Month: September 2016

Lights Out in Port Pirie

We were off the road and safely ensconced in our nice motel room in Port Pirie when the biggest storm in 50 years hit South Australia yesterday bringing very high winds, torrential rain, lightning and flooding. To be honest it wasn’t really that bad – I can think of one or two summer BBQs in Scotland where the weather has been worse. 😃

As we sat reading and relaxing to pass the day away Susan asked me ‘do you think the power could ever be cut?’ I replied ‘of course’. Right at that moment, that exact moment, we lost all power! I looked at Susan and thought that was blinking clever. ‘What have you done? I asked. ‘Nothing, the power’s been cut!’  Well it just goes to show – I’m right again! 😃

It so transpired the whole of South Australia lost power – that’s an area the size of France and includes Adelaide. Last night we were in total blackout but it isn’t much of a hinderance as we are fully equipped for outback camping -it’s just like camping without the snakes and spiders. So we were quite comfortable in our room drinking wine. Here’s a photo of us enjoying ourselves and coping admirably in the blackout. I did tell Susan to put more clothes on but you know what’s she’s like, a bit of an exhibitionist!


Sorry it’s a bit underexposed (well apart from Susan of course) but it was a blackout.

We walked into town this morning and everywhere was closed due to the continuing power outage. You know it’s pretty serious when the Golden Arches of MacDonalds are blacked out. Dominos pizza and Subway were also shut! Where’s the State contingency planning and why has the army not being deployed to keep those essential services open at a time when people have no light, heating and can’t cook! 

The storm continues and today we are unable to cycle again as high winds and rain are affecting our road south. It’s a reasonably busy main road and our main issue is visibility when the rain is heavy. It actually looks like it will be Saturday before we can safely restart our journey.

In the meantime we are enjoying our enforced rest and I’m able to catch up on my reading and beer drinking. It’s not all roses, however, as Susan has limited me to low carbohydrate beer when I’m not cycling. It’s not easy being a beer drinking layabout cyclist. 

Another Rest Day or Two

Yesterday we cycled 94km from Port Augusta to Port Pirie and we are now two days cycling from Adelaide. As keen as we are to get there it looks like we will be staying where we are for now 😩


Yes, we are on the South Australia coast where the bad weather should reach this afternoon.  Time to batten down the hatches and get some emergency supplies. Now where’s the beer shop!!

Wudinna to Port Augusta

Wudinna to Port Augusta

We left Wudinna at 7.30am, our earliest start yet. We knew we had a long day ahead over hills and with a strong northerly crosswind. We keep a keen eye on the weather forecast through a couple of excellent smartphone apps that we have come to rely on as being pretty accurate. When you are out on the bike all day nearly every day then there is nothing more important than the weather. Not even beer is that important (I can’t believe I’m actually saying that!).

The strong crosswind proved a real problem that day. The tandem caught the wind and it continually ‘nudged’ us towards the centre of the road. We just have to drift with the wind and then correct back onto the side of the road. At all times we have to be aware of cars and trucks and, in this case, our rear view mirrors are indispensable. 

To date, the major highway east has been single carriageway and whilst we had a paved hard shoulder in Western Australia we have no such luxury in South Australia. We generally find that drivers are very considerate and the huge road train trucks, in particular, are very good and move over to the opposite side of the road to give us enough space. Actually, drivers are much more considerate than our last trip in Canada although I continue to cycle constantly checking behind. 

Yes, of course, we do come across very occasional drivers who shouldn’t be driving but Susan has told me to be calm about it and my therapist says I should count to ten. I usually get to 2 before I give them a ‘friendly’ wave in their rear view mirror.  Just writing about it gets me going – one, two…. ✌😀

Okay time to break up all this text with another picture of the long suffering Susan on the bike. What does she suffer?  Well the wind, the hills, the unrelenting sun, the flies and her sore knees. Oh and me of course!


It was a hard cycle that day. Very hard. The wind sapped our energy and didn’t relent. Thankfully, our experience cycling in Canada and Australia is a great help and we know we can keep going no matter how absolutely tired we are.  We eventually reached Kimba about 5pm after 101km and 2500 feet of ascent. Exhausted. 

The following day we were on the road again at 8am. Tour cycling is never about today; it’s always about tomorrow, if you know what I mean. At Kimba, we did stop for a picture at the halfway sign – Susan wasn’t too happy as we had to cycle 500m in the wrong direction to get there. 


Now if you look at a map Kimba doesn’t actually look half way across but somehow they have contrived to make it a tourist attraction. As Kimba says its ‘as the crow flies’. I’m not sure where the crow was flying although perhaps the crow had GPS navigation as good as our Garmin Edge 1000!

From Kimba we cycled 116km to Nuttbush Retreat – a delightful campsite that’s also a working sheep station. We opted for a cabin rather than camping as we ended a great 8km downhill and swept into reception just ahead of an approaching storm. 

Our bush tucker trial that night consisted of a lamb chop, a burger and two sausages each with a half loaf of bread from the freezer – It was all that was available at the camp shop. Try eating a meat fest of dubious meat with dry bread and nothing else – it’s not gagging easy!

The following day we had an easy cycle of 38km to Port Augusta. 


We are now in the lovely friendly Acacia motel, we have good food and great beer. Oh and Susan’s knees are still sore and I still have a ‘serious’ twinge in mine. We are still drinking jelly though today we have now found a tub of powdered gelatine in the supermarket baking selection.  I’m thinking about making jelly beer 😀. I know, I know I’m an ideas factory!

Talking about beer again, Susan has begun to torment me. The bottles of beer (‘stubbies’) have these serrated metal tops that you can twist open. Now I prefer to use an bottle opener because my hands are soft. Old leather hands picks up my bottle, gives it a twist and throws the top at me! If music is playing she even dances whilst she does it! That’s what I have to put up with 😩

Tomorrow we start heading south towards Adelaide. Yes, we are not taking the quick way to Sydney. So after wishing for westerly winds for the last 6 weeks we now want northerly – there’s no pleasing us it seems! Oh and the forecast is for southerly wind with thunderstorms and hail on Wednesday.  I guess we will be going nowhere fast! 

2,468km to date.

Ceduna to Wudinna

We had a great two days resting at the Ceduna Foreshore Hotel.  It’s a lovely modern hotel and restaurant owned by the local community with profits reinvested in local facilities. After my beer drought through the Nullarbor I believe they are now building a new community centre from my bar profits – I’m glad my thirst can have some lasting community benefit. This is the view I had from my bar stool:


From Ceduna we headed southwards to Streaky Bay – a slight detour but the wind was blowing that way so why not!  After two rest days in Ceduna and a following wind you think we would fly along. Well not when you’re our age – two days is just enough time for all the joints to start seizing up and it was like putting two tortoises on a bike – it didn’t look nice or smooth moving.  Now before Susan reads this I would like to add that I was actually the only one who looked like a tortoise! All that said, the two tortoises got there (110km) and came across a lovely motel (run by a Scotsman).  Here is a picture of our cabin to show we don’t always have to rough it. 


Dinner that night was beer and curry. Wonderful.  

After a couple of nights in Streaky Bay we headed back on the road east. Again, the wind was behind us and we were happy until I developed a little bit of a sore knee! 

Now all through Canada Susan had sore knees and being a sensitive guy I could tell she was in real pain especially when she was tearful.  So before we came to Australia Susan took collagen tablets to help her knees and we spent a fortune in Perth buying collagen powder.  We’re not sure it’s working that well as she still has sore knees but not as bad as before – I can tell as she hasn’t cried yet. 

Now there are two types of people when it comes to dealing with pain. There are those like Susan who soldier on and just cycle through it. She doesn’t stop giving 100% on the bike regardless of the pain she feels. As I like to say she is tough as old boots 😀

Then there are people like me who are as tough as marshmallow, a BBQ marshmallow! I’m the can’t cope type. So when my knee started to twinge I’m immediately thinking this is going to get worse.  ‘Oh, uh, uh, this is bad’. ‘It’s ligaments’. ‘Uh, uh, uh’ every time the pedal goes round. ‘I’m not going to make it, I’ll never get to Sydney’. ‘We’re going to have to stop’. ‘Uh, uh, uh’. Susan doesn’t help, of course, when she tells me ‘Do what I do just cycle through it and think of something else’ Think of something ****** else!  That’s not what I want to hear! I want somebody to blame. Yes, I want somebody to blame for my sore knee!  I don’t know why but I think shouting at them might make me feel better. I try to keep calm and we stop the bike. ‘This is bad’ I say.  Now at this time, I’m not getting much sympathy from Susan who has now pedalled through Canada and Australia for 10,000 km with sore knees. But really that’s not what this is about! This is about me!! 

Eventually I realise there is nobody around to give me a sympathy and we are on a road alone in the wilderness.  So I get back on the bike and miraculously mange to pedal onto our next destination at Minnipa.  On route we passed through Poochera which is famous for the discovery of the Dinosaur Ant.


Due to its body structure, this ant is regarded is the most primitive alive and one of the first ants to evolve from the wasp.  It’s a living fossil and Poochera is the only town in the world to survive on ant based tourism! Interesting or what?  We stayed for 5 minutes whilst Susan used the facilities and cycled on. The excitement was too much. 

We reached Minnipa after 96km. That’s 96km with my sore knee. All is not lost, however, and we may at least make Adelaide because Susan has new remedy for sore knees – she drinks jelly and I’ve also joined the jelly club. Yup apparently jelly has gelatine which is a source of collagen and good for joints. Now it appears that you can’t buy jelly in cubes anymore and it all comes in packets of crystals. So now we have a bedtime nightcap – a cup of jelly and two ibuprofen. 

Now this is a drink you have to finish reasonably quickly because if you let it get cool it starts to set in your cup. I wonder what happens when it’s in your stomach.  Does it set? I mean I sat there last night and I’m sure my stomach was getting larger as this jelly set. Susan said it was just the beer and that got me thinking all sorts of chemistry things – just how does beer and jelly interact? Now drinking jelly isn’t something I would recommend but today we found some Port Wine jelly and I’m actually looking forward to my jelly nightcap tonight. 

So as it stands just now the cycle across Australia is off!  Susan says she can carry on with her two painful knees but she has no idea what I’m going through. I will, of course, try to carry but, really, how am I expected to cycle with such a serious twinge in my knee! 😂

When we did get to Minnipa we had a good evening at the motel with a range of other travellers swapping travelling stories. We enjoyed it but you had to be a traveller to stay awake.  Today we had a great day with a short 39km to reach Wudinna.  It was our  shortest cycle to date and we finished by lunchtime. After Wudinna it’s 100km of wilderness so we will leave that for tomorrow.  

This area is known as the Gawler Ranges and is the largest area of granite in the world.  Of course, we have already cycled the Nullarbor which is the largest limestone bed in the world. I may even start a cycling geological tick list. In recognition of our locale, here is a marvellous granite statue in Wudinna titled the ‘Australian Farmer’. 


Tomorrow we head for Kimba and hopefully Adelaide in a week or so. I hope I can be a brave soldier just like Susan. Now, where’s my jelly!