Went for a run this morning, man am I getting fit on this trip! I went for my first run at the start of the trip and it was a 50 metre run, then take a photo, walk for another 50 metres then take another photo, then realise that I have been going for 15 minute so better turn back as don’t want to push it and get an injury. This morning I went hard out and ran for about 7 minutes before noticing that the cattle were looking at me, got nervous turned around and headed back. Total run time 10 – 15 minutes, it’s a long road to fitness, but here I come.
We packed up and hit the road deciding to skip breakfast in Tom Price and just head to the next town of Paraburdoo, just 80km down the road. It was cold, breath test positive cold. You will be thinking will he never be happy about the temperature, days of whinging on about the heat, now it’s too cold. It was a nice change and had the grip heaters on full. Heaps of Mine four wheel drives on the road all with just one person in them. It is a mystery what they are doing. Surly in an open cast mine there is one or two diggers and a whole lot of trucks taking the ore away and that is about it, but clearly no there is an army of other people running around in shiny four-wheel drives doing something else. The four Wheel drives all have a pole with a flag, and a light at the top of the pole. I guess this is so that they do not get squashed by the oversized trucks running around that would drive over the top of a shiny four wheel drive without even noticing. There was a monument at the exit to Tom Price that is a retired Lectra Haul dump truck. It was massive. To give some idea it weighs 98 tonne, and carries 155 tonne, has a 1600HP motor that weighs 5 tonne, carries 2877l of fuel and burns it pretty quickly I guess. I am glade I don’t have to full that one up. It has tyres that are 3 metres diameter. This machine on display worked at Tom Price mine between 1980 and 1992 and moved about 23 million tonnes of Ore in that time, before it blew a fuse and was retired.
Fuelled up in Paraburton and found that there was no roadhouse for breakfast. The Woman said we might be able to get into the mess hall that serves breakfast for single men. Not sure if this was down and out single men or mine workers. We went to the dairy instead but there was a power cut so it was shut. The bakery was open though so we got a coffee milk and a donut and sandwich. It was quite nice. Listened to a lot of twittering from the collection of young mothers who obviously meet for a morning get together after dropping of kids at school, it was like white noise, couldn’t hear a word as there were so many simultaneous words coming from the group.
Went to leave and Dad had lost his key again. Learning from previous experience I went straight to it on the grass where his hanky had been pulled out of his pocket for a blast and hooked the key out. I was getting my helmet on when there was a grunt and an almighty crunching noise. Looked up and Dads bike with him on it had fallen over. Both were on the ground. A man was on the spot immediately to help and we got it back onto two wheels with petrol pouring out of the overflow pipe. The mirror had popped off and the indicator housing was broken, a few scratches to bike and rider, but no major damage otherwise. These bikes fully fuelled and loaded with gear are probably about 350kg and once they start to go in the wrong direction they are very hard to stop, Dad was standing on uneven ground and was trying to get something from his pocket when it got away on him.
Rode off down a very interesting road. Another Terex dump truck monument as he went out of town then we were into a minor road headed for Nanutarra Roadhouse. Sparse bush and red earth with interesting hills and rock outcrops down this road that had hardly any traffic. We came across a lizard sunning himself in the middle of the road, a real beauty, about 1 metre or more, and the same colour as the red earth. He stood out like a sore thumb in the grey road especially as he had his head up high as we approached. His head dropped to the ground as he tried to blend in to his surrounding as we passed, this didn’t work as red on grey, that stands out. I turned around to get a photo, but he was gone and was invisible, red on red, now that’s hard to see.
Two Emu were roadside further on, but they took off as we pulled up. So I was right this is Road Runner territory and there he goes with his girlfriend, I started scanning the horizon for Coyote. Saw a couple of Roos and another Lizard roadside.
A Robinson Helicopter was doing some work, then further on a Cessna was doing low level circling, so lots of activity.
After about 270km we arrived at Nanutarra Roadhouse, about midday so fuelled up on 91 unleaded, not ideal for these bikes but they were out of super. Ongoing discussion with strangers about the bikes and our trip, and hearing about their previous bikes and wishes to get another one. Had some lunch. This was the most expensive hamburger I have ever had. $14.50 for a hamburger that was only slightly larger than a McDonalds Cheese burger. Some of these roadhouses are brutal with their pricing as they have a captive audience. When it is 2-300km to the next fuel you are foolish to ride past them and they know it.
Rode back on the North West Coastal highway, taking some photos of the Ashburton River, which is dry, surprise surprise. Ongoing interesting rock outcrops every now and then but mostly just flat terrain with light scrub. After about 100km stopped as there was an information booth in the middle of nowhere, and I was fascinated to see what it was information for? It had a lot of info about the North West Cape and things to see and do before you get to Exmouth as the turnoff was just up the road. We decided to make a cuppa and have a little break.
A couple of road trains pulled in for a break. I was fascinated to discover that Humans got out of the cabs and were talking to each other. I have been waving out to these road trains but I have not seen the driver’s wave back, there is just an ominous darkness about the cab that is way up in the heavens. I had wondered if these trucks were in fact driven by unwaving robots or something. I now realised that I had probably been too focused on the final trailers wobbles to be looking at whether the drivers were waving or not. I thought I had better go and meet these drivers, and taking the approach that others have taken successfully with me walked up and said “ I see you have got a truck there?” “What?” comes the reply. I thought - poor thing he is deaf, so raised my voice and repeated “ I SEE YOU HAVE GOT A TRUCK THERE, I USED TO DRIVE A TRUCK?” ‘P--- off” he replies. A bit cold I thought but persistence usually pays off in this situation, so “Yes I used to drive an International, with a 40 foot hay rake, man did it cut the corners, I bet you know about trailers cutting the corners with one of these Road trains?” “Are you deaf you Tosser, I said P--- off!” “Yes that truck was a really tricky thing to drive, not like these modern machines that must be easy. I used to have to hold the old truck in gear and if travelling for a long time we used to jam a tool box between the dash and the gear stick to hold her in gear”, “Do you know how hard it is to eat steak without any F%@king teeth? You two wheeled tosser, because you are about to find out”. He’s not that friendly I thought. “Yes of course I stopped driving the truck and went onto driving tractors, but I guess you have a tractor unit on your road train then don’t you”. “Hold still you little b%#$&rd, so I can give you what you deserve”. Now running at a steady jog, in a zig zagging course I was wondering if he would actually warm up at all.” I stopped driving tractors and went onto Combined harvesters, now there is a tricky machine to operate, have you ever driven a Combine?” “ Stop running you piece of road kill?” he is not catching me, perhaps he is warming up after all, “I then drove a silage stack tractor, now that was exciting, especially as it was on a night shift and the tractors lights were pretty much nonexistent, so the edge of the stack was hard to see and a five metre drop is enough to get anyone worried?” “If I hadn’t Puff, just had a, Puff, puff, truckies breakfast, Puff, you would be, Puff, dead meat by now, puff puff” then he collapsed. So I went and had a look in the cab to see what it looked like, just like a big car really.
Actually that last paragraph might not have been entirely true. The truckies were actually very friendly and we had a good chat. They were on a compulsory break that they have to take every 5 hours. They can drive for 17 hours per day but the breaks are rigidly adhered to as a GPS tracking device tells head office if they have taken the legal breaks or not. They had delivered cars to Port Hedland and were returning to Perth for another load. It takes 600l less fuel on the return trip due to the lesser load. A good couple of guys to talk to.
We headed into the final phase of our ride out onto the road across the scrubby range. This was progressively more sandy ground as we approached the sea. Hanging a left at the final T intersection on our westward journey we rode along to Coral bay. This was very sandy looking ground with only low grass on the vegetation front, but interestingly the termite mounts were all standing out giving a stone henge type appearance to the landscape. It was quite windy and gusty.
We arrived into Coral bay and found the Backpackers that we were booked into. We organised a tour tomorrow to look at and swim with the Whale Sharks, these man-eaters are up to 18metres long and hang around off the coast here so I said I would be keen to see them and even give them an arm wrestle to show them who’s boss. Should be interesting.
I went for a run. Yes that’s right the second one for the day, whoa am I turning into some sort of elite athlete or what. We headed down to the local hotel to get onto the Internet and ended up having a beer and dinner here as the first State of Origin Game was on and there was a great atmosphere. Seemed to be an even split between Queensland and NSW supporters. Our ears were ringing at the end of the night.
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