NQ 2 NT Journal Entry
Day 21
Daly Waters to Mataranka
By: Mark “Sharky” Smoothy
Daily statistics
Cars sighted: This category has now been changed to Road Trains sighted as we are now on road train Stuart Highway all the way to Darwin.
Road trains sighted: 22
Distance: 168km’s
Accumulated Distance: 3535 km’s
Average speed: 32.5 kmph
Riding time: 5:13
Air Temperature: 36 degrees
Humidity: 41%
Wind direction: South Tailwind for majority of the day. You little ripper!
Hi there and welcome to day 21 of a journey quickly drawing to its conclusion. What an amazing day to report on, I am so excited and at the same time I am determined to keep this as brief as possible and get to bed prior to 12am. Scotty and the road crew are taking bets on the chance of this happening to be very slim and very much in their favour. I am out to prove them wrong and my one finger typing skills are seeing my two fingers fly across the keyboard at an astonishing rate of 15 words per minute! Amazing I know.
I will get the boring stuff out of the way first but for me it was the utmost important day of this entire journey. Important in the sense that finally I felt like I made a contribution to getting us to our destination but more on that later. We awoke to a sensational and most stunning unbelievable sight. On the morning we left Brisbane, over three weeks ago it was raining, around lunchtime that same day the clouds disappeared; another cloud was not to be sighted until this morning in good old Daley Waters. A change was in the air, we were leaving the dry heat of the interior and heading into the humidity of Mataranka, Katherine and ultimately Darwin. It was overcast and the southerly wind brought with it a nip in the air; Falcon was complaining how cold he was, it was still 22 degrees! Kimmy loved it, she’s from Toowoomba, cold in Toowoomba is five degrees, and Kevvy was still asleep.
The great thing about it being a southerly is that we were now heading north, meaning we had a tailwind. After 1500km’s of heading due west, today was our first day of the next four of always travelling north until we hit Darwin. Today’s 168km run into Mataranka was on good wide flat roads, hence the decision to count three-trailer road trains instead of cars or road kill, sorry Schindler! But Schindi let me assure you that you would be in seventh heaven with the road side kill count here because of these great beasts barrelling down the highway and not stopping for nothing man. These road trains displace so much air as they rocket along a section of highway where it is legal to sit on 130kmph, especially so when they pass two crazy cyclists. You can hear them coming from behind for what seems like ages, and I have to tell you that it was the most terrifying -but at the same time- exhilarating and loud five second experience of our lives! Every single one of them gave us a wide berth of at least 10 feet. Falcon and his head-cam recorded a few of them passing and it is awesome to watch it back on the laptop and hear the incredible rush of air, wheels in motion and engine noise all combined into one almighty ROAR!
So this contribution I was talking about was my suggestion to Falcon to do five minutes out front each on the bikes. We decide not to ride two abreast as the danger factor of being on a highway loaded with road trains was just not the sensible thing to do. We did this so successfully, that for the first 100km’s we managed to average 33.3kmph. Finally I felt strong and able to contribute. We slowed a little for the remaining 68km’s but we’re still well pleased with a 32.5km average for the entire 168km’s by the time we rolled into Mataranka at 3:30pm. My health and confidence has been given a massive confidence boost these past couple of days and I am extraordinarily grateful.
Mataranka is famous for its natural thermal pools; with a population of just 300 people it is a tiny quirky little town that entertains you with the most absurd collection of statues in the local park. You need to picture painted life-sized people dressed from the 1800’s, dogs included, frozen in a particular motion of action, spread throughout the entire park. The whole park is actually dedicated to a novel called ‘We of the Never Never’, an autobiographical novel by Jeannie Gunn about her life as a pioneering women on nearby Elsey Station in 1890’s. It was of course made into a movie and this movie is shown every day at a small theatre in town.
Anyway as soon as we arrived we had our mandatory beer and chips, I again shocked Kevvy when I had a heavy beer this time, and again with no lemonade! After our beer we got the washing done and then made a run for the Bitter Springs thermal pool. These pools are at a constant 34oC all year round and are a major tourist attraction in the area. I was grateful that we had the place to ourselves and just a few others, as we were told in high season that the place is overrun with bus loads of kids and tourists. The water was amazingly crystal clear but ever so warm and refreshing. It is also very creepy as it looks perfect for attracting crocodiles. I got chatting to a couple who were in the water and I asked them how come there are no crocs here. They told me it was due to the algae taking out all of the oxygen in the water, meaning no oxygen, no fish, no life and no food for crocodiles. The water is so dense and heavy that if you stop kicking for an instant you immediately sink straight to the bottom. Our short half hour swim was an instant fix to our fatigue from a hard days riding. It was a sensational, relaxing and calming experience.
Speaking of today’s ride it is not often ‘The Falcon’ complains of sore legs but after today’s session, where we kept swapping turns out front, not only were both of us feeling it in our legs but we were smashed.
On another front we are getting dangerously low on Jacobs Creek, if Kevvy run’s out before we hit Darwin our lives will not be worth living. As I write this he is on my case to go to bed and is on to his fourth half glass of red. Kevvy is great in that he applies a quiet pressure to make sure we get more than a few hours sleep, as well he gets us going in the morning if we are fluffing around chewing up time. It is always a constant battle getting these journals done, I love doing them and having Falcon on board with his technical expertise and as well doing the occasional journal, has really eased that pressure.
I have to leave you with a story about an incident that happened at our lunch stop at Larrimah. It involves Kevvy and was definitely the funniest thing to happen to date. Larrimah is a very small town that consists of a pub, of course! A couple of homes, a population of 13 people, yes just 13 people, and then there is Fran of Fran’s Devonshire Teahouse. We called into the pub first to check out the zoo that was attached to it, yes a small zoo that had lots of birds, snakes and would you believe it three live, not dead, very moving like type crocodiles. Kim was beside herself with excitement at seeing yet another lot of crocodiles on this trip. We then moved onto Fran’s as the sign on the highway coming into town promised Devonshire teas and I had a hankering for one immediately.
Fran said she was 63, she started Fran’s Teahouse 19 years ago, she will chew your ear off assuring you that everything on the premises is cooked fresh today, and then in the next sentence tells us she freezes everything and whenever a customer wants something she ‘zaps’ it in the microwave. And let me tell you this, that lady could talk under water, be buried under a mudslide, put on the moon, left in the Sahara desert, dropped into a 50km deep cave and never stop talking. And the only thing she will talk about is how fresh her home-made cooking is and how she zaps it in the microwave. We walked in and I was ready to order my Devonshire tea when Fran convinced me that a Camel pie, -yep a camel pie- just this moment and don’t forget ‘fresh’ from the oven was what I needed, not a silly Devonshire tea. What was I thinking? So Scotty and I are sitting down with our fresh home-made straight from the oven pie and I am nearly gagging with every bite and Scotty Mr-cast-iron-guts is enjoying every mouthful, when Fran sits down and watches us eat and continues to tell us how fresh they are straight from the oven and pipes up and suddenly says; “so boys what do you think of my fresh from the oven camel pie?” I start to say something and she cuts me off and says; “It’s okay, be honest, everyone loves my camel pies.” Did I mention they were fresh and straight from the oven? Anyway I said, between bouts of regurgitating, “Fran to be perfectly honest I am totally not enjoying this and I stopped eating it there and then. I managed to eat half of it and next thing I know Kevvy has grabbed it and finished it off.
Now Kevvy has finished my camel pie -which was suggested by Falcon that it may contain traces of her late husband, as Fran also said she was a little short on camels around the time her husband left her- and he puts his left foot up on the Kmart type 20 year old plastic $10 chair. Fran takes one look at Kevvy and in an explosive voice rockets out; “get your foot off my f#*ken chair!” I have never seen Kevvy move so fast; first he puts it down to appease her and then jokingly holds it above the plastic 30 year old Target $15 table and Fran saw red. I watched her walk into her kitchen and hold the table inside, shaking her head and looking at a huge carving knife set above on the wall. She then walked out, sat down with us and told us how everything was fresh and the pies had just come out of the oven and boy were they fresh! When we went to pay for our two camel pies and two milkshakes we had to ask what we owed as there are no prices advertised anywhere, just signs all over the shop saying stuff like, you guessed it, ‘home-made fresh out of the oven pies sold here, if you wish to know my prices don’t ask until you have eaten and just remember everything here is fresh from the oven and home-made. We were shocked when she asked for $30.00, slotted it straight into her side pocket, grinned at us and gave us no change. But for pure entertainment value it was ‘the best’ 30 bucks we have ever spent. Don’t miss Fran’s Tea House if ever in Larrimah. And that is all I am going to say about Fran and her awesome fresh-from-the-oven- zapped-in-the-microwave camel pies...
Lastly I just wanted to say thank you to Linda and George Laxford at the Territory Manor Caravan Park, who provided an amazing cabin with air-conditioning for a greatly discounted rate. That night the special they had on was an all you could eat roast dinner for just $15.00 a head. With Nick and Matt also staying at the same park the owners definitely lost out with four hungry cyclists and two famished road crew members demolishing everything but the cutlery and plates. It is the only van park I have ever seen where the actual cabin walls are made out of termite mounds. Of which I can assure you there is no shortage of up here. I have been keeping a rough count of termite mounds since first sighted over 1400km’s ago and I lost count after 666 million billion- there was no way I was starting again! Makes sense I guess as anything made of timber they would eat.
Hey guess what I lost my bet, it is now past 12pm and I am so pathetic at writing and thinking fast.
Three days of riding to go, an easy 106km day tomorrow into Katherine. I am so excited as I have always wanted to see and swim in Katherine Gorge.
All the best and thanks heaps for following our journey to Darwin.
Sharky