Day Eight – A Dark Day

The next day dawned… well, grey and overcast to be honest. I headed out of the hotel and went straight to get breakfast. Someone decided at some point that Kimba is halfway across Australia, and to celebrate that they (or someone else) erected a giant Galah. I really can’t think of a better way of marking the halfway point, even if it is actually only the halfway point if you are taking a specific route from Perth through to Sydney. Well, to be honest, I can think of one better way, but happily they also built a bakery, so they had all bases covered, and I had breakfast covered.

After a bit of eating time, a bit of chatting time, and a lot of stowing food time, I headed out to see what the day would bring.

It was an uneventful morning. The sun came out but there was still enough cloud about to keep it cool, and although there were a few bumps I was overall going very gently downhill, rolling along and keeping my heartrate down, conscious that I still had a long way to go.

Around noon the hills of Iron Knob came into sight. Iron Knob is a mining town that produces a huge amount of, not unsurprisingly, iron ore. I understand the name originally referenced what became known as the Iron Monarch deposit, and was basically given because that particular deposit stuck out as a great knob from a fairly flat surrounding landscape. I don’t really know why the name changed from Knob to Monarch, and nor do I know if it was a republican who originally suggested that change. What I do know is that today, when you look towards Iron Knob from afar, it looks at first like a mountain range. It isn’t until you look a little closer that you realise what you’re seeing are great mounds of, presumably, spoil and by-products from the mining of the ore. It’s quite spectacular to see the scale, and given how much ore has been taken away from the site over the last 120 years it must have been a spectacular knob before people started digging it up.

Because it was so spectacular, I stopped to take a picture. And while I had my phone out, I noticed there were a couple of comments in the rider’s chat group. Always good for a bit of banter about who forgot what where, or where the best meals are, I opened it up to see what was happening. What was happening was that JJ had been found unconscious and airlifted to hospital with a broken leg. There were no other details.

I don’t know JJ well, we’d had a bit of a chat in Freemantle and that was about it, but even in that short time he struck me as a particularly nice bloke, and doing something like IndyPac together is astonishingly good at building a bond. Hearing that he had been airlifted out in uncertain condition was like a hammer blow. I spent the next 20 minutes standing in the sun astride my bike and next to the highway, trying to find any more information. Unfortunately, there was no more to be had.

Eventually I conceded that there was nothing that I could possibly do to help from where I was, so I started pedalling again. To this day I don’t know what happened to JJ, and as far as I know, no-one does, I don’t think even he fully remembers how he ended up unconscious beside the road with what turned out to be a broken arm. There’re quite a few things that could have happened though, and as I rode on the possibilities were going around and around in my head. There was a bit of roadworks in the area I was riding, and some deep and loose gravel, and a bit of wildlife about, and some trucks, and some grey nomads with their caravans weaving across the lane behind them, and some kids trying to prove that they were adults by driving badly, and some potholes… and every one of them felt like a threat. It was nearly three hours later that I turned off the Eyre Highway and onto Caroona Rd.

Caroona Rd is a horrible, bumpy little road with a terrible surface, and at that moment it felt like heaven. The lack of traffic was such a relief for my current mood, and I was really happy to have left the nice smooth highway! It also provided my first glimpse of the Flinders ranges, which provide the biggest climb and the highest point after leaving Freemantle. As well as that they mark a point where the population increases, and services become a lot more accessible. There are still a few long stretches remaining on the route, but you are past the extreme remoteness of the first few thousand kilometres.

My memories of Port Augusta aren’t the best. In 2018 one of the riders had his bike stolen from a park in Port Augusta as he slept beside it, and it meant I was always on the lookout and didn’t trust anyone around there. Rolling into town now the first place I saw for refreshments was a service station, and I happily stopped there for refreshments. I locked my bike up against the window where I would be able to see it from inside, and then added another two locks, just out of an abundance of caution.

I went in, got some food and drink (including a lot of ice cream and a Farmers Union Iced Coffee) and returned outside to sit on the scorching concrete and think about just what exactly I was doing.

I love riding bikes. When I was a kid I lived out of town, and my bike was crucial. If I wanted to get anywhere I had to either wait for someone else to have time to drive me, walk there (and that was seldom a good option) or ride my bike. I started riding bikes because they provide transportation. There’s a whole generation of people now who spent all their childhoods being driven everywhere, and they fail to understand this simple fact. I now live near one of those little bike parks for children to learn on. I see parents driving their kids there, and I feel sad. These kids are being conditioned to think that they can’t get somewhere under their own power, that they can use the bike to play on but if they actually want to get somewhere then they need to use a car. That preconception and the lack of faith in their own capabilities is not going to do those kids any favours in later life.

I’m absolutely not against cars – I learnt to drive in paddocks as a kid, I grew up playing with cars, I got my driver’s licence on the very day that I was old enough, and I would struggle to live the life I live without a car. I just don’t think they’re the only way to get places. I have other options, and I feel sorry for the people who don’t realise that they too have those other options.

Once I realised a bike was transport though I started noticing that it was more than that. A bike was freedom – I could get on my bike and go where I wanted. It was independence – I didn’t need to work to anyone else’s timetable, or be begging rides. It was an escape – bikes can take you to places, but they can also take you away from places. It was adventure – I could reach places I’d never been before, and it’s the perfect way to explore an area. It was peace – on a bike you don’t have the constant distraction of modern life, you can focus on where you are and what you’re doing. It was a connection – you connect to the environment so much better on a bike. A person riding a bike can tell you if it’s hot or cold, they can tell you where the wind is coming from, they can tell you where the birds are singing and where someone is having a barbeque, and they can tell you if they are going uphill or down. Yes, you can notice all these things from a car if you try, but on a bike you don’t have to try, you are involved in it. And most of all, it was fun. I ride bikes for dozens of reasons, but often the reason is simply because it is fun.

IndyPac, in particular, is about the fun. There are no prizes, the fame that comes with it is reasonably limited (although it always surprises me just how far it spreads), there’s a lot of travel but I wasn’t heading to somewhere I needed to be, basically it’s just about the fun.

There is a trade-off though. It’s hard work. It’s uncomfortable and painful. And it’s a bit dangerous (although it isn’t that dangerous, in the big picture – any time anyone goes near a road these days it is dangerous, so IndyPac isn’t much worse than staying home).

As I sat in the shade on the roasting concrete of a service station forecourt I thought about the suffering and the risk, and decided that I should make very sure the fun outweighed it.

I stayed there for nearly an hour – eating, drinking, and thinking about the meaning of the life and big bike rides. And then I got up, packed my stuff, and headed out onto the road. I was going to take some more time. I was going to stop and take more pictures, see more sights, try some new things, expand my horizons, and get a bit more sleep. But for me, winning is fun too. I was still going to make sure I was the first rider into Sydney.

Heading out of Port Augusta I paused for a look at the concentrating solar power tower that was up there. This region is quite heavily dependant on mining and energy intensive steel refining, and a lot of that industry had been shutting down. Projects like this one should reduce the power price here and keep the industries going in a more viable way. It also gave me a moment to see a fellow IndyPac’er.

Pretty soon I was heading towards the Flinders Ranges and Horrocks Pass. This is quite a steep little climb on a road that winds through some spectacular mountains. Now I’m thinking I might have been in an emotional state of mind, but it was a truly wonderful climb, and I reached the top to see a moonrise so beautiful it simply took my breath away.

Coming down from the pass it isn’t far to the town of Wilmington – a pretty town that I’ve never actually stopped in. I rolled through town fairly quickly, noticing how pretty it was, but mainly thinking about what I wanted for dinner and where I would get it. At one point I noticed a nice bike leaning up against a wall, but I didn’t get a good look at it because there were a couple of people standing on the curb. They were looking straight at me, so out of a spirit of friendliness I gave them a smile and wave. It wasn’t until I’d gone past them that their conversation filtered through into my brain. I was sure I’d heard the words “Well done”. Were they talking about me? Were they, in fact, talking to me? Or was I, in fact, full of it? When you’ve spent eight days riding on your own it becomes pretty easy to see yourself as the centre of the universe. But on the other hand, if they were talking to me, was I being awfully rude by having just ridden straight past and not even paused to hear what they were saying?

By this time of course I was well past them, and going back wasn’t really an option. I thought it was one of those things I would just never know, but actually the question was later answered for me by Alison the Stirling Roadrunner (you’ll hear more about her shortly). They were in fact dot-watchers who had come out to see me, and I just blasted straight past them! Sorry about that Chris and friend, but I did appreciate it afterwards!

At this point it was starting to get dark, and I was pretty hungry. I’d been deliberately starting late while heading due east, to avoid riding straight into the sun, but now I was heading south. I could stop for an early night and a good meal, and then get an early start in the morning. I got out my phone and had a look at accommodation in Melrose.

The Mt Remarkable Hotel looked like just the thing, and a quick phone call confirmed that they had a room for me and could have a pizza ready for my arrival. Perfect.

It was a fairly flat ride into Melrose, and I got there pretty comfortably. Checking in and the proprietor looked at me, and said “now we don’t allow bikes in rooms, but I’m guessing yours is fairly expensive, is that right?”

I confirmed that it was fairly expensive, as well as being loaded with all the things that I absolutely couldn’t do without.

“Ok, there’s not much room in there, so you might need to move the table out of your room to fit the bike in, but you can just put it on the verandah.”

I liked these people. They brought out the food and asked if there was anything else they could do for me.

“You wouldn’t have a Farmers Union Iced Coffee, would you?”

They looked at each other, then back to me. “We’re Dare people, but we can give you one of them?”

I considered my options. Everything else in Melrose was pretty much closed. The next town that was big enough I was sure I’d get a FUIC was only about 50km away. I could eat some of the pizza now, and finish it on my ride. But then I thought about it. I’d decided that this ride was going to be a chance to expand my horizons.

“Ok,” I said, “that’d be great, thanks.”

It turns out, after testing, I’m very much in the farmers union court. Happily, the room was nice, the pizza was great, and the people were lovely. Overall, my ranking is: Great place, take your own FUIC.

It had been a tough day, a day where I had to face that there are some things that I just can’t do anything about, and I’d spent a lot of time thinking about my priorities. Now though I was showered and fed, in a comfortable room. Climbing into bed I looked over to the message that had come with my dinner – now propped up on the bedside table. I would make sure I did.