Day 112, Sunday, 19 July 2009

Distance travelled –  65.8 km
Avg speed –   22.7 kph
Max speed – 33.1 kph

Bush Camp to Threeways Roadhouse

We were pretty happy with our camp spot last night. It was not far from the road so we saw the lights from the occasional car or road train but no one would not have been able to see us. The stars were absolutely brilliant. The only down side was that the mozzies came out around 7.00pm so we ate dinner in the tent. Yuki would pass us this morning not knowing we were only a hundred metres away.

We were still undecided on whether to stay at Threeways or Tennant Creek tonight, there were good arguments for both so we decided to make the decision when we got to Threeways. It was an easy ride into Threeways but surprisingly after feeling up to a 190km ride yesterday I did not feel like riding anywhere today and Denise had to set the pace most of the way. We still cannot work out what makes us feel like undertaking a marathon day one day and the next feeling like we are pulling a trailer full of lead. At least to date we have not felt the same way together so the other is able to pull the other along. How someone like Yuki does this by himself we do not know.

Threeways is 500m north of the intersection of the Barkly Highway with the Stuart Highway and we pretty much made our decision where to stay as we turned the corner heading north. The light side wind we had been riding with for the last hour became a head wind so we thought there was little point riding 25km south to then turn around a couple of days later to ride an unnecessary 25km fully loaded into a potential head wind. We confirmed this after lunch after looking through the caravan park and decided to stay Threenights at Threeways.

We discovered Yuki tucked away in a corner of the campground and got chatting again – either his English is getting better or our ability to describe things slower and simpler is getting better. As we left Queensland we had a number of comments from the Grey Nomads that we were brave to undertake this leg of our trip. We disagreed as we felt we had planned it sufficiently and had enough water, food and spares to be self-sufficient. On the other hand we feel Yuki is brave coming to spend 10 months in Australia by himself with very limited English – we could not do it.

Again no birds of prey today!

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

Sitting in the shade of a radio repeater tower.

Radio repeater tower

Welcome to Threeways

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