Overlander Way & Stuart Highway

Well long time since I posted.  I suffered from very little internet access over the past few weeks.  Now I almost feel guilty writing an entry.

Road House Blues

Basically the only places to stay on the Stuart highway are road houses and pubs.  Each on tries to out do the other to attract the punter.  They are usually your only source of food, fuel, beer, and a shower. Me being someone on a bike all of those things are very important.  They are typically spaced every 200 k's or so.  The roads are amazing in their quality.  In NT they are now rated to 130kph.  I at best do 125kph.  Most of the time I sit around 110.  Lots of reasons for me going slower.  1. Call me Mr. Safety.  2. Call me Mr. Safety. 3. Call me cheap.

Note: I'm smiling under that helmet.

Now I've also started to keep my emergency water supplies strapped to the bike at all times now.  Turns out they make the bike handle much better.  I'm hanging them off the front crash bars.  The weight has moved forward and now the front tire has more presure on the road surface.

Barkly Homestead

My first NT stop was at Barkley Homestead, 241.28kms West of Camooweal. aka 241.28 km's between fuel stops.   This is basically a must stop for everyone,  They got nice little hotel rooms and reasonable camp sites.  Here is a tip for people pitching a tent in one of these places.  Always look for green grass ( yeah like you are going to find that. ) or puddles.  Both usually mean the ground is soft enough to put a tent peg in.  I pitched my tent right on top of a puddle.  Tent was up in a few minutes.  The poor bastard beside me chose flat smooth ground.  I've never seen a pretzel shaped peg before.

The bar and kitchen there are not bad.  Beer is cold which is the most important.

Big tip here.  When going to the showers.  Bring your towel.  I somehow forgot.  I had to leg it back to the tent half dressed dripping wet to get the towel.  Then leg it back to the showers so I could shower again because I was covered in mud.

On the day I left Barkly Homestead the wind had licked up.  Not just wind.  Gusting wind.  Steady wind is easy to deal with.  However Gusting wind is definitely not easy to deal with.  I seriously struggled to put down the K's.   I was doing a solid 80kph.  At least it was coming from just behind my right hip.  So I got a little push along.

I was however not quick enough to stop a woman riding alone going in the other direction on a Harley Soft Tail. We had met the day before.  She was headed in the other direction.  Into the wind.  She had an extra gas can,  but there was no way in hell she was going to get to the next stop even with the extra gas.

Rennier Springs

The ride into Rennier Springs from Barkly Homestead was rough but worse was yet to come.  Beautiful roads and fantastic scenery.

One the ride in I went through such glamorous places as Three Ways,  Banka Banka, & Elliott.  Actually that's all you will ride through.  There ain't much on this road.  Word of warning, don't stop in Elliott for the night. Unfortunately this place has some domestic issues with booze and crime.

The picture to the right is the springs.  Talk about a jewel in the rough.  You can't expect much on this road.  But what you will find is tons of character.

While staying here I got to know the locals.  I got to see this poor back packer kid that got off this bus to start his new job.  The look of pure horror on his face was priceless.  He was German, and always lived in a city. Now he's in a place where there is no phone reception and definitely no internet and the grass is mowed by goat.

Oh and yes I pitched my tent next to the unit block.  I was stealing power.

Daly Waters

The ride into Daly waters was possible the hardest ride of my entire life.  I had 0-60kph gusts coming from 45 degrees behind my right side.  It was down right dangerous.  I did not managed to exceed 80kph.  Most of the time I was hovering around 60kph.  This on a road that was 130kph limit.

Now for a little lesson in bad air.  Bad Airtm Mark Daku,  is turbulent air that thrown off by passing or leading vehicles. Many things affect how you as a rider will be affected by bad air.

1. Closing speed.  This is the sum of your speed and the speed of the approaching vehicle.  The larger this number the bigger the blast of air that will hit you.
2. Direction of prevailing wind.  Now this is Australia.  So for you American / Euro types this will be backwards.  If the wind is coming from you left side then the impact of bad air is reduced.  If the wind  is from the right hand side the impact can be dramatically worse.   For winds from the right hand side speeds of -0-30kph and not much of an issue.  30-60kph.  This starts to be very difficult.  Over 60kph.  Just get off the road.  In the 30-60 kph I strongly recommend slowing down as much as you can when trucks are approaching.
3. Steady vs Gusting.  Steady wind is manageable but needs to be treated as if it were a dingo.  Always be on guard.  Gusts however must be treated with extreme caution.  A gust can move you in a lane by a couple of metres.   If you are top heavy then the impact make your bike feel as if some is trying to kick the legs out from under you.  This is how you can go down.  Over correcting can result in you be laid down on the road.  Slow down in gusts.  Gusts only make bad air that much harder to handle.
4. The vehicle approaching.  Small cars that are built for speed are hardly noticed in the bad air scale.  As they are designed to have the air flow around them.  On the opposite scale is the road train with flat bed trailers with the ramps in the upright position.  The easiest one to spot is the road train.  A big square truck coming at you is going to toss turbulent air.  But take a look for a wind deflector on top of the cab.  These things actually smooth out the air a bit.  No air deflector means really bad air. Next take a look at the trailers it is pulling.  An enclosed trailer stirs up less bad air than an open trailer like a live stock trailer. The worst trailer is the flat bed with folded up ramps at the end.  These ramps act like battering rams in the air.  Now you also have to look for the movement of the trailers.  In windy conditions the trailers will actually snake behind the cab.  A snaking trailer is a trailer that is 1 affected by air and is 2 giving bad air.  Next down the list of bad vehicles is the caravan.  You can see the traits of these road trains in smaller vehicles as well.  So keep you eyes open and act accordingly.  As a general rule, slow down and move over.  Allow for the bad air to move you further towards the ditch.
5. Following a vehicle.  This is a smaller scale version of the approaching problem.  The more bad air you experience the farther back you should hang.  It's very tempting to come up real close to that caravan going 90kph and shoot out past it when the coast is clear.  Don't.  One you restrict your ability to see past it.  And Two when a vehicle passes you are now being smacked around by at least two sources of bad air.  Wait for a passing lane or wait for a clear spot on open road. Your on a bike you will still pass it very quickly.  You don't need to be riding it's bumper to pass.

Should probably make a section just for bad air!

Now this trip as I said before was the hardest ride of my life.  At one point I stopped on the side of the road.  I was basically stuck.  There was no way I could ride in the gusts.  Simply too intense.  I was also in a section of road where it was not possible to camp.  A large flood plain.  The road it self was raised fairly high up so that in the wet the floods would not close the road.  This just made the gusts worse.  I was for all intensive purposes, stuck.  I then glanced down into the ditch and noticed the old road.  It was like someone had handed me a get out of jail free card.  This road was still paved and in reasonable condition.  No matter what, I had to get off the road.  So down was my only option.  Well I get down on the old road and the wind gusts where basically zero.  I had no intention of riding this road.  But I did as long as it was good and as long as I was able to get out.  Well I managed to travel over 20km at about 70kph.  This got me through the worst part and at the end of the old road I was able to easily get back onto the Stuart highway.  I was now travelling on the main road at 60kph.  Yep slower.

I don't know where I learned this.  But I remember sailors avoided long lines of clouds in the sky.  Once you are under them the wind dies off.  For about 150km I watch this line of cloud in the sky.  Just praying to get under it.  It worked.  About 60 km outside of Daly waters I got under the clouds and the winds died off to nothing.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Daly waters is the oldest pub in Australia.  It also holds the record for the shortest amount of time a McDonalds store was open.  Yep.  McDonalds opened a store here for 1 afternoon.  That's it. Apparently they shipped in all the stuff it takes to run a store and they served burgers and what not for charity.

Daly waters has a dusty plain next door that serves as the caravan park.  There are definitely not enough dunnies to handle all the people.  I stayed in a cabin room. A real bed and a toilet that didn't have a queue behind it.

Katherine

Daly Waters to Katherine.  In my mind this is where the Top End starts.  From here on up is where I associate those incredibly hot summers and torrential rains.  The start of the beautiful vistas and really dangerous critters.  

One of my stand out memories of the place is this is where a train was literally washed off the tracks by floods.  Everything else in the region was smart enough to seek high ground and stay put. The roads where closed, live stock was moved, schools where closed.  But yet the rail companies thought the tracks where good even though they were under water.

The ride in was smooth and easy,  The winds of the previous days had died down to something that easy to handle.  I got a chance after the last few days to really take in the road and the views.  The Stuart Highway is a very good road.  With long slow curves built to handle road trains at 130kph.  This was a road built for cruiser motorcycles.  The Harley riders out there would love it, as this is the type of road a Harley can handle.

I had a little apprehension about staying in Katherine.  In the last few years the news would always paint Katherine as a town ravaged by high level of alcohol violence, low employment and high crime.  At first when I rolled into Katherine I turned into a neighbourhood to have a look around.  All of the houses are surrounded by high fences and the yards all had dogs.  My fears where looking like there were about to come true.  I then decided to find the caravan park.  On recommendation I was headed to SpringVale Homestead 

The Homestead was a great little place. It is a little run down. Loads of character. All sorts of critters are at the homestead. ducks, guineafowl, wallabies, cookatoos, turtles and fresh water crocs.  All of which beg for food.  The ducks are so fat I thought there were some kind of goose at first.  I've never seen turtles that beg. When you come up to the billabongs edge the turtles start to creep closer and will eventually come out of the water and look up at you waiting for food.  There are also some small crocs in the billabong.

Katherine Gorge & Night River Croc spotting

A complete surprise was the Katherine Gorge.  I'm sure I heard of it before but I complete forgot it existed. While doing some the what the heck do I do in this town information search one of the first things I came across was the Katherine Gorge.  An absolute must see I was told.  I thought it's just a gorge. Well it turns out it is no typical gorge.  The gorge was formed by the erosion of cracks in the escarpment over ohh lets say a few years.  The cracks effectively act like a grid layout across the escarpment.  This makes for very straight very long walls.  Now this is some 300km inland and salties manage to make there way up the river every year during the wet. Since it has become illegal to hunt salties they are expanding to their original territories again.  This includes Katherine and farther up stream.  So each year at the start of the dry the rangers and local councils embark on trapping and moving the animals.  Unfortunately the gorge was not clear of salties when I was there.  So I couldn't go for swim in the gorge.  I was able to spot some freshies however while I cruised around on the tour.