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 and exploration truck traffic. The heavy vehicles loosen the clayey sand cap on the road resulting in stretches of loose sand.

Sand catches wheel, correction is a bit slow and…… down you go.

3 horizontal dismounts today. As always, one of them was just as a car went past and the caring occupants stopped to check that I was a) OK and b) moderately sane!

A passing driver checked I was OK as most do then stopped again half a kilometre further up to give me a bottle of water and a bag of grapes. Thanks, that was great.

After struggling through the loose sand and getting an introduction to corrugations I passed the ‘Cosmo’ sign, thought it was a direction to the Cosmo Newberry cattle station but it was in fact to the town. Oh well, just on dark pulled the bike off the road and rolled out the ground sheet. Problem with that was that the dew was so heavy that the sleeping bag got quite damp overnight. (n.b. The heavy dew issue dogged me for most of the trip so few open camps like this, mostly in the tent just to avoid getting wet from dew).