Turkey Creek Roadhouse

After my usual breakfast of porridge at the roadhouse I left early again. It was just 165km to Halls Creek, I’ve done much longer than that so I didn’t think too much of it. Boy was I wrong, it turned out to be a hell of a day. By the time I got to Hells Creek it was dark, I was soaking wet and dead tired.

On the map the road looks flat but that doesn’t tell the story at all. The road undulates constantly with almost no flat sections at all. They are just small rises but going over them all day long really took it out of me. Added to that was the wind which has pretty much been in my face since Katherine. I’m getting tired, I can feel myself slowing down daily and the computer backs that up too.

Sometime in the early afternoon as I was puttering along slowly I saw a storm building and coming straight towards me. So I pulled over, there was a rest area with a decent covered picnic table. I lay down for a minute, and had a blink that lasted about an hour. When I opened my eyes again the storm was safely away to the east so I got going again. As luck would have it there was another storm right in front of me. The sun was starting to get get low in the sky and I was still about 40km from Halls Creek but I kept going hoping that I’d be alright. Lightning was hitting the ground everywhere to the left and right from both the storms. The wind picked up and I got wet from some rain but it cooled down considerably. I must have looked like a nutter to anyone who passed me. Here I was cycling in one of the remotest parts of Australia in driving rain. But it’s the look on my face that would seal then opinion. I had a feverish paranoid look in my eyes, head constantly turning left and right making sure neither one would close in on my completely. The lightning was freaking me out a little. If you’ve never travelled the road to Hells Creek, the last 20km is pretty featureless just a road that goes over a gently rising hill. There were no trees or bushes or anything taller then me, so if lightning was looking for a way to the ground I was the tallest thing around. Was I relived when I got close to town with trees and powerlines and houses.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 4:47 pm by Ross and is filed under Australia, Western Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.