Saturday 15 April 2017

Tropic heat

We have moved from Nevada-like desert dry to tropical wet in just two days. After a quick pack and the morning at the Mt Isa Experience, we didn't hit the highway until about 11:00 and made Cloncurry about 12:30. The local Woolies provided with us with a healthy lunch of Caesar salad, cabinosi and orange juice in the local park.

The temperatures on the road have been a steady 34C and we are taking water stops every hour or so to stretch. Heading north from Cloncurry, we had to keep a weather eye out for Brahman cattle, wallabies and the occasional lizard on the lightly trafficed Developmntal Road to Normanton.

We got in just on sunset, and had a slow setup talking bikes with a fellow traveller who had ridden around South America over a year. Normanton has thousands of small (baby) cane toads clustered around any light source, all competing for a meal of the flying bugs.

They threw us out of the Purple Pub at 8pm closing, and we came back and had a swim in the dark - the perfect end to a long, hot day on the road. I had to throw the tent fly off in the middle of the night to get some breeze through and it was 29C at dawn this morning.

We'll skip through Karumba and then pick up the Savanah Way to Georgetown. Two weeks today since we rode out from Melbourne.

The Antipodean Mariners

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