Jaimi and I arrived in William Creek, a ‘town’ with more planes than local residents (9 planes vs. 6 locals), which made it something of an anti-climax after 3 days of cycling through desert on the Oodnadatta Track. The pub – the centre of every Aussie outback town (the centre of the universe for the […]
australian outback
Cycling Across Australia 7 – The Oodnadatta Track
The desert demands so much, and provides so little.When I was cycling the Oodnadatta Track, I decided in a melodramatic fit of frustration that this was surely the most godforsaken place in the world.It is now a few weeks since I reached Marree and finished the Oodnadatta Track, which has given me some time to […]
Cycling Across Australia 6 – Riding to Uluru
For anyone travelling through the centre of Australia, Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) will surely be one of the highlights. It is the icon of the Outback. Getting there was a detour which would add a week to my Australia crossing, but after several thousand kilometrers of nothing, a week of cycling to look at a big […]
Cycling Across Australia 5 – The Red Centre Way
CRAAAACK! Jaimi skidded to a halt in front of me. I swerved, braking hard and narrowly avoided colliding into her. I saw her mudguard mangled into the rear wheel, plastic and metal, buckled and bent. “It’s just your mud guard,” I told her, relieved; had it been the derailleur (the thing that changes the gears) […]
Cycling Across Australia 2 – Finding Beauty in the Nothing
I love the unpredictability of travelling, all the random and serendipitous encounters that surprise you along the way. In Katherine, I met an English Girl, Jaimi. Like me, she had spent the last two years cycling from England, and though similar routes led us to Australia, sometimes only two weeks apart, we had never met […]
Cycling Across Australia 1: Did I bite off too much?
As the plane had descended into Darwin, I had gazed south. Beyond the grey smudge of city, I could see a huge distance – perhaps 40 or 50 kilometres – of nothingness, which stretched right up to the horizon. I pictured this vastness extending over that horizon, then the horizon after that and, indeed, for […]