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After a steak and a couple of Coopers at the Orroroo pub, I woke to refuel the bike and myself in main street Orroroo, and set off for Port Augusta. There was a magnificent set of twisties crossing the range and as i got stuck behind a truck for the last 10 minutes downhill, i actually turned around and rode back to the top and back down again (in a much higher set of gears)

After stopping at the information centre in Port Augusta, the road opened up to Woomera. What a dismal place. They try to talk it up and suggest it on the tourist trail, but there is no good reason to be in Woomera. It feels like Canberra (1000x smaller, stuck 50 years ago, in an oven)
Didn’t see any signs to the detention centre. But if you were sent here, you would have to think you made a mistake coming to Australia.
So after taking some photos of rockets, I was back on the road. And what had become evident was that the colour of the landscape was changing. Much more red in the earth now.

Today’s objects of disdain as they tried to knock me off were families of emus and road trains. It was a really windy day and as each road train passed, I was getting blown about the road. I was glad for the weight of the bike, but less so for the windage in the panniers.

After a while, I started to smell what I thought was rain and could see of in the distance, dark clouds over the desert. And it did rain, for at least an hour, which washed the bike of most of the dead grasshoppers (conveniently) and also cooled me down to a comfortable level.

I stopped to refuel at Glendambo and met my first other bike on the trip. Elise was riding her Honda CB250 from Alice Springs to Melbourne! What a star, and doing it with a huge smile. She gave me a tip for dinner in Coober Pedy and we headed off, me north, Elise south. It’s a strange thing where there are only 2 possible directions to go for 1000km.

Arrived in Coober Pedy at around 6pm, just as the downpour stopped and the tempurature had dropped suddenly from 38’C to a very pleasant 21’C

Pulled into Radeka’s underground hotel and had a couple of Coopers, compliments of the manager. We sat around talking hotel business until 11pm, when I went and picked up a MASSIVE pizza from John’s Pizza. I couldn’t even begin to finish it, so shared it with 2 German travellers who were so stoked, as they got to keep the leftovers for breakfast.

Tomorrow may be the last stretch into Uluru!