Balladonia to Bush Camp 95kms then Bush Camp to Caiguna 90kms

In my imagination, there was the unmistakable aroma of a freshly baked cinnamon sugar tea cake! Yum but of course it couldn’t be true. It was just the fresh early morning air I guess. It’s a good 180 km to the next sign of civilisation, including the famed longest straight stretch of road in Australia 145k. My plan is to cover half the distance and then find a bush camp.

The first couple of hours were good despite the crosswind, laser straight with scant bush on either side. It’s been said that some people go a little crazy on this stretch, but not me, I live mostly in my head anyway, so I just found a nice cadence and powered along all the while having my own internal dialogue.

Around mid-morning the wind picked up, then the rain began to hammer down and the weather settled in. I was soaked to the skin. Pushing on, I reached the 95 km mark as I topped a rise. The horizon stretched on with no visible cover for a camp. After peddling on for a further couple of kilometers, I doubled back to find a piece of bush. The moment I left the road surface, I was mired in thick mud. The fine talc-like dusty soil becomes sticky, gluey, viscous mud in contact with water.

I plowed on through the scrub a few hundred meters off the road until I found a suitable place to camp, just as the rain stopped! I made camp breaking one of my tent poles in the process. Let’s just say at that point I had a moment; soaked, and cold, with a broken tent, my bike gear and I covered in mud.

Within an hour I had the camp set up, the tent fixed and had put dry clothes on, sitting in my tent just as the rain began again, phew!

Dinner was a peanut butter wrap, boiled egg, then a small tin of apricots just as well I’m camping alone!

“At night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars” so said Banjo Patterson in his lyrical poem ‘Clancy of the Overflow’. And so, it was. I stood outside in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, looking up at that celestial time machine full of awe and wonder.

All was quiet in the bush until around 2am when I was woken by howling Dingos gathered around close to my camp, they soon settled down. Perhaps they were hunting or looking for food. Whatever, they gave me a wide berth, the essence of Nick not to their liking, I guess!

I was up at 5.30 am with the Magpies. All my clothes are damp, I put on the least wet stuff, break camp then spend half an hour cleaning the mud from the bike.

Rolling along the road to Caiguna was fun. Once I got going, however, the verge gave out after a few km Which meant when road trains were passing. I had no choice but to ride off into the mud 7 times and after each off-road adventure a few minutes of cleaning was required!!!  I found a little cover at a roadside rest stop to wait out the mid-morning showers.

I cycled into Caiguna in the early afternoon, and this gave me time to set up camp on gravel and away from the mud. I dried my clothes at the camp laundry, then had my first hot meal in a day and a half: Tea and chips yum!
A sign on the men’s toilet door warns of snakes, I reason that the rain keeps them away.

Cocklebiddy tomorrow, evidently the weather is improving.