NQ 2 NT Journal Entry
Day 9
Innisfail to Mt Garnet
By: Mark “Sharky” Smoothy
Daily statistics
Distance: 138km’s
Average speed: 23.1kmph
Altitude Gain: 1880 metres
Riding time: 5:46:00
Air Temperature: 32 degrees
Humidity: 82%
Wind direction: South east, at our backs, you little ripper!
Road kill count: 5 Snakes, 4 Skippy’s, 1 Lizard, 4 Birds, 2 Tree Roo’s, 2 Rabbits and 2 unknowns.
Road kill count was made famous by Andrew Schindler, fellow Smiddy rider from the past three years and now known as Schindler’s Road Kill list. Of course we cannot hope to be as good as the grand master but we do it to remind us of the great one... Miss you Schindi! For us it is a combined effort with road crew throwing in their two bobs worth.
Prior to getting into the ride I thought I might share a few things about our starting point in Innisfail. Up until she was flattened by Cyclone Larry on the 20/03/2006, Innisfail was famous for its sugar production, still is, as the region brings in excess of 87 million dollars worth of sugar per annum. The town centre has a mixture of beautiful old and new buildings and a quick ride around the centre makes one realise that the locals are proud of their beautiful little town of 8000 inhabitants. I decided to start the ride from here purely because it was the closest town that was in a ‘proverbial’ straight line across to Darwin.
Anyway welcome to day nine of our epic adventure from Brisbane to Darwin. The Smiddy Challenge saw us clock up 1600km’s in the first eight days. After two rest days and a portage from Home Hill to Innisfail, the ‘Falcon’ and I were ready to begin our quest to cross two states and hopefully end up in Darwin in 16 days time.
We decided to begin our journey at the Innisfail Habour, with a planned 8am start time stretching out to 9:30 thanks to a media story and photo opportunity with the local Innisfail Bulletin newspaper. ABC radio was also able to offer us a small interview and plug our ride and fundraising efforts.
The first 60km’s of today’s ride consisted of mostly climbing to the highest point from sea level of 1050 metres and not much descending. ‘Falcon’ was having a great day but could not act on it as he knew I was struggling for the entire day and stuck by my side. Thanks Falcon. Today’s route was absolutely gorgeous with stunning rain forest, mountainess type views and majestic skies completing the backdrop. I was so tired that I could not fully appreciate it but a small part of me was acknowledging the beauty. To be honest I think part of my tiredness is that I am not actually feeling all that well, but the other main contributing factor is that I am missing my 60 Smiddy mates from the main Smiddy Challenge. That eight days with the crew I can honestly say is the absolute maximum highlight of my year. I miss my mates and it showed today in my performance on the bike.
The last half of our journey today saw around 20km’s of downhill and with a tailwind we were absolutely hooting along at times. But every time we would hit anything that resembled a slight incline I was back to crawling pace. Proof of this lay in our average speed. Hopefully I will come better for tomorrow’s stage as it is a 220km day to Georgetown. When we pulled up into Mt Garnet I promptly got off my bike, sat on the sidewalk, then lay down on my back and instantly fell asleep. Kevvy was in the Mt Garnet pub working his magic with the publican, he let me sleep for 10 minutes before shaking me awake. My mate Ronny Steely will vouch for my ability to fall asleep rather quickly...right Steely?
Mt Garnet is a very small tidy town of just 300 people. The name Garnet came from a slope where copper was first found in 1882. Garnet is a hard stone found in many different colours. By 1901 Mt Garnet was a booming mining town that saw over 2000 people living here. That same year a provisional school was built to accommodate the huge increase in miner’s children. Again that same year the mining company collapsed due to the high cost of actually getting the raw materials railed out. It became an even darker year, when due to poor sanitation at the school there was an outbreak of Typhoid fever. A local poet at the time penned these disturbing words:
Was filthied and abused
Then Typhoid took its ghastly toll
Of people born so free
One lonely grave, a head stone says,
Contains our infants three.
I was chatting to a local guy Kim Gravatt over a beer tonight, and he told me that there is a lot of pride in their town, there is very little violence or crime and that the aboriginals co-exist very comfortably within the community. Mt Garnet is kept aloft now thanks to its massive stores of zinc and copper and since 2003 has become Australia’s highest producers of these low cost base metals.
Incredible acts of kindness (IAOK) today came from Marcus Lake of the Mt Garnet Pub. Kevvy and Kimmy, our unbelievable road crew, drove in ahead of us and by the time ‘Falcon’ and I rolled into the small town of Mt Garnet, they had secured 3 bedrooms for free and the first beer was on the publican.
IAOK 2: At Innisfail we called into the Jagad’s Cafe for breakfast and got chatting to the owner and the next thing he has donated $70.00 and given us a contact of one of his friends to hit up in Georgetown for a further $50 donation.
IAOK 3: Kim Gravatt (male Kim) is a regular at the Mt Garnet pub, he overheard Kevvy talking to the publican about what we were doing and proceeded to buy us a round of beers. I of course had a shandy, I actually shocked Kevvy tonight when I drank 3 shandy’s, two of them schooners!
Our road crew in the two K’s, Kevvy and Kimmy are getting along just fine. Kim has a great teacher in ‘Captain Kev’ and I knew they were bonding well when in the afternoon it was noticed that Kim was allowed to drive ‘The beast’. This is the name I gave it because fully loaded our beloved Sargeants 4WD Ute looks mean and ready for action.
Cheers until tomorrow.
Sharky