Julie and I were supposed to be hiking the 5,000km Continental Divide Trail in the US in 2020, but COVID-19 derailed that plan. Instead, we will have an adventure in Australia, circumnavigating the country on our bikes, a distance of about 16,500km taking approximately five and a half months. We will use minor roads where possible and occasionally catch ferries across rivers and inlets to avoid busier inland routes. We will camp some of the time and stay in motels, hotels, etc, at others. There will be stretches of up to five days with no accommodation or resupply available, so we will need to be self-sufficient.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 044 - Highway 16 to Robinson River

Day:  044

Date: Friday, 14 August 2020

Start:  Junction Highway 1 & Highway 16, Northern Territory (NT)

Finish:  Robinson River Crossing

Daily Kilometres:  94 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  4726

Weather:  Cool and misty early, then sunny and warm to hot

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Muesli

  Lunch:  Trail mix

  Dinner:  Soup, 2-minute noodles

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  Undoubtedly the fully-clothed dip at the end of the day in the Robinson River. 

Lowlight:  Once again, the corrugations, soft sand/dust and rocks of the road.  This is Highway 1, Australia's premier road, circumnavigating the continent, but you would never guess.  Our average speed today was 10kph, and we frequently had to walk the bikes through dust too deep to ride through, and both had falls.  The whole day was spent trying to guess which line was the best to ride, bouncing up and down over rocks and corrugations, and putting in spurts of effort to get through softer sections.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We didn't have a great day.  It started out OK, when just down the road from where we were camped on an eerily misty morning, we encountered two policemen manning the Northern Territory's COVID-19 checkpoint.  After a friendly chat and a bit of paperwork, we were allowed to continue.

From there, we actually made reasonable time for the 26km to the Calvert River where we had breakfast and replenished our water supplies for the day.  It was like an oasis in the savannah, with cool water lagoons, lilies and tropical vegetation, and would have been a good camping spot.

After the river, our day became very tough.  It was hot and dusty hard work on the bad road (see above) with flies constantly and annoyingly in our faces.  There was very little traffic, which generally fell into two categories, those who waved and sped by covering us in dust, and those who waved, but slowed down to spare us the dust and sometimes to ask whether we needed anything.  Our team's social secretary, Julie, was always up for a quick chat on such occasions.

With only 71km to go from our breakfast stop to Robinsons River, we were hopeful of going further before stopping for the night, but as the day wore on and we were worn down, just making the river became our dream.  The last 20km of road was particularly onerous, taking us over two hours, with long sandy sections and never-ending corrugations.  We were very happy to reach the river just after the sun set at around 5:45pm.  There was nowhere to camp close to the river, and not recommended because of crocodiles, so we took a break, filled every water container we had (we can carry about 20 litres), then had a dip in the very inviting clear river, fully-clothed.  Heaven!  We are absolutely caked in red dust at the end of a day such as today.

After the dip, we pushed our bikes up the hill on the other side of the river and found a place to camp.  Both exhausted, we set up camp as quickly as we could, ate and went to bed hoping that the road is a little better tomorrow.

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