- Left – 9.30am
- 19th July 2015
- Miles rode – 262 (419km)
I emerged from my tent to be greeted by a Brolga, a massive bird that stands over 1 metre high, it was about a metre from my tent, motionless and just staring at me. It was very cold again last night so a quick coffee, pack the tent away and head just around the corner to the ‘Stockmans Hall of Fame’ where Noel and I spent a few hours learning about the history and life of the ‘Australian Stockman’, I loved it, very interesting.
As we headed east the amount of roadkill was as shocking as previous days. There has been a drought in northern Australia for about 4 years and when it does rain the verge gets double the water than other areas as it gets the ‘run off’ from the road too, this means more grass and food for the animals. Sounds like a trap to me. I passed dead animals on the roadside for the past 5 days (over 2,000km), I’ve seen cattle, sheep, emus, eagles, hawks and of course kangaroos, all in various states of decomposition, I estimate that I’ve seen over 10,000 (ten thousand) dead animals!
Other than Noel and I the road was empty and with the dead kangaroos every metre or so I imagined we were in a post apocalyptic world, would Mad Max come over the next crest followed by a tough biker gang?
After an hour or so the red, dusty, dry earth started to change and grass was growing in the fields, as the food for animals started to appear the roadside graveyard started to return to a verge. I love seeing the landscape change as I ride. As the roadkill decreased the live animals I saw proportionately increased, cattle now dominated the fields, I saw flocks of emus, a mob of kangaroos and a heard of camels, we also saw 2 Wedgetail Eagles. This is why I came to Australia.
It’s all about the animals.
