Day 09 – Sat, 10 Jul to Undara Volcanic National Park

After a spectacular sunset last night, the morning was a slow start – I woke at 6am but just took my time having breakfast and packing the bike. I hadn’t heard from the Wild One since he left Longreach – probably because of mobile service. But I thought I would ride down to the local Police Station and make sure there had been no bike accident on the roads he was likely to travel.

So I was parking my bike outside the police station and who should ride down the other side of the street but the wild one himself. Well I have to stop calling him that now as he was back on his sedate BMW bike. Rod had made it to about 130km from Charters Towers the previous day, rose early and rode in that morning. Talk about perfect timing – you couldn’t plan it that accurately.

We had a chat went up to the Towers Lookout just outside of CT and were on our way a little after 10am. The morning ride N of CT was and easy 210km ride. We had lunch at Greenvale and wasn’t aware of the road ahead.

The road N is a road train route, but the road in most parts was only one vehicle width with space either side. So you can guess who has priority on the bitumen – yep the road trains. They just keep coming and us smaller vehicles (which includes large 4WD towing vans) move off the centre path and onto the gravel. You become quite proficient at it and I guess I’ll need to as I expect a lot more of such roads ahead.

In addition to that there was 40-50km of road works with lots of stop/go controls. Very slow going. By the end of day I had only ridden about 400km but it felt more like a 600km day ride.

Tonight we are camped at the Undara Volcanic NP where there are 100’s of metres of lava tubes – more of that tomorrow when we have seen them. We are currently sitting around an open fire, looking at the wonderful night sky, finishing our nightly tea and both yawning away. Looks like it is that time of day.