Day 471 | Dajarra roadside stop: why not stay here?
84 km | zzOz total: 14,699 km
You’d think that someone with as many miles under my belt out here in the sticks wouldn’t stuff up the essential aspects of this stage of the trip, ie, water and the distance.
Actually yesterday I started on the detoxification of my water bottles back at the Travellers Haven in Mt Isa, usually I add a couple of drops of bleach you can often find lying around but on this instance I used boiling water. After using the bottles for a while with water from untreated sources there’s always the possibility of some greeblie growth but all the bottles, 7 of them, are now either stainless or Sigg aluminium and that cuts out on light penetration.
I filled the 7, it’s a bit of a task, then started on the two 10 litre leaky Ortlieb water sacks. For some reason the tap I was using was a dribble and maybe I became frustrated because I left with 3 or 4 litres in one and 5 or 6 in the other, I don’t usually fill them completely but that was really low tide.
That should have been enough for the 150 km to Dajarra, the next water source, that’s 6.5 litres in the bottles and probably 9 litres in the sacks, but I hadn’t reckoned on the headwind and the ambient temperature, it’s basically been 2 days around 38ºC, and with the water just a little salty with a crust of calcium carbonate in the sacks, you can just drink and drink.
Even for dinner last night I was on rations, no soup and I thought I’d swill the wash up water from the dishes this morning, it’s only milk powder and porridge. Lucky because it became apparent the situation would get tight later this afternoon.
It became a somewhat cruel game, I’ll sip in 15 minutes or when I get to that sign down the road, whichever is longer and once there postponing it for another 3 minutes. When I finally saw the town water tank from a distance I drained the last mouthful.
Of course it was somewhat undulating but I had the impression it was mostly uphill, bashing into the wind despite Dajarra being comparable in elevation to Mt Isa.
The road is single lane, ie, wide enough for the occasional roadtrain and nothing else, inches to spare each side, most of the traffic was white mining 4WDs moving at great pace. I played chicken a bit, wobbling across the road when I was in their view and hovering nearer the edge of the asphalt as they approached, the idea was to encourage them to drop 2 wheels off the road into the dirt, ie, just like they have to when they meet another car. When they meet a roadtrain they have to get completely off the road, those roadtrains don’t, can’t, budge for anything, due to their load they would flip if they tried to be nimble.
A few 4WDs were resolute in staying completely on the asphalt meaning they’d whizz by with, err, limited clearance, one or two just maintaining their considerable velocity, they really need to be elsewhere fast.
To celebrate today’s survival I went down to the roadhouse, the town’s population is around 150, for a burger with the lot, the Irish backpacker cook on her last days away from civilisation took a shine to me and loaded it way up, complete with a plate of chips, I spent money on a frigid 2 litres of milk rather than a solitary beer, finally a drink without high salt content.
There’s a good tap here at a funny little roadside campsite in the centre of what was once the largest staging post for loading cattle on trains in the world, I’m informed, I’m under a spreading tree, no one can really see me, I’ll really load up in the morning, predictions are it will be 40ºC for the next couple of days until I reach Boulia.