the beginning
of the ride, an exercise which would eventually result in a journey to the moon
and back) making 38,255 before I had to right turn right again, to
Normanton. Then the next stop, 190 kms
further on, was the Leichhardt River, an historic crossing point, where we
would refuel.
And so on, a
whole sheet of figures which I taped to the bars of my bike each day. When I wanted to read this sheet, which was
extremely difficult since with my glasses on my eyesight is remarkably poor at
a distance of two feet, I would have to hold the shuddering, flapping sheet
still with my left hand, squint down, glance up at the road, squint down,
glance up, squint down, glance up – this series going on long enough for me to
eventually read where I'm supposed to be going without leaving the road and hurtling
into the bush.
Only twice on
the whole ride did I take the wrong turning and somehow I instinctively knew
I'd gone wrong, backtracked, waited for one of the others to come along. When I saw a red bike and had made sure it
wasn't the local postie trying to fool me, I then took the same direction. Only twice, which I felt wasn't bad for a
stranger in a strange land, and a rookie biker at that.
At the end of
the day we would have done 341.9 kms and would hopefully be in the rodeo
grounds of Normanton. Always the last 50
kms of the day were difficult for me, and I believe for others. I had to force my eyes to stay open. My bones and muscles ached with the
juddering. My brain was full of
bees. The bike engine seemed to get
noisier and noisier, the mind and spirit got tired, and all I wanted to do was
get to the end of the road. Some of the
riders wore ear plugs and some carried ipods to drown out the grinding bike
engine with pleasant music. If I'd
thought to bring music of some kind I'd have gone for good Aussie folk.
Pete had
introduced me to the Bushwackers,
whose single favourite of mine is Limejuice
Tub. The Bushwackers, now defunct, sing a great mix of Irish, English and
plain old Aussie folk songs. If not the Bushwackers, then Midnight
Oil, my favourite cd of theirs being Diesel
and Dust. How appropriate would that
be?
