Struck camp after drying off the light rain.
Downhill ride for twenty kilometres to Hidden Valley Resort (For Sale) but the road got progressively rougher so the thirty kilometers to the Ewan iron ore mine (closed) took four hours!
Popped off this rough road and its loose rocks, corrugations and endless dips into gullies and back up and out, to a bitument road connecting the Ewan iron ore mine to the Hervey Range road.
At the junction both passing cars stopped to confirm I was OK. The second (Pacific Islander) guy pointed out that I was now on The National Trail which is a mountain bike trail running from Cooktown to South Cape in Tasmania.
While I could have followed the exact trail around the Ewan mine (I was informed it was as rough as guts) I chose the recommended route through the mine and past the workers town to rejoin the National Trail on the Kangaroo Hills Station road 10 km further on.
The Kangaroo Hills boundary is marked by a large creek and a fearsome ‘grid bridge’ – one slip and a leg drops between the bares and probably breaks. The iron rails are too slippery to ride. Get off and walk it, carefully.
From here the road got a little better.
Around a bend and on a hill I came across a road camp (bulldozer, grader, roller, water truck, swamper) repairing the road.
I pulled up next to the bulldozer driver who was blowing the dust out of the air filter. Under the caked on dust I saw the driver was an attractive lady.
It was the famous Melissa. Melissa is the wife of John and both are station hands on Kangaroo Hills.
Melissa is a legend in the district for being worth several men on the station. She is also a legend to riders of the National Trail for being helpful beyond the call in caching food drops and generally helping the lost souls who try this track.
Melissa made a few encouraging comments and I carried on. A few kilometres further on a man on a quad bike popped out of the gully to check me out. It was the station owner who, quite rightly, was making sure that I wasn’t likely to cause him any grief like stir up the stock, start a fire and so on. Friendly enough.
Past the Kangaroo Hills homestead, over the Burdekin River again, stopping to fill the water bottles, and then on for another five kilometres to find a camp site.
I finally settled on a patch of recently burnt savannah near a road junction. I would figure out which way to go in the morning. Seeing this was in the back of beyond I didn’t bother getting far off the road to camp.