A surprisingly short ride to the turnoff to the track that leads to Lambert’s Geographical Centre of Australia. The Centre is very popular with grey nomads.

As it is only 12 km in I decided to go and look. The guide books say that the track is so sandy that cyclists are better off riding in the mulga beside the track rather than on the track. They are nearly right. The guidebooks are definitely right that dropping your panniers in the scrub at the start of the track rather than trying to carry them into the Centre is a good idea.

The deep loose sand starts at the old gate and makes up maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the distance to the centre.

I decided to try my bush navigation skills by going off the road. I wanted to go perhaps 100m in to the mulga and then go north parallel to the track to intersect it about 8 km up where the track swings west. All I had to do was head towards the sun which was due north of the gate at the time.

Reality check. I was getting badly disoriented within half a kilometre of leaving the track. Even tracking due north was difficult as soft  sand, dunes and trees got in the way. Being human I normally veered preferentially to (the north) one side in avoiding the obstacle. After about half an hour I called it quits and headed straight east to rejoin the road having walked nearly a semicircle instead of along a straight line. Very sobering.

The Centre is marked with a small version of the flagpole over the Australian Federal Parliament building in Canberra. There is a plaque stand (plaque stolen), a toilet block (vandalised) and a parking area.

I have now been to the easternmost, westernmost, southernmost, northernmost and now the centremost points of the Australian mainland by bicycle.

While patting myself on the back some grey nomads gave me a couple of muesli bars to celebrate. Thanks, they were very nice.

The ride out was a bit quicker than going in.

On the way out passed the Mulga bore (abandoned) and Antere Station (seemingly unoccupied) marked on the HEMA map. There are other stock waters in the area and many cattle pads leading to them but the difficulty is knowing which way and how far to go to find the dam/bore/trough. Be aware.

After  rejoining the road it was only 20 km to Finck township. Unfortunately the road got rougher and hillier which combined with the lack of lunch to make the last 10 km in to Finck difficult. The police on patrol south of town were friendly and also correct in noting that I was travelling the hard way.

In Finck I was riding around looking for a caravan park (that is the bare stoney area on the southern entrance to town) when I saw a government Toyota Landcruiser that had passed me twice a day since Kulgera. I stopped and asked the aborigine at the house what job needed so much time on the road.

Charlie explained that he had only just arrived. I had been passed by another Landcruiser running a ferry service from Finck to the Alice Springs bus at Kulgera for people needing to travel for medical or other reasons.

After a bit of chat, Charlie invited me in to stay the night and have dinner. We talked aboriginal rights and social problems until midnight then went to bed. Charlie is running programs trying to instil pride and social responsibility in young offenders as an alternative to going through the criminal justice system. Makes sense to me. He gets them out finding bush foods and tries to re-link them to their aboriginal heritage.

We also discovered that he and I were distantly related through my father’s cousin at Birdsville who has a cattle station and the aboriginal stockmen on it who took the name of the white station owner. Although the connection was very tenuous Charlie invited/insisted that I visit his wife’s family’s country at Dalhousie Spring on the western edge of the Simpson Desert.

To thank Charlie for his hospitality and patient explanation of the social issues in the central region I gave him the 12″ pair of fencing pliers I had found south of Docker River. Thanks said all round.