Great day all round
Transport stage, and endless hectares of unpopulated country.
Another early rise and we are back on the Great Central Road. We were averaging about the 100km/h on the rough road and it was pretty hard to take in the surrounding scenery while trying to keep the bike in a kind of straight line. There is just endless kms with not a person in sight. We stopped every 50kms to give the rear end a rest and for everyone to regroup that were keeping out of the dust plumes from the riders in front. First real stop for the day was Warakurna, a small roadhouse and town ship. We pulled up and noticed the attendant with a blower vac blowing all the dust from around the entrance to the roadhouse and wonder how many times per hour this would be needed to be done? Another photo opportunity, re-fuel the bikes and the cars, and some lunch before heading for the NT border.
We had only just pulled up at the bowser when we met the first of the two locals. The first dude (let’s call Hank) bustled out of his Cruiser and came over and straight to the point said“not a decent bike amongst you f*%ing drongos” Well that’s a nice how do you do, are you some sort of legend Hank? “Well as a matter of fact, Yes” I was the sole importer of Motorex oils, expert Husky racer and I don’t want to blow my own horn too much, but I can ride pretty fast…….I ride an old Husky TE610 and you clowns have no idea how fast I travel over corrugations he continued. Hank asked what speed we sit on, being honest we said around the 100km/h, give or take 5%. Hank scoffed, snorted a little and then said he sits on 140 or more for 8 hours at a time. Anyway Hank still lives in the dreamtime and we proceeded inside for some lunch.
It was then we met (let’s call him Roger). We were all sitting around the table and Roger burst through the door and stopped and looked at us for what seemed like 3 minutes without blinking either of his riddled eyes. Matt and Tony were on his left side and started to laugh, but we could not see anything wrong with the poor old guy. He then turned to us and we nearly wet ourselves as he started to tell the story of the vibrations in his Triton were so bad it rattled the lens out his glasses and bounced out the window taking the small screw with it. We couldn’t help it, and when he asked for the second time why we were parachuting we all started in fits of laugher again. Robbo couldn’t help himself and was in serious pain from trying to hold the laughter in. He nearly dehydrated from loss of fluids through the eye holes. Seems he thought that us wearing these newfangled camel backs looked like parachutes and the helmets laying around too were an indication we were happy jumping out of perfectly good aeroplanes.
We had to bid Hank and Roger farewell and head for Docker River. The scenery now was amazing, large mountain ranges as far as we could see. The road now was not always straight and an often sharp crest to catch out any weary traveller. Robbo could see this huge dust plume coming over the crest and took evasive action just before cresting it only to a triple road train at pace barreling towards him. 3 minutes later after the dust had settled the group were off once more.
We rolled into Docker River and enjoyed the 1044 meters of bitumen road through the main street. Matt looked on in amazement to see an older lady breast feed her child out through and over the top her T-shirt, not a memory that one wants to keep while trying to keep a motorcycle upright on these roads.
We arrived at Lasseters cave late in the day, had a good look around and then made camp in a dry riverbed. One of the greatest camps we had, and beverages were flowing again the moment the thirsty car drivers shut down the diesels.
The open Road
Warrakuna General Store, apparently according to the dude on the right "not a good bike amongst us"
Miles and Miles
Major Milestone, our first state border crossing
Lassiters Cave
One of our best camp sites on the whole trip
