Day 77 | into the wind, Leigh Creek: plugging away for 6 hours

67 km | Heading west total: 2,681 km

Ena’s trusty bike has taken her more than 40k km from Germany via Russia, Tibet, China, Thailand, somehow to East Timor before arriving in Darwin.

That cross Europe and through Asia trek took about a year and she has been in Oz for another year.

She has been quite fearless with her riding tackling long stretches of remote Outback roads mostly off the seal. I didn’t get the full story but from Darwin about a year ago she headed down the west coast to Perth and then east in the middle of winter via the Great Central Road that goes directly from Kalgoorlie to Uluru. Then somehow headed to Cairns but came back via dirt roads through Normanton, Mt Isa, and the west of Queensland to Birdsville, down the Birdsville Track to pick grapes at Clare and is now heading back towards Darwin via more dirt roads.

The bike had no gears but she joked it was a three speed: riding along the flat, pushing up all the hills, and freewheel downhill.

Then she said the real 3 speeds were Stop, Go and Stop.

It really is a low-tech approach to transportation.