Leaving Norseman on Eyre Highway 1 we have a 700km cycle to reach Eucla, the next small settlement on our route.  

Our accommodation will be either Roadhouses (basically a petrol station with accommodation) or bush camping. As some Roadhouses are nearly 200km apart, bush camping is inevitable.  We are now properly in the Australian Outback. 

The highway is well maintained with a reasonable hard  shoulder and the traffic is infrequent. Everyone passing gives us a wave, flashes lights or sounds horn and no that’s not because we are in the way! 😃. Mind you, I think they’re more amused than impressed 😃. 

Last night we stayed at the Fraser Range Station after 105km from Norseman. Fraser Range is an old sheep shearing station and steeped in Australian history. Our accommodation was basic to say the least. Opting for the queen room in the stone cottage we found it was about 8 square feet with rough stone walls and floor. Essentially it was a cave with a window!  All that didn’t matter, however, once we were refreshed with a hot shower followed by a home cooked meal in the communal dining room. For a reasonable price we helped ourselves to a mountain of shepherds pie and vegetables. Desert was apple crumble and custard. Simple food but must rank as one of my top meals of the year – it’s all about the timing! 

Tonight we are in Balladonia Roadhouse, which has the benefit of a local Skylab museum. Remember Skylab that fell from the sky in 1979?  Well parts of it came crashing down around Balladonia and there is a small but interesting display. 

Tomorrow we head away from the hills (thank goodness) and enter Nullarbor. The Nullarbor desert is a ancient dried up sea bed and is the world’s largest pice of limestone and about 1200km wide. A long cycle but hey it’s flat for the next week or so. 

953km to date. 

Leaving Coolgardie we headed 77km south to Widgiemooltha and had an overnight stop at the Widgie Tavern roadhouse where the staff made us very welcome. A nice easy day with an early finish. The following day was the first day of Spring although you wouldn’t know it by the weather.  It was so bad it was just like August in Scotland!   We endured sun, drizzle, an awfully strong headwind and very undulating terrain over 91km. We were pretty weary (understatement) when we arrived at the Railway Motel although that was all sorted with a huge jacuzzi bath with Epsom salts followed by beer and pizza at the local pub. An outstanding end to a tough day.

After a particularly long hill Susan asked to stop and got off the bike. She started slapping her thighs. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.  ‘Getting rid of the lactic acid’ ‘How do you get rid of lactic acid?’ she replied whilst slapping away like a Morris Dancer. ‘Just stretch your legs and walk around’ I advised.  She did this for a minute then looked up ‘how do I know if I’ve got lactic acid and what is it a anyway?’ By this time I really was puzzled. ‘If you don’t actually know what it is, where did the idea come from? ‘ ‘Jason Kenny had it at the Olympics and they had to get rid of it before the next race’ she explained! ‘Don’t you wish you had it?’  So the simple reasoning was that Susan and an Olympic cyclist get lactic acid and I don’t!   What does this say about me?  She’s absolutely right of course!  Tomorrow I’m going to stop cycling like a precocious princess and get some of that lactic acid – then I will be like an Olympic cyclist too!

Actually, as a footnote to that story, I do think I have parallels to that other great Olympian, Sir Chris Hoy. You see once I have been cycling for a couple of weeks I build up great leg muscles. Now it’s nothing like Sir Chris, of course, but I’m fairly impressed with myself. I can tell Susan is impressed too – she calls me chicken legs!

Norseman is an old gold mining town established after a Scotsman and his horse called ‘Hardy Norseman’ found a gold nugget – it got stuck in its hoof!  It’s now a rundown town in the middle of nowhere with friendly people. One of the reasons we cycle tour is to visit places such as this that you would never visit otherwise. We love these experiences.

On the cycle into Norseman the raised highway crossed Lake Cowan salt flats.

From Norseman we start on the Eyre Highway across 1,000km of desert known as the Nullarbor Plain. A sign down the road makes things clear:

Doesn’t that sign just make you feel thirsty!

But that’s tomorrow.  Tonight I’ve got to do some proper carbohydrate loading so I’m off to that great local pub for some excellent beer.  I bet you that’s what Jason Kenny does too!

Great day for cycling. No wind and the sun is shining. 

We left Merredin on Saturday 27th August and continued on our journey east. This was a special day though we didn’t actually realise it until two days later. I will explain later. 

Anyway, the headwinds that had been our unwelcome friend since Perth disappeared and we were able to make better progress. Unfortunately, the rolling hills continued and the rain arrived to soak us every half hour. Despite these constant hinderances to our progress we remained joyously downbeat 🙂  We have now started dreaming about sitting on the sofa at home watching a good movie, drinking a bottle of red.  This is a dream that will remain with us until we return home – you don’t know just how lucky you are!

From Merredin we cycled along Highway 94 through Southern Cross to Coolgardie – 300km and 5000ft ascent in 3 days. Whilst we are still sore and knackered we are, at last, getting bike fit. Look for the blue dot – that’s us in Coolgardie. It’s a 10% journey done start!

Southern Cross to Coolgardie was 186km with no accommodation or even a shop along the way. So it was another bushcamp and if we have to endure a bushcamp then at least you can endure another bushcamp photo. 

This camp was surrounded by thousands of one and two centimetre holes with no sign of life.  We had no idea what kind of animal or insect made these holes so we camped and hoped for the best. When it was pitch dark I took the headtorch and went out to investigate wondering whether I was going to see thousands of spiders or snakes. Thankfully, it was just ants!

Now ants are not too much of a problem but when the sun comes out the flies appear. We had the choice of buying environmentally friendly all natural insect repellent or ‘Bushman’ with 80% DEET and smells like paraffin. Guess what we carry!  Susan is more environmentally conscious than myself but I won her over by telling her that applying Bushman was like the high end beauty parlour treatment ‘chemical skin peeling’ and that it would take years off her.

So far, however, the flies tend to favour me. I think it’s because I have been wearing a green merino wool top that is constantly damp with the rain. I’m just like a big green sheep on a bike. Flies aren’t intelligent and don’t know that sheep can’t ride bikes so it’s a logical assumption to make especially when I smell like one!

I’ve already discovered the flies can catch us even when we are cycling at 20mph and they regularly like to land on your face!  Now even through Canada with millions of flies, they didn’t land on your face!  What’s this all about! Now this is Australia, after all, and as we know every insect is dangerous.  So that can only lead me to assume these are face eating flies! Well I can tell you that my Bushman is going to be my favourite travelling companion.

As we cycle, the weather is very changeable – the last few days have been cold and raining but when the sun comes out its hot and burning.  Rainbows are everywhere. We cycled through this rainbow and Susan turned into a unicorn. Who would have imagined that!

We are now having a day off in Coolgardie. It’s a holiday after all. Coolgardie was part of the Australian gold rush and in its day (1890’s) it was the third largest town in Western Australia (after Perth and Fremantle) with 25,000 residents.  Today there are just 1,200.

Its a very quiet town now but with lots of old historical buildings. The mines are still worked but most of the gold has gone. When we visit these places I always drag Susan to the local bar to chat to the locals. Yesterday we went to the old Denver Hotel bar that has been here since goldrush times. Susan got chatted up by an old retired goldminer who told us his stories. However, although he had a four bedroom house with a fine view that he had build from reclaimed timber from old mines, he had no gold. So unfortunately (for her!) Susan is still cycling with me 🙂

Finally, what was so special about the 27th that we came to realise two days later? Well it was our wedding anniversary! Memories are made of this 🙂

Our bike and trailer by Highway 94.

Nazca Quetzal recumbent tandem with Radical trailer.

http://www.laid-back-bikes.scot

I had to visit the local hardware store to buy a file to make a small repair to the bike. When I returned, Susan picked up the packet and shook her head with exasperation ‘ I hope you didn’t pay extra for a personalised tool!’

…. in a land far far away we left the comfort of the Fraser Suites in Perth and cycled east. Through the city streets the Garmin GPS took us on a tortuous route of back streets and hills that sapped our strength in the first couple of hours. This was actually the first time we had cycled with the fully laden tandem plus trailer since we left Canada two years ago. I remember leaving Vancouver and it was a real shock to the system how we struggled on hills to overtake women pushing their prams on the pavement. Some pedestrians we never ever caught and they got bored looking behind to see where we were.

You see, this recumbent tandem is a wonderful touring bike but add the drag of a 25kg trailer, two panniers of clothes, 15kg of water and powered by two pensioners and perhaps you will begin to understand why this blog is called ‘Going Nowhere Fast’. Now I’m sure Susan won’t like me calling her a ‘pensioner’ but, as far as I’m concerned, sitting here after 4 days cycling, I look 75 and feel 84 so I qualify. Susan looks as young and as fresh as ever, of course 😉

I really don’t believe you can train for this – you can try but there is no substitute for doing the real thing day after day.

Anyway, enough of the bleating. From Perth we made our way onto the Railway Reserves Heritage Trail which is a wonderful cycle/walking path following the route of an old railway.

This was the start of our crossing the Darling Ranges, an escarpment running north south. Over the next few days we cycled an average of 50-60km with about 2,000 feet of climbing each day through towns such as Mundering, Northam, Cunderin and Kellerberrin. The hills and a strong headwind made us feel right at home – it was just like being in Canada again!

As we made our way from Northam to Kellerberrin we knew we were not going to make it as it’s still winter here and the days are short.  It was time to camp. So we cycled off the main highway and found a suitable spot in the bush. Now I know what you’re thinking -this is Australia the most deadly country in the world. Well I’m not daft and I had done my research and the top of the ‘I don’t want to meet in Australia’ leaderboard are sharks, salt water crocodiles and box jelly fish. We were miles from the sea so unless ‘Sharknado’ (look it up if you don’t know) came to pass we would be safe. Kind of.

So for the next few hours I nagged Susan with the words ‘snakes and spiders’ as we set up camp and made dinner. That nights ‘Bush Tucker Trial’ consisted of pasta mug shots topped up with powdered tomato soup with milk and a mars bar for desert. Mmmmm

Presently we are in Merredin having a welcome rest day. Hopefully the wind will change tomorrow, are per the forecast, and we will get a following wind. At this time of year the winds in Western Australia are predominantly westerly which is ideal for us. In September they change to easterly and by this time we hope (have) to be across the Nullarbor Plain or otherwise I think we will be progressing backwards.

Tomorrow looks like another bush camp as I suspect we are going to get caught in no mans land again. It won’t be so bad this time as we have a tin of corned beef and biscuits. It’s almost worth camping just for that!