- Left – 9.15am
- 12th July 2015
- Miles rode – 247 (395km)
Waking up in the outback to the sound of birds singing is great, the prospect of leaving the security of my small tent to venture out into the wilderness wasn’t so good. I wondered what insects and animals had been in close proximity to my tent, a massive spider, kangaroo, snake or emu? I tentatively opened the zip on my tent and peered outside to see if a night visitor had outstayed its welcome. The only life seemed to be the birds. Time for coffee and planning what to do today.
I took advice and didn’t leave early as the animals are still about and can randomly run across the road into me! When I did leave within 1km a wallaby and 2 wild pigs ran right out in front of me, slow down Dan. After 5km the tarmac road abruptly ended and I started 60km of dirt road. Red dirt, deep red dirt you only see in Australia, I have no problem riding dirt roads but this road wasn’t like others I had experienced, the surface was ‘corrugated’, yes, just like a corrugated roof but the undulations were at times over 15cm deep and close together, maybe 20 – 30 cm apart. I tried riding very fast as I thought I would fly over the top but this just resulted in the whole bike being shaken. In the end I had to go slowly and I could only speed up and fly over the top when the corrugation wasn’t too deep. The edge of the road looked flat so I tried that out but it wasn’t dirt or sand it was dust and was too difficult to control my heavy bike! Welcome to Australian dirt roads I thought.
With the wildlife that wants to either kill or eat me and the bad road conditions my mind turned to a film from the 1980’s, where was Mick Dundee when I needed him? “That’s not a knife!”
Kakadu National Park is by far the best known in Northern Australia but whilst Kakadu is amazing I thought Lichfield was more interesting.
Another night camping, this time in Kakadu.
