So this is where I start getting into the real guts of the trip. One thing that I noticed while pouring over ride reports while dreaming of doing my own ride was the sheer number of people doing RTW trips these days and how many of them are taking fairly similar routes. For me, the idea of riding around the world has always been that it would be a massive adventure and following the major highways (or what passes for a highway) never really appealed to me. I was inspired and amazed by people like Carl Stearns Clancy who rode around the world in 1912-13, before petrol was even a readily available commodity, let alone motorcycle tires or spare parts that could take 6 months to ship, or alternatively, you would have to get made from scratch like he did in spain. These are the heros of motorcycle travel for me and their modern equivalents are the guys that choose the path less travelled into places that most of us have never even heard of.
Now I doubt im ever going to be considered a great adventurer but I am going to try to stay off the main routes as much as possible on this ride, which is why from Normanton to Darwin, I would take the gulf track. At over 1000km in length and much of it unsealed with the odd saltwater crocodile infested river crossing, it was adventure enough without the physical problems I was about to encounter. The gulf track has everything you could want from an outback Australian road; flat endless plains pockmarked with termite mounds, road trains kicking up bulldust, the odd unchecked bushfire burning its way through the scrub and river crossings filled with saltwater crocs while giving a sense of extreme isolation throughout.
Some of the river crossing had causeways across them that were both a blessing and a curse, smoothing out the rough riverbed underneath but slipperier than a steel plate covered in grease. I found out just how slippery when the front end washed out on me, dumping the bike on top of me in the shallow, still water. The thought of massive reptiles with big teeth being attracted by the sounds of splashing had me out from under the bike and running for the shore like a little girl faster than anyone in history.
As for the special physical challenge, it turns out I am prone to having my sciatic nerve getting pinched around my hips. For those that aren’t physiotherapists, the sciatic nerve is the big one that runs down your spine and splits into two slight less large nerves to run through your hips and down the back of your legs. What that means in the real world is that when it gets pinched, its no longer free to slide around when you bend at the waist which includes walking and standing up from a seating position. The pain can range from being slightly uncomfortable to pain that stops you from breathing. I had the breath stoping kind. Walking meant stopping every 50m to let the pain subside and even more dangerous was moving from a sitting to standing position on the bike. As I stood up the pain would take over, blurring vision and halting my breath just long enough to see me fly into deep sand or rocks with my eyes closed and arse only inches off the seat. Not ideal.
The gulf track wasn’t going to let me go that easily though with the day before hitting the Stuart Highway threw up a few more challenges. The chain oil container split, covering a lot of my spares in the sticky mess, the sidestand broke in two and the GPS screen stopped working properly. After getting the sidestand welded I decided half a day spent swimming in bitter springs was well deserved before heading to Darwin.
long, straight and empty
a field full of small termite mounds
hitting this cattle grid in the centre would give you good little wakeup call
gets hot out there too
camped out along the Gulf track somewhere
ordering some pizza for dinner
outback voyeurs
where i went down, you can see the marks the front tire left in the slime
first casualty
getting the sidestand welded up
Bitter Springs
more here:
http://oztoice.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/the-gulf-track/
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at st albans pub with Sean and Kai
Hybrid Mode
