Day 142 | Larapinta Drive, a bit further: now I remember the Mereenie Loop

44 km | zzOz total: 7,358 km

The rain has gone, blown away by the wind.

The wind is still here, a huge wind, an easterly, and I’m heading due east.

The road, here it’s soft, bogsville, after the rain, then a bit rocky, like riding on uneven cobblestones, the rocks stick out of the clay, unavoidable, and then there’s the sand and rock together, it all changes back and forth.

The first 26km are uphill, nothing too dramatic with the incline but combined with smashing into that wind and the road surface and it turns out to be quite the Trifector.

I look down at the computer: 6.5 km/hour, that’s 4 mph, and remember back to the last encounter with the road with the enthusiastic Ahn and Chee, managing 55 km on each of the first full days.

I switch the computer to the time but that’s just as bad: I inadvertently look down, 2 minutes have passed.

Best just to admire the view and for the first 21 km I’m heading up a valley close to the Gardiner Range, not exactly the Southern Alps, it would take maybe 20 minutes to walk to the top, but it does have a most unusual and rhythmic, make that rhythmatic even, form. It’s a sinusoidal pattern with a dip every 800 m or so, as an artist you’d need a palette with Raw Sienna and Burnt Umber featured prominently, just waving along, for all those 21km.

In celebration of Melbourne Cup Day, I’ve found out it’s the first Tuesday in November, a public holiday in that city only, for the horse race that stops the nation, a congregation of 5 brumbies eye me up suspiciously, snorting, no doubt attempting to catch my (camel-like) scent, a dangerous move in my present sweaty condition but the wind’s too strong. Eventually the lead mare makes a sudden break for it and they thunder off on their stumpy legs, hooves flailing in the spinifex.

Half an hour later there’s another 4 neddies with a similar response to my intrusion.

Almost lunchtime I just about reach the pass when the clay turns sticky. The glug coats the wheels an inch thick then fills the complete gap with the mudguards. Unlike yesterday’s wheel rotation but movement nonexistent today the wheels stopped completely.

Yeah, jammed up solid with pink clay, I’d pumped all the water out of the mix.

I gouged the stiff brew out to some extent with a stick, now my sandals are equally coated, then 100 m later, well you get the picture.

After 4 km of this, the system is not working and my persistence doesn’t seem to be either, I finally remove the front and trailer guard, they are just doing their job too efficiently, and for some reason almost immediately the road improves, into 15 km of bone jarring cobblestones.

Yes, now I remember why I used to say the Mereenie Loop was one of the more rugged sections of my travels, despite being only about 150 km of “gravel” road.

The rain sure hasn’t helped: today’s average speed less than 9km/hour, not including the time I was stationery removing said crud from wheels.

I stopped shortly after 4 pm to dry out the tent, sleeping bag, etc after those string of wet days.

It’s perfectly calm.

Dingo: 1.

Brumbies: 20.