508 km … *phew* – I have heard so many riding tales of bikers having had a +1000km days. I will make a call now and say: never! I have done it in a car for sure, but 2 up, on our bike, +10 hours in the saddle … just no. Plus, alth

ough the days are getting rapidly longer now (spring coming and moving towards the equator) but daylight is still a limiting factor for us. So far we were successful in avoiding Australia’s most deadly animal, the Kangaroo, and I’d like to keep it that way.

So what happened today? Not much, really. First and foremost, we have learned that the reboot of the Perry Rhodan series, called Perry Rhodan Neo, has a much darker tone than the original series at that point.

… oh, you want to read about the country? We passed into the Northern Territory, the last Australian state on our route. This enormous piece of land is only home to between 180k and 250k (varying sources, no internet to check).

The landscape has changed after Coober Pedy, for the arid desert type to a more typical outback setting. Red sand, green shrubs and bushland left and right of the road. A lot more hills, mesa and cliffs than I would have expected.

The most important change in wildlife for us is seeing these enormous eagles for the first time. Sitting on roadkill till the last second, they reach to about my hip sitting on the bike, so up to 1m tall. Beautiful birds. In other news, flies are still annoying. No one tells you about them before going into the outback (at least not us), but they are everywhere. At least we found out today that they don’t like fire. As soon as we put water on the stove, they left us in peace. A little bit of Shellite is a small price to pay for not being pestered …

With a last push, we arrived at Curtin Springs. It is free camping within 100km of the rock, so we did not look twice. It has a nice view of Mt. Conner, a mesa often mistaken for Uluru. We both like it in its own right.

We’ll move to the Ayers Rock Resort ($36 for an unpowered campsite) either tomorrow or the day after to do the sunrise / sunset thing for Uluru and go hiking around Kata Tjuta.