Day 15 – Fri, 16 Jul to Laura

Check out day 14 also as both were posted today.

What a fantastic nights sleep – the total tiredness from the previous day, the cascading water and the great site made for a really wonderful rest. We did get a couple of showers in the early morning and I was contemplating a rest day, but the sun broke through and another day of riding was to be had.

From Endeavour Falls we were heading initially N for a few km then heading NW on Battle Camp Rd – not sure why it is called this but we did pass the Battle Camp Station so I guess that may explain it.

This was a full day’s riding on gravel – not the same as yesterday a fair bit better. But in about 10km we hit our first creek crossing. So off the bikes to check things out. This was made difficult by numerous 4WD passing through, stirring up the water and generally rocking and rolling as they went.

So we walked across through the water (boots and all) to check things out for ourselves. I spoke to a southbound couple to ask about the way ahead, as there was no point in crossing this first creek if the road got worse. So we took photos of the Isabella Falls which was fed by the creek and generally summoned up the courage to give it a go.

Off we went, and on crossing we congratulated ourselves – that wasn’t so bad was the general consensus – but a real challenge seeing it was our 1st crossing – sounds like we just crossed the Equator or something doesn’t it, but that would be easier.

So we rode on and the road was dry with lots of corrugations but generally not too bad – maybe our off road skills are just improving. In all we had to do 3 more creek crossing one being a concrete causeway but the others just el natural.

After much discussions on the earlier ones, Rod took the 3rd crossing without checking. I followed his path as I thought he had seen something that I hadn’t. Well the crossing went fine and he stopped on the exit slope. So I followed his path and I promptly stopped about 2m short of where he had stopped.

I hadn’t realised that he stopped because he couldn’t go any further as he was stuck in the heavy river pebbles – exactly why I also stopped. We extricated ourselves and promptly laughed at the audience we had watching us do our thing.

So talk about being led, in his case across the creek (rather than up) without a paddle. I’m still trying to understand his signals after he had casually stepped off the bike and waved – could that mean stop or come on down.

We stopped in at the Old Laura Homestead which had been occupied from around 1830 right through to 1966 – it was a cattle station. We decided that we should look for a camp for the night so we headed for Laura where we are currently spending the night.

This was a good decision for the road deteriorated from here with far more corrugations. When we hit the main Peninsula Developmental Road (this heads N to the Cape) the corrugations simply got worse.  Talk about the t-shirts that state there are 3,545,347 corrugations N – we reckon we travelled at least that every km to camp. Bumpy, you bet.