Day 40 Tanami Tootle Mary River Bridge 114km includes run to shop in Halls Creek for Salted Peanuts for scroggin.
After 2 days loafing around Halls Creek and enjoying restaurant cooked lunches and dinners at the Kimberley Hotel we are back on the road.
The ride was pretty flat and without much to talk about. So featureless that when the road left the river to follow the ridgetop for a few kilometres there was a lookout to see a gap in the mesa. The gap allowed a view of even more featureless savannah to the horizon.
Moderately brisk easterly and fuelled legs pushed us to Mary River pool along with hundreds of grey nomad in caravans, by 4pm. Pool has new access road since 2002 but old causeway still there, just no road out from it. Remarkably, whereas in 2002 on my first ride across the top of Australia there only a few big old trees along the river pool, now there are lots of 150-200mm dbhob younger trees as well. That is quick natural regeneration. The old concrete causeway has also been replaced by a more robust culvert about a kilometre downriver.
Excellent weather, light traffic with few roadtrains but quite a few caravans who are giving more room to cyclists than in years of yore.
Starting to think of getting into Broome a day early so Don can go on the dinosaur footprints tour.
