Thursday: Back to Bikes & Riders after a night sleeping in the Sleeping under a piece of plastic a very rare if ever, previous experience for me. At the bike shop we fitted lowering links to my new bike, due to me being vertically challenged & nearly unable to reach the ground. Out of Mt Isa by around 10am on sealed roads heading East for Mckinlay.
We stopped for lunch at the Mckinlay Walkabout Hotel (they were out of food as they had just catered for a Tour.) The hotel was used in the Crocodile Dundee movie if you recall the bar scenes where Mick, Sue & Walter hung out. The bar is more like being on a film set, rather than a bar. Full of memorabilia, photos etc.etc. Quite interesting but a pretty remote place to get to for a bit of nostalgia. There is a camp ground behind the hotel. The Blue Heeler Hotel further down the road looked much more authentic, although we didnt go in there.
Onto Winton. We arrived in this small seemingly thriving rural town after having done 466kms all on seal, across some pretty featureless flat countryside. Plenty of
road train activity going each way on this road. Apparently this region is the birthplace of Australias sheep industry. Arriving in Winton there was some confusion (mine) re which Hotel we had booked a house through, eventually we sorted this, then even more confusion over the house location. When all this confusion was sorted, we were into a good (but old & tired) 3 bedroom house with plenty of room. Even a laundry so we caught up on a few days washing. The house had a covered carport area to work on our bikes. Back to the Australian hotel in town for dinner & an interesting chat with some locals who coincidentally were heading North to Lorella where we had just been.
Ian & Keith left Winton and to Longreach as they needed tyres fitted and the shop was keen for the bikes to be there asap.
Brenton, Bryan & myself had breakfast at the local bakery where the owner gave us chapter & verse re her Kawasaki ZX10 & her riding exploits. We also heard part of her life story – quite confusing as while she was only
probably late 40s she reckoned she had done more than all of We then escaped and headed onto our original route. They have had a lot of rain here in recent weeks & the dirt roads are impassable in some places so we were a bit apprehensive. We started the track facing muddy deep ruts caused by cattle trucks when the track was still wet. After this, things got a bit better, slowly.
Even though it became a fast hard track for a while we had to be careful as the deepish ruts had pushed the soft dirt & sand into the middle of the 2 tracks. A nice berm just waiting to catch you out. If you got a bit off line and hit the soft centre the back of the bike would try to overtake the front .not a good formula!
The track was, to say the least, variable. In some places it was dead straight & a hard packed surface but suddenly there were ruts & or soft sand so paying attention was a necessity. Every now and again the track had been semi washed away but generally we found a way around.
The fords in this area were to approach with caution. After my nearly washed away experience on the Marakai road I decided to stop & assess one that was fast flowing with murky water and difficult to judge the depth. While Bryan & I were discussing this, Brenton arrived & rode straight through establishing it had a concrete base and was only 6 inches deep!!!
Every few kms through this whole region there are signs, Flood Area indicators mark depth some of the signs are marked up to 2m. They must get some serious rain here, and they have had some major flooding here in recent days so our caution even though misplaced was well founded.
The road after 50 or 60 kms turned into a farm track with gates at some places but we were confident it was a public road. There were road signs occasionally & named as roads on our GPS. This gave us some confidence.
