Author: stragglingstu

More blandness on the GCR.

One horizontal dismount today because I didn’t watch the dust as I pulled in to the Surfers Paradise road side layby about midday (everybody sees it marked on the maps and goes to have a …

Warning to cyclists: The famous Limestone Bore 20 km east of Cosmo Newberry is no more! Dead, non-functional. No water.

Don’t panic though – there is a stock water bore (Murrays bore) right on the road about 11 km east …

A couple of hours checking emails and blogging at the Laverton community centre before hitting the frog_n_toad at about 11 am.

Ten kilometres of bitumen before the gravel and sand. The Great Central Road sees a surprising amount of mining …

Camping in abandoned fettler’s cottages has its issues: dingoes howling from near the front verandah being one.

Wangianna fettlers cottage

Seeing graffiti from Gunzel, a blogger on a Rail Page Australia forum, was also a surprise. The cottage is absolutely …

Carried on chilln’ at the Lyndhurst Hotel.

Chats with Talc Alf, the talc rock sculptor and lower Strezlecki track mailman (Alf is very knowledgeable about aboriginal and early white history of the Lyndhurst areas and world history), meeting a station …

The main interest in this southern part of the track was the Dog Fence, supposed to keep dingoes out of the sheep areas, it is still in pretty good nick so

someone believes it works.…

More corrugations, some loose stones.

Highlight was passing the Blanchwater Station ruins. Blanchwater was the horse and cattle station that Burke and Wills tried desperately to reach after they missed their support party. At one stage it was carrying 12,000 …

Snuck out of my discrete camp in amongst the nitre bushes a couple of km from the (abandoned) Mt Hopeless homestead and on to the Strezlecki track. Mostly good road but long stretches of corrugations.

A highlight was the stock …

From a gravel pit 32 km south of Moomba gas plant to the new KJM desert hotel motel was a straight forward ride.

Moomba gas plant was plonked in the desert like a set from a Mad Max movie. The …

Hard to drag myself away from the KJM desert hotel with its luxury.

The ride was uneventful, straight up between the dunes until the last curving 10 km in to Innamincka.

Innamincka was a couple of houses and businesses catering …

Pack up camp and discover that the broken mounting clamp on the front pannier actually should be holding something on! Investigate further and find a couple more pannier bolts that have shaken loose on the corrugations and gibbers over the …

Checked out the Dig Tree, one of Australia’s most famous landmarks. It was here that explorers Burke, Wills and King returned from their historic first south-to-north crossing of the continent only to find that their supply party had left the …

What a rough day!!

Basically the first four hours were straight into a 30-40 km/hr (estimate) headwind on a road that was mostly 50/50 drifting sand (get off and walk) or hard clayey-sand base. Very hard work so that for …

Rain and a leaking tent that blew flat in the wind (yeah, the CTAWA club riders know the story of my tent’s propensity to lie down in a crosswind) made for an uncomfortable night. Still, no damage done and back …

No one else was at Haddon Corner last night so very peaceful.

A slow retrace of the corrugated, gibber strewn, dusty track out to the Arrabury Road starting with push/pulling the loaded bike over the soft sand track over the …