In this part, we will create an account on Linode, and roll out a bare bones virtual machine.

Get a Linode:

First up, go to www.linode.com and find the “sign up” button. You’ll go through the normal credit card details and sign-on credentials. Buy the size package you like, the Linode 512 package is a good start. You may chose to add the backup package as well later on. Once you’re done, you should be at the Linode Manager, and there will be an IP address just for you and your new machine. Make a note of the IP address.

Get a Domain Name:

You will probably want to obtain a domain name to use on the internet. One way is to go to www.dyndns.com and create an account. With a free account you can have a couple of host names, but better yet sign up for DynDNS Pro for $15 per year and you won’t have to worry about it again. Once you have an account (free or pro) – “Add a Hostname”. Pick a name you like, and assign the IP address you noted earlier. Then accept that and you’re done there.

Edit your DNS Settings:

Back over at the Linode Manager, you should see an option “DNS Manager” – click it. Then click “Add a Domain Zone”. Enter the new domain name you claimed at DynDNS into the “Domain” field. Enter a reasonable email address for you into the “SOA Email”. Select “Insert a few records…” and your IP address from the drop down. Click “Add Master Zone”. You should see a bunch of reasonable looking DNS settings, including a www.YourDomainName and mail.YourDomainName.

Rolling Out The Linode:

At the Linode Manager, select the “Linodes” link. There should be a linode name against your linode. Click on the “Settings” tab and enter a nice name in the Linode Label field, then click on “Save Changes”. Click back on the “DashBoard” link, and then on the “Deploy A Linux Distribution”. Select your distribution, I’d reccommend 10.4 LTS as you won’t need to worry about major updates for a few years.

Now the question of Disk Size. I like to have a separate “storage” partition for all my files, away from the operating system, just in case they grow too big, or I need to rebuild. Also if you need to get files from a backup you need room to extract the backed up volume. If you agree with me, enter a smaller size like 10240 MB, otherwise go with the default maximum size. You’ll need a swap drive, but it’s already there. Enter your “root” password, and make sure you make a note of it – very important. Press “Deploy”. After a little while, you’ll see the job queue settle.

Adding the “Storage” volume: (optional extra)

On the Linode Dashboard, click on “Create a new disc image”. Give it a good name, like “storage”, set the type to “ext3″ and give it a reasonable size, like 2048 MB. Click “Save Changes” and you’ll see on the job queue it being created. Click on “edit” beside the “My Ubuntu …. profile” to add the storage. You’ll see a section called “Block Device Assignment”. See the third device – /dev/xvdc – select from the drop down your storage partition and click “Save Changes”.

End of Optional storage section.

Press the “Boot” button and watch as your Linode boots up.

Job done – you have a domain name and a virtual machine – it’s running and connected to the Internet!

Beautiful Cable Beach

Sharky’s OZ 7 in 7
Broome to Kalyaydayan

Distanced covered: 136.5 km

Ride time: 5 hours and 14 minutes
Metres climbed: 86 m
Average speed: 26.0 km/h
Maximum Speed: 36.3 km/h
Wind direction: South East in our face
Min temperature: 30 deg
Max temperature: 47.1 deg, and over 44 deg for the last 60 km
Time it took for temperature to get to 30 degrees: 7am

Road Kill:
3 Roo’s
1 Cockatoo (thanks Kevvy)
1 Varmit

The Famous Roey

Today we were back on the bikes after a wonderful rest day in Broome. It turned out to be the best idea we’ve had, to push through to Broome ahead of schedule. The people at the Roey (the Roebuck Hotel in Broome) and Julie in particular treated us like kings (and gave me a new nickname I’ll keep to myself thanks).

While trying to get an early start we loaded up the Ute, and the car driven by Marty, our ever so kind and helpful WA Bottlemart man. We had to make a quick trip out to Cable Beach again for proper cycling photos – at least that sounds like a good excuse to get out there again! After that we headed back out the 40 odd km’s to the roadhouse on the road between Broome and Port Headland, our next major town. We had already ridden that road from the roadhouse to Broome and didn’t feel the need to beat into that headwind for no good reason.

We had met a fellow cyclist Colin Abbott on the road the other day who Ronny knew from his bike shop back in Mackay – Colin had dropped in earlier in his trip around Australia. Colin was taking some days off in Broome but came out for our send-off along with Marty. We presented both Marty and Colin with our special wristbands as a sign of appreciation for their efforts. I can’t thank Marty enough, and I hope he wants to be involved with the ride next year right through the heart of his country. We gave Marty the cow bell to ring to send us on our way.

Open country

Today was a landmark day for a couple of reasons. Firstly Shanno was leaving us today to head back to other commitments. It’s a busy time of the year for Shanno, and it’s the second time out of three that he’s had to miss the end of this “extended” ride, which I’m sure he hates doing. As we prepared to leave this morning Sharky had a few words to say to Shanno which brought welling of emotion to Sharky that I know Shanno understands. The other landmark is that we are now in the third stage of this journey, which means that we are turning more southerly (which means headwinds) and into the harsh country at the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, and we know what that means…

Pirate Falcon

For the first 20km we saw open treeless plains with heavy winds but our luck would improve. There was a tree line coming up that would give us some cover from the wind, but better yet we happened to find a plastic pirates cutlass on the side of the road which meant that we switched to Pirate, and had to talk like a pirate for the rest of the day. This combined with the hot dry wind meant that our throats were shot by morning tea…

This was our first morning tea without Shanno so it was going to be interesting to see how Kevvy handled the pressure. Of course he had no trouble, had prepared a banquet of foods and drinks from around the world on a table with native wildflowers. We were allowed as much Coke as we could desire, and could leave the esky open as long as we liked. Just kidding Shanno!!! Our Jedi Master Shanno has taught us well and Kevvy and the riders are handling things.

Just a wee sleep

Back on the bikes and the hot day wore on and eventually we decided we needed a “middy” break, for a pee, which became a little sit down, which became a little lay down on the side of the road on the gravel and spear grass. We hadn’t even taken off our shoes or helmets. Within a few seconds all three of us were asleep, for how long I have no idea, but I think it was the next road train passing beside us that woke us up. Startled we jumped back on the bikes, to find Kevvy only 1km down the completely straight road waiting for us at what was to become our overnight camp.

Young Cam from Ronny’s bike shop has been following us with our Spot tracker and saw that we had pulled up for the day, and checked the satellite image to see where we were – he was able to correctly identify that our home for the night was indeed a bus shelter in the middle of pretty much nowhere! Actually it was pretty good, the only downfall being the half hourly road train passing by all night and rattling the road grid just up the road.

As good a place as any to sleep

Before I sign off I’d like to thank John and the guys from Ada Street Supplements, who are again helping us with supplements for this trip. This year we let John come up with a plan of what we need and so far it’s working out marvellously. So if you need any supplements seriously do yourself a favour and talk to John – he’ll sort you out and save you money, what else could you want – and tell him you read it here!

Thanks for following us, and once we have regular internet (long story, Port Hedland hopefully) we’ll catch up with some great photos on Facebook. See ya then.

Falcon

Adcock Gorge

Sharky’s OZ 7 in 7
Adcock Gorge to Lennard River Crossing

Distanced covered: 152.7 particularly long km’s

Ride time: 7 hard hours and 8 not so hard minutes
Metres climbed: 495 m
Average speed: 21.4 km/h
Maximum Speed: 47.9 km/h – that’s Ronny “Stat’s Man” max speed, not mine! (add 20?)
Wind direction: South East
Min temperature: 22 deg
Max temperature: 42.4 deg
Time it took for temperature to get to 30 degrees: 8am, yes 8am!

Road Kill:

1 Roo
1 small diplodocus

Like shags on a rock

Last night everyone was pretty early to bed, so I guess it was no surprise that by sunup we were all pretty keen to get on with the day’s task. As beautiful a place as Adcock Gorge is – and it is – especially to a dry trio of cyclists that Sharky, Rocket Ron and I make, we made tracks. Unfortunately we had only gone about 200m down the track before we met the deep(ish) rocky creek crossing we mastered so well on the way in before it took revenge on Ronny, leaving him with a good solid bruise to the side of his hand. This did as least take away from the pain he was suffering from the cut on the same hand he received from a rouge piece of firewood (a whole dead tree) that Ronny and I burnt on the campfire last night.

Today we hatched a plan to make up some km’s so that we could earn some rest and recuperation (and maybe do a load of washing and get some internet time) in Broome in a couple of days’ time. Last year Sharky and I did one day of 150 odd km on the dirt and swore we would never do that again yet here we were again. But we were keen and apart from a couple of good climbs, we had the wind at our back and so far not too much heat, so we headed to Imintji Store as quickly as we could, some 47km down the dirt road.

We finally found some other cyclists!

Only 1.5km before the store, we ran into the only other cyclists we’ve actually seen on this trip so far – a Darwin couple by the name Jenny and Ben. They were on the other side of the road with a minor mechanical as we dropped by. They had been speaking to our road crew Shanno and Kevvy at the store so they knew what we were about, and we found that they were travelling unsupported to our last night’s stay at Adcock Gorge. Unfortunately they were travelling into our wonderful tail wind, and up the climb we were enjoying coming down off. All we could offer was our well wishes, and a hug, and then one of our team gave Jenny another couple of hugs just to show the team spirit.

Imintji Store

Eventually getting back onto the road, we were at Imintji Store in no time. You have to see this place to believe it. It’s basically a couple of 40 foot containers tied together, with pretty much everything you might be likely to buy in a store jammed in ready to go. There were a few local delicacies on offer as well and Ron seemed keen to try a local Kangaroo Pie. Sharky and I still suffer nightmares and the occasional burp from a certain Camel Pie during last year’s ride so we both went with the good tucker provided by our “can’t ever say enough kind words for” road crew. Ronny stopped complaining about the repeat pie action after only three hours of climbing mountain ranges so I guess it was slightly better than camel pie.

King Leopold Ranges

Speaking of climbing mountains – we’ve been riding through countryside over the last day or so that might be described as a little mundane. Really it is interesting but with all the escarpments and dramatic country we saw before that I guess we’ve been spoilt. Today there were no such complaints. I know in the last journal I wrote I mentioned New Zealand, and of course the countryside would not be confused with NZ, but again I was reminded of NZ. Riding over the King Leopold Ranges today was so dramatic. After a long climb up the hash front face of the range, the whole outlook changed to quite different greener slightly softer more tropical view. We rolled over the ranges an eventually rode through a very unfortunately named “March Fly Glen” where we saw some campers – hopefully the name March Fly Glen isn’t how it sounds. Further over the King Leopold Ranges we found a drier flatter descent towards Napia Plains. This was easily most beautiful piece of road and landscape of the last few days.

Once on the Napia Plains, we found a whole new road surface to complain about. This road is somewhat corrugated in places, but the big feature of it is the unforgivingness of it. It’s hard, rough and mean. It’s like riding the cobblestones of Roubaix (which I haven’t) but just 20 times harder. We rode though the Napia Range at Queen Victoria Head – it’s like a big escarpment that rises out of the ground in the middle of a big flat nowhere, with a small gap for the road to run through, and a rocky outcrop on the right that probably looks something like Queen Victoria, to somebody…

Lennard River Ice Cream Shop

Our target today was a camp site on the Lennard River, which a truck driver earlier had told us might still have some water in it. It was a bit of a push but it suited our plan. Once we got here we were amazed to see signs at the river crossing for a “Snack Stop” offering “Cornettos” ice creams! This was not on any of our maps and we had no idea what was going on. Kevvy tried to defuse our excitement by saying that they close early on Thursday but that was not to be. We still had an hour of shopping time!

I have to tell you a story about Rod Hadley, the man that sells ice creams at Lennard River in the Kimberley country – a story that I think is what the Smiddy Spirit is all about. Upon hearing that there were soon going to be three sweaty lycra clad cyclists on his doorstep, probably wanting ice cream, he was just waving our road crew guys away. We turned up and again he waved us away. Of course he did actually sell us our ice creams, but clearly we were outside the “normal” clientèle! Rod has a stoma and I gather is a survivor of throat cancer. He certainly doesn’t like a fuss made and it was impossible to get his story from him so we don’t really know much more now. But I suspect he quietly understands what we are doing, although he is much too much his own man to admit it.

What he did do though was this. We were down to dangerously low levels of beer, and have been out of red wine for a couple of days. This is a situation that clearly no one is comfortable with. We were on a strict ration of two beers until Derby which is tough in these temperatures. Rod simply asked us how many beers we had, and next thing we knew there was an ice cold carton of beer handed to us, along with an address. I don’t think Rod has a licence to sell beer, so his deal was that we drink his beer and then we buy some for him when we hit Derby, and leave it with some people that will deliver it back to him on the weekend. Next thing we knew the plan changed and he gave us money to buy two cartons for him, with instructions to not replace the carton he gave us. He then waved us away with “stop making a fuss you lycra clad idiots and bugger off” hand gestures. He had some amazing keepsakes on display and photos with stars like Dame Edna and Bryan Brown, and I would love to learn more about this guy but it seems unlikely that I will – perhaps his friends in Derby will fill us in.

Lennard River - at least there was some water

This may be our last proper camp night, and I for one will be sad. Our “rough” camps have been a great experience, and I suppose that will change now as we hit the “big smoke” of Derby, Broome, Port Headland and Karratha. Hopefully we will be back into somewhat regular internet access and phone coverage though which will be good at least.

Facebook Photos!

The park through a great BBQ breakfast to send us off

OZ 7 in 7
Kununurra to Home Valley Station

Distanced covered: 120km total – 53km on the main road, then 67km of mixed bitumen and dirt on the Gibb River Track

Ride time: 5hrs 18min
Metres climbed: 487 m
Average speed: 22.7 km/h
Maximum Speed: 51.2 km/h
Wind direction: South East, strong and fresh
Min temperature: 22 deg
Max temperature: 41.5 deg
Time it took for temperature to get to 30 degrees: 10am

Road Kill:

1 Cow
1 Roo
1 Ostrich
1 Sharky (details later on)

Morning Views

We started the day a little later than our normal torturous dawn schedule since our wonderful hosts at the KimberleyLand Van Park, Dan and Nora, offered to throw on a free BBQ breakfast in the park for all. The BBQ was free, but of course for all the onlookers there was the donation tin that needed visiting before the free BBQ could be approached! Thanks again to Dan, Nora, your kids (who raced us out to the road, and won) and also Sarah for a wonderful welcome. Sharky claims he doesn’t eat sausage, but the four he ate for breaky this morning would say otherwise!

I found out a little more about the town of Kununurra this morning. The big lake our cabin was overlooking is actually off stream storage from the Ord River. This lake is huge – they run tour cruises on it. Lake Argyle and the Ord River make massive amounts of water storage available, yet it costs consumers the same rate as it does in very dry Perth, so consequently not much is used even though there seems an unlimited amount available. A great pity I think. As we rolled out of town we crossed the Ord River, and indeed it is a “big river”, so the name Kununurra seems apt.

As we head off along the Gibb River Track

Our resourceful road crew also found out more about town, as they got lost coming back down from the lookout at the edge of town after we rolled out. They followed some big truck to another lake we hadn’t even heard about. Never mind, they found us 55km down the road, after the Gibb River Road turn off, with us still on road bikes on the rocky gravel road. I had just pinched flated my front tyre, and just ran out of water, so was very happy to see the boys. We also lost our mates Lynton and Kayo this morning, as they head to another mountain bike race he’ll probably win. It was great to ride with Lynton and today we really came to appreciate how hard it is to travel at road bike speeds while on a mountain bike with big fat tyres. He’s a strong man!

The guys couldn't understand the need to stack rocks?

The wind was very strong today, but fortunately it spent much of the day coming from the side or behind, with just a few sections of head wind to remind us of how bad it could have been. Today the “dirt section” was a mix of bitumen and dirt sections so it’s a gentler introduction to the Gibb River Track. By 90km we were happy to (just) find the boys hiding off the road by a large water hole for lunch. Another hour and a half of bouncing over and trying to find paths through corrugations had us rolling down the main track into the Home Valley Station.

Some random river crossing

The countryside we rode through today is just unbelievably beautiful, and reminded me of riding in the South Island of New Zealand in the sense that you were always looking up at the scenery in amazement, and not believing that it could just keep coming. It’s a harsh place, but there’s beauty everywhere.

 

 

 

Lots of escarpments out this way

Seeing the station brought happiness and relief to Ronny, Sharky and I, so much so that we were jumping the water bars and getting air on the way in. 10 meters from the camp site Sharky and I popped wheelies in our excitement – unfortunately Sharky forgot to hold on and came off the back of his bike, square onto his well-seasoned rear end. Laughs all round except for poor Sharky (now on the road kill count) who now claims he’s okay. He’s stopped complaining about the various bits that were sore, and is now telling us all about the new bits that are sore… Ronny showed great concern for Sharky by checking that he got a great photo of the fall before bothering to check on Sharky. He did and you’ll see it once we can get more photos on Facebook.

Sharky's Fall

The Pool at Home Valley

Home Valley Station is an oasis out here. I sit writing this after having a swim in a great cool pool, overlooking the amazing escarpment views that you will have seen in the movie “Australia” as well as a small gorge full of water. There’s a band warming up over there by the sound of it. We’re camping in the best camping area I’ve ever seen, plus there are 5 star units and everything else in-between. Shanno and Kevvy are cooking something that smells great, as usual. There are horses and horse tours, as well as river tours and plane tours. If you’re out this way drop in! This place has also made a liar of us when we said there would be no journals for several days – we’ve managed to get a little bit of satellite internet to send this out and say hello!

It’s shaping up to be another very windy night again – not sure what that’s all about.

I’m not sure when we’ll be online again but you’ll hear when we are. In the mean time you can still see our location on www.smiddy.org.au/livetracking.aspx

I arrived at the airport in Brisbane yesterday ready to argue with the check in guy about why I was carrying so much gear on the plane, but was pleasantly surprised to find that they were expecting me, had my exit row seat ready, and no, the heavy bike bag was no problem at all, thank you very much. A very nice start to the day for sure.

So after breakfast we managed to race through departures quickly – although Smoothy’s line was just a little faster than mine so I lost that one. Time to buy a bottle of Bundy Red at duty free and off to the plane. I managed to win the next contest by being the very last passenger onto the plane – a particular favourite of mine.

So after our gluten free breakfasts, and oh why not, can we please have a regular breakfast as well (a deal that is a particular favourite of Smoothy’s) we arrived at Queenstown. I’ve only been here in January on previous trips, and have never seen snow on top of the Remarkables at Queenstown, as I was now seeing. That probably had something to do with what the captain had told us on route – there was a nasty southerly in town to greet us and snow had dropped a couple of hours earlier. There was also snow at Cadrona on the Crown Range heading up to Wanaka, and I’ve never seen snow there either. By this time Smoothy is quite regretting that since it’s always warm in Wanaka in January why bother bringing a jacket…

We’re in the Purple Cow, a local backpackers, and a pleasant place it is. We’ve been told it’s warming up, although I don’t know if it will be too warm come race day. The water is a little chilly at 14 degrees so skull caps are going on, but this morning (Tuesday) the nasty wind seems to have eased quite a bit at least.

I’ve already bumped into a number of people that I remember, and strangely they remember me, so the town is as friendly as ever.

Today we’re planning to have a swim and later on a ride so we’ll know better what conditions are like then.

Our Sponsors!

This is part of a series of journal pages about a ride Mark Smoothy and I did as a charity ride from Brisbane to Darwin. There’s more stories and information about the ride at www.smiddy.org.au!

Daily statistics

Cars sighted: Not many, but quite a few road trains
Distance: 215 km’s
Accumulated Distance: 3198 km’s
Average speed: 27.6 km/h
Riding time: 7:47
Air Temperature: 36 degrees
Humidity: 35 %
Wind direction: All over the place

A day of change for us today:

As we rolled out from our wonderful hosts at Cairns Industries we were very sad to see Shanno and Gordo leave for home. Shanno’s business is cane farms and right now is about as busy as they get, so we were lucky to have the boys on boards for the time we did. Shanno loves camping and took the opportunity to camp with us – that helped us immensely. Shanno has the gear and the know how to make things work, and nothing was ever too much trouble. Love your style mate. And Gordo, you were so good to have in the camp, and gave us plenty of laughs. I’ll miss you mate.

Change of route. We’ve been fretting over this for a long time and today was crunch time. We originally planned to head north from Borroloola towards Ropers Bar. This route is beautiful, but very challenging. For the riders travelling this way meant a few very long hard days on mountain bikes, up to 172 km in one day of rough dirt, and for Kimmy and Kevvy quite some risk. We only have one spare tyre for their car and apparently that’s about one third the number you need to take through that country. Everyone has been telling us we are crazy and not to go that way. Now we’re quite used to being called crazy but as it turns out going that way just isn’t smart for us. So we’re back to our original plan, to travel via Daly Waters to Mataranka.

Bitumen road. Oh how I have missed you bitumen road.

Riding buddies. For the days we’ve been on the dirt, which has been since Normanton more or less, we’ve been seeing other cycle tracks in the dirt. But these tracks were a little different to ours. These tracks were made with thinner tyres than our mountain bike tyres, and clearly there were bikes with trailers ahead of us. We were quite excited at the prospect of catching up to these other cyclists, which given that they were towing trailers we should catch them eventually. We sometimes saw footprints in the sandy tracks beside the wheel tracks so we started to make up stories of how these other cyclists were handling the conditions. You’ve got to keep your mind busy during adventures like these. We would ask other travellers about these cyclists ahead and started to get rough guesses of the distance between them and us. Then we could start to guess when we would catch them. So today was that day. Shanno left us earlier and was heading home via Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford, our 111 km mark today. He had found the other cyclists just ahead, and by the time we got to Heartbreak Hotel we finally caught them. Just by the way Cape Crawford is not a cape, and when I asked the barman at Heartbreak Hotel about that he just grinned. I guess I’m the millionth customer to ask that question.

We found that these two guys – Nick Cuthbert and Matt Sladden – are riding around Australia in 6 months, totally unsupported carrying what they need in their trailers. In this part of the country that includes about 16 litres of water each! Their trailers weigh about 45 kg loaded, which is a huge load to drag on a pushbike, but it’s a small fraction of the load our support vehicle is carrying. They are riding around Australia to help raise awareness for the issues troubling Australia’s youth and causing teen suicide. I would ask you to read their story at www.ausyouthcycle.com.au and www.reachout.com. They asked if they could ride along with us for a few km to chat which of course we thought was a great idea. We ended up riding the rest of the afternoon together. I’m amazed at the speed Nick and Matt were riding given the load they are carrying. So we chatted and swapped stories for the rest of the afternoon’s ride, which turned out to be a long afternoon.

Along this stretch of road there isn’t much change in the scenery. We were told there was a council roadside camp – about the only half decent campsite to be found – about 84km along after Heartbreak Hotel. It would be a long but achievable day. Perhaps not so for the trailer boys, but that was a decision for them to make. At the 195km mark we (3 cyclists now) were more than ready for camp and with the sun setting in front of us we hoped to see Kim and Kev soon. Unfortunately the night just got darker, I switched on my pathetic little led flasher and we continued, watching for kangaroos and wallabies. Nick had a better front light which was later retrieved from his trailer and still onwards we continued. Eventually Kim drove out to find us and gave us the news that the camp was still another 12km away, but at least now we had the headlights of our support vehicle. We finally made camp a little after 8:00 pm and were pretty happy to stop and have a late dinner. For Matt the night was even worse. He had been dropped, which according to Nick is quite okay (their rules not ours!) and was back a good few km’s. Before Kim drove back with us she checked on Matt, to find that he was okay and would soldier on. Then 30 seconds (no exaggeration) after Kim turned to find us again Matt’s chain broke, so he then had to scooter along his 55kg plus rig. Eventually Kim went back to check on him, and he returned to the camp in the car. A very long day for Matt, sorry mate.

You may have read about an appeal to see if my Everyday Hero site is still working. I’m very happy to say that it has suddenly begun to work wonderfully! I’d want to thank all of you so much who so quickly helped out with donations – you’ve lifted the spirits of one Falcon who is now soaring again! Many of the donations came from Smiddy riders and really they’ve already given so much. My family, Shanno, Gordo, friends and workmates, plus others I thank you all.

As I send this email I’d like to add that when we later rode into Daly Waters and finally back into NextG coverage my phone was alive with support voicemail, texts and emails. I want to thank you all, too many to list here but you know who you are (friends and family). It really made my day.

Till next time,
Scotty the happy Falcon

PS. We’re back into reliable NextG coverage now so hopefully the journals will return to their regular delivery. Thanks for reading them!

PPS. A problem with me taking so long to write a journal entry is that Kevvy keeps topping up my glass of Jacobs Creek. It probably contributes to the problem…

All Our Sponsors

This is part of a series of journal pages about a ride Mark Smoothy and I did as a charity ride from Brisbane to Darwin. There’s more stories and information about the ride at www.smiddy.org.au!

Daily statistics
Distance: 103km’s
Accumulated Distance: 2473km’s
Average speed: 25.4km/h
Metres Climbed: Not worth mentioning
Riding time: 4 hours neat
Air Temperature: 35 degrees
Humidity: 90% dropping to 40%
Wind direction: North/north east

You will know that we temporarily have the road kill count on hold, in part because of Smoothy’s thumb, but perhaps mainly because there really isn’t too much to report in these parts. After several hours thinking about this we realised that it’s because there isn’t too much traffic along these roads either. So instead of road kill, we thought we might take the easy option and count traffic. I’m happy to report that by the time of our first break at 58km we had seen three cars. While we stopped at our first break all madness broke out and three more cars came by in a convoy and threw our theories into chaos. By the end of the day we managed to count 22 cars, although many of these were Doomadgee locals at the end of the day.

Burketown is famous for a couple of things and the roll cloud formations that appear this time of the year is certainly one of them. We were lucky enough to be in town when one appeared this morning, unfortunately we weren’t organised well enough to take it in. Never mind we saw some great photos in the pub last night. Some “Red Bull” teams were in town to fly gliders over the clouds today which I’m sure would have been great to see.

Tirranna Roadhouse

36km down the road towards Doomadgee we found another Mark at the Tirranna Roadhouse, a small service station come store in the middle of nowhere. We were not good customers, having no money on us at the time but Mark was more than happy to fill our bottles with fresh rain water, we had a great chat and the obligatory photo opportunity. Just after this we crossed the Gregory River, a most beautiful place with plenty of crystal clear water flowing rapidly under and across the causeway.

Gregory R - there's no crocs here?

We had two surreal nature moments today. The first involved a flock of large back birds. I can’t tell you what they were, but I’ll guess and say hawks. Anyway we rode in their shadows for most of the ride today. Each time we stopped for water, they disappeared, but as soon as we got back on the road, there they were again. I hoped it wasn’t a lack of faith in our ability to complete this stage today, and given the lack of road kill, perhaps they were optimistically waiting for us to fail. I have a different theory though, but I’ll keep that to myself. The other moment was when we found literally thousands of grasshoppers flying along and across the road. They flew at a height just above our heads while we rode along underneath. It was quite bizarre.

Originally we expected the road today to be mostly dirt, and of course rode our MTB’s but were pleasantly surprised to find that about 50% of the surface today was bitumen, which certainly improved our average speed, as well as Smoothy’s spirit.

Flat out as we ride into town

Today’s destination is Doomadgee, an Aboriginal community in the gulf. Doomadgee is quite a large town, over 2000 people, and the school has over 300 students. We arrived in Doomadgee at close to 2:00pm to find we really can’t just turn up in an Aboriginal Community and find somewhere to stay. Our usual style of – arrive in town, find the local pub, have a beer and work out the details from there – does not work in Doomadgee. There is no pub for a start! Shanno had discussions with the local police which left us quite worried, and he was eventually lead to the Town Mayor and tribal elder, a chap by the name of Fred O’Keefe. Now Fred was most accommodating, took Shanno on board and drove him around town until they eventually found our hosts for the night, Northern Constructions, owned by Tubby Cairns. Tubby cleared out some rooms for us, replaced some air conditioners and made us feel completely at home. I can’t speak highly enough of how welcoming Tubby and his boys are. We spent the evening learning about Doomadgee and how things are done out here. It was an eye opener for sure.

A well deserved beer!

Tomorrow brings another day of mostly dirt road, longer distances, and hotter temperatures. I think we will be without internet for two days now but the journals will continue!

Until next time,
Scotty (Falcon)

P.S. I’m a bit worried that my “Everyday Hero” donation page may have disappeared! Has anyone seen it lately? I’m genuinely working hard, I need your help!

P.P.S. I’d like to send a big thank you to the Urban Muscle guys at ADA Street Supplements for stocking us up with various protein powders for this trip. It’s made a huge difference to be able to get some clean protein in on a trip like this – Thanks guys!