Day 14 – A day like this a year....

Made it to the Spencer Gulf, albeit a rather industrial part of it

Today was a close to a perfect day’s cycling as you could ask for. After days on the plains and in the bush it was beyond refreshing to be up in the hills. With the temperature down, flies and clouds nowhere to be seen, traffic few, far between and light on sleepy country back roads and a roaring tailwind almost straight up my backside all day I must’ve done something right in my life, because this was perfect.

To top it all the Southern Flinders Range fro  On a crisp cool morning with the wind propelling me up the hills it was really properly special cycling.


m Burra to the coast are stunningly beautiful. Great wide valleys of wheat fields and sheep running North South framed by four or five great spines of hills, dotted with Victorian farms both thriving and abandoned. Every 20 miles odd the journey was broken by another pretty little village.

All I took of the Flinders, trust me
it's beautiful

Without trucks to avoid, or flies heat or wind to fill my mind wandered badly, and more than once I found myself singing at the top of my voice without planning to. At one point the singing was so loud it startled a family of Kangaroos out of the bushes. The two parents an the joey bounce along side me for what felt like a couple of miles. Every time they thought they’d got clear of me and stopped, the illuminous yellow Lehmans' fire warden’s waistcoat would hove into view and they would move on up the road, till they eventually found a hole in the fence, crossed the road right in front of the bike, and disappeared over the hills the other side. In the sun, in the hills, singing with Kangaroos. Life is pretty awesome sometimes.

I was glad to see the kangaroos. Since the second day I’ve seen no live ones. Hundreds of dead, brained by road trains at night, but only one live one. Considering local pet shops advertise kangaroo meat at dog food on TV here, was starting to get concerned the farm dogs of Australia had eaten rather too many.

It was always planned to be a shorter day at 75 miles odd, but I made the sleepy town of Crystal Brook for lunch well ahead of time, and was back on the road facing little over 15 miles to finish by 12:30. Most of this to Port Pirie was back on the highway, which felt frighteningly busy, but my pespective of busy is off centre after days of seriously quite rural roads.

Port Pirie is something of a disappointment. Dominated by three vast grain storage tower complexes, there doesn’t seem to be much to it. And it looks tired, like it’s best days are firmly behind it. Although this might be coloured by the fact that by 13:45 when I rolled in, everything was shut. 12:00 close on a Saturday seemed to be almost universal. This was very tedious as I needed to pick some stuff up from the cycle shop.

After tomorrow in Port Augusta that's pretty much it for bike shops for 1,000 miles. Being Sunday, I’m going to miss that too, but have booked in to see some bloke who advertises as a roving bike mechanic, sans shop, so lets see. Would be very frustrating to be held up. With the Nullabor crossing so tantalisingly close, I’m keen to just get stuck in, before my nerve goes.

I panicked due to lack of pics

For the night I’m holed up in a motel on the edge of town. Have made a classic mistake of booking a motel out the cente, and I’m now stuck here eating in their over priced restaurant and bar. The room does come with a whirlpool bath, so like a middle aged lady on a Goupon voucher I ran a very deep bath, switched on the whirlpool mechanics and took in a book. Guilty pleasure aside, it’s been great for my aching legs.

A very good day, although sadly so good I forgot to stop and take many pictures. With the wind in my face I find the time photograph a closed big concrete orange, but can’t capture any of my best day to date. Amazing how the human mind works.

Miles 76 - Burra - Crystal Brook - Port Pirie

Breakfast – Standard

Lunch – Chicken sandwich from the Chrystal Brook take away. Perfectly edible, but improved by a White Magnum for pudding.

Supper – Expensive but good salt and pepper prawns from the hotel restaurant