Day 103, Friday, 10 July 2009

Distance travelled – 122.8 km
Avg speed –  20.2 kph
Max speed – 52 kph

Cloncurry to Mt Isa

Equidistant between Cloncurry and Mt Isa there is the Fountain Springs Rest Area with a sign that says, “You are half way through one of the most amazing drives in Australia … enjoy!”

For the previous 60 kms Denise and I had been commenting on how lucky we were to be here. The country was absolutely marvellous – rolling rugged hills in a full palette of colours - blacks, greys, browns, purples, blues, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, creams, whites …….. . 

Perhaps it was the early morning light but the diversity in the colour of the rocks, their rugged shapes, the dry and the wet creek crossings, mixed with the light green spinifex, yellow flowering shrubs, silver grey white flowering bushes, low growing trees on the flat and white trunked trees on the cliffs. All this topped with the constant chatter of birds left us going “Wow” as we topped every crest. 

Usually we can take a reasonable photo but at the end of the day when we downloaded and reviewed all the day’s photos we were quite disappointed with the results as none satisfactorily captured our memories from today. 

The sign at Fountain Springs truly reflects the experience.

As we sat at Fountain Springs a station wagon pulling a trailer pulled up and five young tanned backpacker types got out. One of the blokes with long straight shoulder length hair, no shirt, long below the knee shorts, ankle bracelet and thongs walked over to us and with an Italian accent says “F..K Man! Where did you come from?” …. “Canberra” … “F..K Man! I am having trouble being 1000km from Townsville in a car. Why you here on bicycles?” …. “We are cycling around Australia.” …. “FFFF.. K MAN how you dealing with no towns out here? In Italy there is only 30 or 40 km between towns, out here there are hundreds of kilometres between towns.” … “We carry everything we need on our bikes.” …. “F..K Man! What about water?” … “Yes water as well”. … “FFFF.. K MAN!” … “What are five Italians doing here?” … “We are driving around Australia” … “So you are backpackers pulling a trailer!” …. ““F..K Man! ‘Upmarket’ backpackers pulling a trailer!” We all laughed.

We enjoyed our 120km ride today. Denise commenting that she now feels guilty complaining and feeling sorry for herself about our difficulties from Normanton to Cloncurry.

We are certainly lucky to be out here!

Zoom into the map and use the 'Satellite' layer to see our new location.

On the road between Cloncurry and Mt Isa.

On the road between Cloncurry and Mt Isa.

On the road between Cloncurry and Mt Isa.

On the road between Cloncurry and Mt Isa.

On the road between Cloncurry and Mt Isa.

On the road between Cloncurry and Mt Isa.

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