Project VELAIA

What a night: Dozens of ants were climbing my tent in the night even though I had put all my food in a plastic bag packed into my waterproof Ortlieb bag and stored that one several meters away. Additionally a thorn or something sharp below the tent resulted in a flat sleeping pad (again) and therefore a hard sleep. But at least did I wake up early at 5:30 in the morning to have a pleasant 40km ride to nearby Dubbo.

In this city I had breakfast, a short phone call with my mother @home and went for 2 hours on the internet (breathtaking 8 Euro!). Leaving Dubbon in the noon I wanted to reach Peak Hill by the evening and cycled relaxed to not overheat mostly through hilly forests and farmland, staying at a rest area for 2 hours. There I finished reading my book “The 3rd Degree” about the consequences of and adaption strategies to climate change Down Under.

After this early afternoon break a cooler evening ride through nice forest scenery brought me to the mining village Peak Hill (now mostly touristic) and with a 2$ coin I found on the way I paid a quarter of my dinner which was half of the price I would have paid for sleeping in the caravan park (but I saved the 16$ and slept in the park) – how cheap was China compared to this!

109.6km, 19.7km/h, 561hm

Peak Hill park in the morning: a quiet spot in the center of a still sleeping village. But something is moving … a cyclist is climbing out of his biwak tent cocon that protected him from the mosquitos in the evening, that held him warm in the fresh night and kept him dry when the lawn was automatically watered in the morning.

On the bike I saw my first (dead) opossum just after the village, passed a big radio telescope and few hills later I arrived in Parkes for a short tour through the IGA supermarket, coming out with 2kg of food (cereals, bread, cookies) and leaving town for the 33km ride to Forbes.

Some short showers cooled me down in the early noon and soon I arrived in Forbes.

(old war planes in West Wyalong and Forbes)

Forbes center has some nice historic buildings like the Court House shown above and stone churches, but after a short refill of my bottles, a picture of the lake and scenig bird breeding trees I left town for another 70km to Marsden, shown as a village in my map.

First that seemed to be an easy job, flat, tailwinds, moderate temperatures but then some hills appeared, followed by dark rain clouds which made the winds go crazy. I had heavy stormy headwinds only quarter an hour later with loads of dust. Arriving in Marsden there existed no village but emptiness!

As the 8 liters of water I carried were almost used up I had to continue but it made no sense to fight at only 10km/h against the hot winds (my thermometer showed up to 49 deg C in the sun (where I was actually cycling) and on the sealed road). Additionally flies made it a nightmare to stop as they found and terrorized me immediately. So after an endless seeming time under these conditions and in the strong, no mercy knowing sund I arrived with my last drops of water in West Wyalong where I relaxed the rest of the evening in a park, cooling down and getting a clear head again.

198.6km, 19.5km/h, 603hm

On the way from West Wyalong to a small, 110 souls village called Weethalle, I met Toni who turned around to give me a cold Coke Zero right from the fridge in the back of his car in the middle of the heat – cooled me down as I was not far from overheating.

(more than half the way already!!)

And in the small, friendly pub in Weethalle I had my noon brake from the outback heat.

The next village was Rankins springs and when I stopped near a tab (with a ‘no tab’ sign??) I had another puncture, resulting from one of these ‘catheads’, up to 1cm long thorns which even knocked out some cars, one just between West Wyalong and Weethalle. After a short fix I could continue, over 2 more hills and into the several hundred kilometer flat, all the way to the mountains before Adelaide.

Stopping in Goolgowi my muesli nearly went out, so I went for a supermarket. But it had already closed at 7pm and asking at a Motoel they wanted to sell me small boxes of muesli, $2.50 for 40g!! “No thanks!”, I told them and went to bed a few hundred meters after the village.

A 110km fast ride the next morning brought me to Hay by noon where shopping in a bigger supermarket was cheap and I could get a kilo of muesli for 5$, not only 80g. Afterwards a short swim in the free swimming pool was a good opportunity to refresh and take a short shower.

I was quite optimistic to make many kilometers that day as the way to Balranald was flat and the clouds caused cool temperatures. Additionally the continuous rain was not only welcomed by the locals who had suffered from several years of draught but in the beginning also for me. But as the rain didn’t stop and the bushland and fields next to the street were all extremely wet to slightly flooded I made the decision to go all the way to Balranald in the evening to find a dry place for the night.

And with the last sunlight I arrived in Balranald, gate to the Mungo national park which is famous for its frogs and ‘Chinese Wall’. I had a peanut butter sandwich and some cookies and went to sleep under the roof of the tourist office – a wise decision because it continued raining all night long and in my small biwy tent I would have gotten extremely wet and cold. A couple on their way to a country music festival who were sleeping nearby gave me a sleeping bag/blanket combination as I was a bit cold in the wet clothes and biwy bag.

(Lake Benanee with 30.000 year Aboriginal history)

The long distance of nearly 247km the day before and the long hours in the rain made the next cycling day a hard one: with heavy legs I started out to Euston, a small village near the bigger Robinvale. A short stop at a rest area and a short ‘powernap’ didn’t have the desired effect and so I had another 2 hard hours to finally arrive in Euston. In a small cafe/convenience store I bought some Vegemite, a very salty and rich in vitamin B paste to put on bread (typical Australian), bread and got a vegetable sandwich for free.

For the night I went into a small park near the Murray river but was extremely unlucky as drunken people came twice at the night and one drunken couple had a heavy conversation and a fight just a few meters away – a really bad night, in fact.

And the morning didn’t start much better as my rear tire blew up totally only 5km after leaving the village – probably caused by another thorn or cathead. After waiting some time a friendly blacksmith on his way to Mildura picked me up and with 6 to 10 times my normal speed he left me in front of a shopping center only 40 minutes later.

But again this proofed to not be my lucky day as not a single shop sold spare tires (only one sold complete bicycles) and I had to walk the bike to the other end of the city to K-Mart to get a replacement. 16$ poorer and quarter an hour later I started out into the direction of South Australia (SA), stopping at Lake Cullulleraine but continuing after half an hour to a place just a few kilometers from the SA border where I pitched the tent behind some bushes.

I passed the fruit control station as you are not allowed to import fruit into SA without a license.

And again all the protection of my tires was not sufficient for the cruel thorns of the outback: As I was going to take a big panorama series of pictures I parked my bike a few meters in the bush and realized on the way back that both, front and rear tire, were completely full of catheads. I pulled them out one after the other and twice I heard the sound of air escaping from the tire

Due to the trouble and the heat I decided to stay for some hours in beautiful Renmark town center, just next to the river with plenty of houseboats.

But even though it was a nice place I had to ride on after I had refilled my batteries. In a fruit and vegetable shop along the road I bought an apple and nectarine and enjoyed the green of the vineyards in the evening. This night my tent was invisible for the cars in a small and dry channel just a few meters from the street and I enjoyed the cereals with milk which I could make from my water reserves and milk powder.

Blanchetown, the town with Lock 1, the first watergate at the mighty 3750km Murray river which rises in the Australian Alps, was my first stop today and I relaxed in a nice park just below the bridge where I had taken the panorama from before.

In the early afternoon heat I left as the internet access was too expensive with $6 per hour and the village was nearly empty. At the Beyond Petrol fuel station (somehow ironic, don’t you think!?) I refilled my water and somehow I got a feeling like being in Mexiko in the peak heat of the day: the heat over the sealed road made the horizon blurred, a strange music came from inside the shop and I could even smell the heat and the exhalations of the dry bushes beside the road. The only thing missing was a Hollywood style gunman turning around the corner

After several hundred kilometers without a mountain I finally reached the mountain range before Adelaide. In a 200m climb I went up to little Truro, a village where a mass murderer had killed 10 people over several years back in the 80s or 90s as a Nuriootpa local told me the next day – I didn’t stop there anyway because it was too small and all shops seemed closed.

In the evening I arrived in Nuriootpa but the markets had closed already and therefore I left to pitch my tent behind a line of vine in the evening.

In the morning I wanted to start early to avoid the dog walkers and noon heat when cycling into Adelaide but I wasn’t successful at all: A friendly local with his black labrador picked me up and served me a delicious breakfast (I found out that I love lemon pie) and told me about the Tour Down Under cycling race which had passed through town just in the afternoon before I had arrived the previous day. He suggested an alternative route to the Sturt Highway and I was really happy to listen to his advice as the vine country I came through later on was a feast for my eyes only topped by the wonderful lakes in the forest containing Adelaide’s water.

I came through Lyndoch where they have a German bakery (& restaurant) which on that day didn’t sell the famous brezels but I bought a 1.2kg massive “block” of “Vollkornbrot” as a guest present for Olly – it should remind him to his cycling days in Germany and the big variety of healthy bread you can find in German bakeries.

And after a long downhill into the city and 1.5 hours of city cycling I arrived at Olly’s house by 5pm, 15 minutes before he arrived back home on his tw-bent recumbent.

So here are some more statistics of the last few days:

01-19: 246.9km, 25.5km/h, 168hm

01-20: 82.8km, 16.4km/h, 132hm

01-21: 100.5km, 14,0km/h, 263hm

01-22: 119km, 17.3km/h, 369hm

01-23: 125km, 16.5km/h, 604hm

01-24: 88km, 18.2km/h, 681hm