Tag Archives: Mt Gambier

Day 34 – pushing it (into overtime)

Today was a long day, quite literally. 24.5 hours. But we did not realise this until it was almost over …

That was quite the run for 12 seconds ...

That was quite the run for 12 seconds …

We knew that today would have to be a bit of a push to make it in time to Adelaide. Have I mentioned this before? We have an appointment with Moto Adelaide, or better Rocinante has. Both seals on the front fork are leaking, something that should have been fixed by the workshop in Wellington just before we left for our trip. Unfortunately, they only replaced the old broken seals and fork oil, but not the root cause: Tiny specs of rust on the chrome cutting the seals with every suspension. So this time, new seals, a polish and neoprene protectors. Hopefully that will last me more than 4500km …

Some serious inclines on the way. Dunes as mentioned in the back.

Some serious inclines on the way. Dunes as mentioned in the back.

The day started with a short walk up the massive sand dunes separating the area with the camp ground (Swan Lake) from the sea. You have to believe me or google it, though: we brought our camera, but not one of our 5 SD cards.

Once again I have successfully avoided face planting us on the sandy dirt road back to the highway. I love the K60 scout on the back, can’t wait to have the matching set once the Shinko front one is dead (although that set got us around fine for 9k km in NZ). And it handles great on the road as well, way better than I would expect from such a rough tire.

First stop was Mount Gambier for provisions and the Obligatory 50m sinkhole in the middle of the town. We even managed to find the fuse for the battery charger I needed to replace since we started the trip.

You can see the rain rolling in, we were good :)

You can see the rain rolling in, we were good 🙂

The idea was to push the 85km to Beachport and have lunch there. About 20km before that though, through what turned out to be a stroke of genius we stoped “in” a roadside shelter / picnic spot. During lunch the heavens opened and Australia showed us that it can rain properly after all. Even better, that was the only spell of hard rain for the entire day, and we sat it out under a roof with a nice cuppatea!

We made it to Beachport after all and the sun came out for the first time. For now, it was only over Beachport that the blue sky gave a shy peep show through the clouds.

Straight straight lines ...

Straight straight lines …

After a super brief peek into Robe, the rest of the day was pretty much exclusively filled by riding. Today, for the first time we got a notion of the new sense of distance in Australia. I think for almost an hour straight we did not drop under 100 km/h. In the end, we will have done 420 km today (1111km in AUS in total). Our approach worked out beautifully though: Audio book on via the intercom, drop into the zone and just eat those kms!

About 50 km before our planned camp for the night at Lake Albert, we decided on one last detour for the day. The Prince Highway we were on for most of the day marks the border of the Coorong National Park, a 150 km long strip of marsh and flood lands between the road and the sea. The vistas from the road are somewhat limited, so we decided to take a 13 km loop road that runs mostly parallel to the highway, but give a much better impression of the national park.

What an impression that was! We almost turned around because the surface was again the upper end of what I am comfortable riding on fully loaded. The wetter spots had patches of soapy mud, up to 5cm deep. So glad we did not. There was one slightly hairy wobble, but no fall. But the views … I had goose bumps. I think sublime is a fitting description.

And so we end with the reason the day was particularly long. At some point during the day I have noticed that the clocks on the bike and the GPS were 30 minutes out, although I have set the bike’s one just the other day. We did not think much of it at the time and were good in time to make it to camp before 6 for Nina to skype with her family back home when I noticed something odd. The sun was quite low. Yesterday it set at 18:10, so we should have plenty of light left, but now at 17:30, it was almost gone.

At that moment it stuck me: We had crossed the border to South Australia early this morning and my diligent GPS adjusted the time to local time. Which, at the moment is 30 min before Melbourne time …