2016-08-06 -13 131

Location

In the bush next the Ghan Railway line, near Hayes Creek, south of Darwin.

Participants

Felix Dance

Expedition

I'm on this long 2500km ride from Darwin to Cairns, and I was only on day 3 when I got into reception to check the geohashes. Bingo, 20kms Away, right on the service track for the Great Ghan Railway Northern Australia Route Awesome.

Spending about 2 seconds wondering if riding off for this one was really the right thing to do before quickly realising that it'd be a betrayal of everything I held dear to not do it, off I went.

The problem was water. My meticulous planning had me running out of water 5 kms prior to reaching an old campsite which should have some. Adding about 10 kms to my route wasn't going to be nice, particularly as 10kms is over an hour on these roads.

Anyway, I rode off the main road into a gold mining region and then onto the 'No Entry' Railway service road.

Awful road: Full of corrugations, creek crossings, overgrown vegetation and ridiculous boulders. At one point I scared a herd of bulls and they destroyed their fence escaping from me and ran over the railway tracks (luckily, no train).

At last I arrived. I clambered under a barbed wire fence on the other side of the tracks and shooed away a bunch of wallabies. Took photos, headed back. It was a long, long ride to the campsite.

But I got there. Just as I was rationing the last sips of water by storing them in my mouth. And, as it turned out, I happened to turn up on the night of free camping, a massive free BBQ and at the same time as a bus load of five touring bands from Melbourne had arrived to put on a massive show. What a geohashing finale!