Go West Young Man
Boab Tree
Broome is the next target town, along the way I’ll go through Kununurra and skirt around the southern edge of the Kimberly and the northern edges of the Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts. Some of the gaps between towns and roadhouses out here are pretty intense, 290km between Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing with no water available in between. It will probably be the most difficult stretch of the whole trip, that and the gap between Broome and Sandfire roadhouse which is about the same.
I left Katherine around 10am, not the best time to get moving, the temperature was already up to 37. Victoria River was the next roadhouse along the way some 200km away. I had planned to try make it there for a icy cold drink at the end of the day but after leaving late pretty much gave up on the idea. It was a hot day but there was no wind so I was making reasonable progress. I stopped for lunch at a rest area about 80km out of Katherine, and there were some people there in an adventure tour van. They gave me a cold bottle of Gatorade and a bag of cold grapes which I grapefully accepted – terrible but I had to!
There were a few good camping options along the way to Victoria River but I really wanted a cold drink so I kept going long after it got dark and arrived at the roadhouse sometime after nine. Riding at night was good, there is almost no traffic, even less then the few that pass during the day and its much cooler. I followed the advice of the old Swiss guy I met and rode on the other side of the road. That way anything that comes up behind you won’t catch you out and you can get out of the way of oncoming traffic easily enough. When I got to the roadhouse the people who gave me the grapes were there and bought me a drink to celebrate my ‘champion’ effort. Later as I was cooking supper, I got chatting to a French couple who are travelling around in a 4WD campervan. It’s just like a Toyota Hiace but its 4WD so I asked about where they took it, how it handled the really rough stuff. When I get round to Sydney, I want to get a vahicle and do it all again but followng a lot of the 4WD tracks I can’t really ride on now. Turns out they will be finishing their trip around the same time I should be in Sydney at the end of mine so I may have found the perfect vehicle for me. I’ll get in touch with them again wen I get to Melbourne and see from there.