Day 136 - White Mountains and a town with no water

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Torrens Creek - Kimburra Rest Area (by the Campaspe River) 69km 

There is a bit of a thrill to sneaking out of a campground at 6:30am. Others are still snoring in their fancy caravans or are shuffling in their robes and ugg boots to the first toilet stop of the day. And we are already on the bikes. So cool (literally). We are hitting the Overland Way (Flinders Highway) with all our lights flashing. A surprising number of road trains are already shifting their many gears while we are making our way towards the White Mountains and yet another crossing of the Dividing Range. We reach the highest point of today at 550m by 08:30am and stop at a nice lookout onto the Burra Ranges in the White Mountains NP. It's funny in a way: in our final days of the across the USA tour we also crossed the White Mountains! We often draw comparison between the US trip and this one, noticing certain parallels but more so, significant differences. Above all, we are eleven years older! But of course, certain elements of touring by bicycle remain the same, no matter what country you are travelling in. Such as the constant hunt for services, food and water.  There is a certain risk of becoming a little complacent once you have defined your end point. You skip the details and you think you can somehow wiggle your way to the end with maybe cutting a few corners here and there... 

Back on the Great Dividing Range 

White Mountains lookout 

Kerstin forgot to refill her big water bottle before heading of this morning. Also, the two empty water storage containers remain empty, thinking we can refill them before our free camp (without drinking water access) in the town of Pentland. Every tap we find and turn in town remains dry. We go back to the General Store/Post Office (not as charming as the Watervale edition) and find out that the entire town has got no water access due to a burst pipe somewhere. No idea when it will be back on. For a moment I contemplate the idea of refilling my bottles with beer at the pub, but it's only 10:30am and we still have 20km to ride. Anyway, we are lucky and buy some bottled water for a small fortune. But it just goes to show, even after gaining almost 6,000km of Australian bicycle touring wisdom, you can still be an idiot for not following one of the major rules: always make sure you have sufficient water supply with you! 

The rest area right by the Campaspe River is very idyllic and quite popular, mainly due to the positive reviews on WikiCamp. We are lucky to arrive early and pick a nice spot a bit further away from the highway. While we stretch our legs with a walk down the river (there is a little stream flowing) and dip our feet in the cooling water, others find the idylle by sitting in their camping chairs in front of their hunderd thousand dollar mansions on wheels, right next to the highway. Each to their own. We overhear one camping party discovering that they run out of Bourbon! Well, we may have almost run out of water, but we still have Bourbon! 

Camping idylle 

Campaspe River: free foot spa

Innovative bike stand 

At afternoon tea time we are confronted by a moral dilemma. Instead of the common ginger nut or Scotch finger biscuits we adventurously purchased some unknown waffle thingy with cherry filling, called a Tondi Waffle. We dig them out of the bag, cup of tea ready, and we do what we often do when buying new food products (usually we do it in the store): we check where the the product is made. The information was hard to find but the capital letters say clearly PRODUCT OF RUSSIA. Shock horror! No, I can't eat that, or can I? I mean, am I going against the Ukrainians by eating this now dodgy looking biscuit? We compromise by eating the biscuits, and not liking them.


Location: Queensland, Australia

Comments

  1. JulietteJune 24, 2022 at 2:44 PM

    That will show the Russians exactly what you thought of their crappy biscuits. xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. FrancieJune 24, 2022 at 4:45 PM

    Go Ginger nuts! Oh dear, sneaking out quietly cost you the water. Are you heading for Townsville?

    ReplyDelete

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