Overnight I set the alarm to 3:30 am so that I could stick my head out of the tent and see the full eclipse of the moon. Rather spectacular but hard to show in a photo.

Slow start on the road to Karratha but great tailwind.

Puncture-wise this was a bad day.

First the rear tube blew out a valve stem when I was pumping it up to check its pressure. Then while standing the bike up it slipped and the chainwheel teeth hooked under the toenail on my big toe; when I lifted the bike I ripped the toenail off. OUCH! Bruce made me soak the injury in iodine which apparently worked as I had no infection.

The replaced tyre tube punctured again while still on the bitumen about 20 km west of Tom Price, then again just after getting on to the dirt rail access road.

As we were fixing this a rail inspector pulled up to see if we were OK. He also ticked us off for waving at the trains as the drivers were getting confused about who were these guys in orange Hi Vis shirts waving madly at the trains. Was it a warning of danger ahead? No waving and stand well back from edge of railway as the 2000 m x 26000 tonne trains go past.

Later on we saw Mount McCrae in the west. This was the site of the first pastoral lease taken out in the Pilbara; it was taken out by the great-grand-dad of Jane, who planned to be the third rider in our Karijini Kapers but pulled out due to failure of her front wheel spokes and getting a better offer to be guest of honour at the Roebourne Picnic Horse Races.

This night we had our first true wild camp between the up & down rail lines on a hill west of Possum Siding. We both slept through the night oblivious to the 2km long trains passing by.

The mechanical score today was 3 flats including 2 valve stem cuts and 1 unknown cause.