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.

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