Monday 8th
October
Spalding District Council -no country is complete without one!
Typical scene along the route
One of the showers I was dodging all day. Until one got me!
Crossing the fruit fly quarantine line. Eat it or bin it
Eat it of course. A tomato and banana sundae!
There were hardly any potholes along the way so far.
It all fell apart today with this stretch of tarmac on the Goyder Highway
In Morgan SA we are within sight of internet heaven.
Our smart motel room in Morgan.
The old hotels in Morgan which was an important transfer town between river and rail transport.
The river has no bridge in Morgan but it does have a free ferry across the wide River Darling.
Rainbow Lorikeets are common and widspread but a visual treat for all.
Mind you they sound pretty awful!
Up early to quietly vacate our unfriendly hotel to sit and have breakfast in the park beside the Spalding District Council offices (It seems every country has one) and see if we can see the Rosellas. All I see is a nice sunrise, feral pigeons, House Sparrows, European Starlings and Blackbirds! Not a native Australian bird in sight until I set off and Mandy sees the Rosellas again!
I broke the rear bottle holder on my bike this morning. I think it happened putting it in the car but imagine the battering from the road surface so far has not helped.
It’s cloudy and warm and the wind is increasing even as
early as 7 am. I’m going East South East today and the wind is from the north
so it is mostly sidewind until one section of 7 km with a full on 20+mph
tailwind and I set a speed record for the trip of nearly 39 mph.
I stop at the pleasant small town of Burra which has a
copper mining background and now is a heritage tourist centre. Of course, as is
typical of Aussie museums, none are open when I’m there but a get a nice coffee
from a garage!
From Burra I make good time and dodge showers that can be
seen to the left and right of me over the low saltbush heath vegetation. I pass
a side road called Windy Brae so I guess wind is not unusual here.
I also pass a turn for World’s End Highway. The weather is
bad but it is not the end of the world!
Eventually my luck runs out and the rain gets to the road where
I am so I get into the car and have lunch and a snooze waiting for it to clear,
which eventually it does. I have quite a lot for lunch which is unfortunate as
we reach an unexpected fruit quarantine point (before the state border where we
knew there was one) and so we are caught with fruit in surplus. We have to eat
it or bin it. Mandy gets the big apple and I get three bananas and a tomato.
Like ice cream, I can always find room for a banana or three.
The rest of the trip is finished quickly with a strong
tailwind element and we get to our smart motel on the edge of Morgan at 3pm. A
beer and a shower and we get out to look around the town which is on the Murray
River which is really wide and was a major travel route in the 1880 to 1910
period. Goods (especially wool) was brought on the river and transferred to a
railway to take the goods to Adelaide. The railway has gone now but the town
has worked hard to publicise the heritage of the area. Most buildings are still
here, with explanatory plaques outside. There is an original paddle steamer
here but it is rather a poor ugly design and is only partially restored. We
seem to be the only tourists here so I hope the summer is busier. There is a
museum but it is only open from 10 am to 1 pm and is closed at weekends bank
holidays!
See Rosellas again as well as the first Red Rumped Parrots
of the trip plus lots of Galahs, Corellas and Rainbow Lorikeets. The latter are
common and widespread but are really colourful crowd pleasers. We’d seen
roadkill Wombats on the road on the way in but despite going out to look at
night we did not see any though we did see many Kangaroos that operate night
and day.
128.63 km today in 4 hours 35 minutes – an average of 28.0
kph. With a maximum for trip of 62.3 kph on a gentle downhill with fast, full
tailwind. Total so far 2894.74 km
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