Melbourne to Mataranka – Hot Hot Honda

A sweaty idiot at the Devils Marbles.

By 10am on the last day of January 2011, it had already hit 40 degrees in Horsham, Victoria. Beside the Western Highway sheep huddled together in the shade of the occasional gum tree, wheat crops swayed in the furnace wind and my Honda was getting hot. I parked outside a big Woolworths, took off my helmet and staggered into the air conditioning. 300km down, 3500 to go. Over a can of coke I looked at the bike. It leaned low over its stand under the weight of my pack and camping gear bungee-strapped to the seat. The paintwork glowed dusty red in the blinding light. It looked upset. 

The CB 250 was designed for commuters. It was small, light and economical. Only months before this bike had been plucked from a comfortable life carting an IT professional around suburban Melbourne – kept under cover and never carrying anything heavier than a Macbook Pro. Now it was carrying 50kgs of camping gear and a sweaty idiot from Melbourne to Darwin – right through the middle of the driest inhabited continent on earth – in summer. No wonder it was narky.

           By Bordertown the north wind was slowing progress badly. It was like riding into God’s fart. I was singing Cranberries songs into my helmet and the heat was so intense one of my nipples had melted off. I found the local swimming pool and rode straight off the diving board. Well no, I didn’t really, but it was tempting. My feet were so hot that when I walked through the kiddies pool it evaporated. The thermometer on the kiosk read 44 degrees.

I floated around gently steaming for half an hour and decided that my goal of reaching Adelaide early next morning wasn’t going to happen. I rode another couple of hours and set up camp in a truck stop 30 km from Coonalpyn.
 

Lunch and an oil change on the Stuart Highway

            A couple of big rigs were pulled up and as I wandered past to stretch my legs a driver got out.

            “Hot.” he said.

            I knew it was hot because he was exactly the 57^th person to tell me.

            “Must be shit on the bike.”

            Hmmm.

            “Good beer weather.”

            My ears pricked up. I knew these guys had fridges in their cabins. Was he going to offer?

            “Course I can’t have any in the truck.”

            Ah.

            I limped back to my hotbox tent and crashed out.

These rest areas are dotted all along the Stuart. They're not pretty but they are free.

The next day was much more bearable and I cruised the 250km to Adelaide, enjoying the gently winding highway through the Adelaide hills. On the long descent into town the little bike hit 130km per hour – still a record.

I picked up a new clutch cable and spent the day hanging out with my mate Stu Harvey in and around Glenelg. He has a CBR600 and it was great putting around the pretty beachside streets together without having my bag strapped on or my jacket cooking me.

After an unspecified number of Coopers Pale Ales and some very decent take away pizza I woke up shite and briny, ready for the ride up through Port Augusta and into the outback proper.

            I was grateful for the cooler conditions, although it was still mid thirties. Riding with my jacket unzipped and streaming behind me was the only way to stay cool, plus it was a bit ‘easy rider’ which is always good. I had left all my cooking gear and some extra camping stuff at Stu’s so now I was travelling without a backpack which was a vast improvement.

With a 12 litre tank I had to stop at every roadhouse. Petrol at this one was $1.95 per litre.

            Stopping at Port Augusta only long enough to fuel up and wash away the dregs of a hangover with some dirty fast food, I set off north – only roadhouses, road trains and dust between here and Coober Pedy. At Glendambo I stopped while a heavy thundery shower swept across the desert. I told the Vietnamese ladies working at the roadhouse that I had been to Glendambo twice in my life and it had poured rain both times. What are the odds? The barman told me that this time three years ago he had been here during a 12 day spell when the weather had topped 50 degrees every day.

“It was shit.” he said with a thousand-yard stare.

I was glad of the rain. These light showers in the desert were like welcome little bursts of air conditioning.

Dodging showers in the desert.

On a roadhouse TV near Woomera I had seen the destruction in Queensland caused by cyclone Yasi. Everyone said that the rain would hit Alice Springs in a few days. I had been doing about 700km a day because I’d heard that parts of the Stuart Highway flood easily and I wanted to get as far north as possible before the rain hit.

After two days riding through flat scrubby desert, eating roadhouse burgers and camping in rocky rest areas I had an early lunch in Alice. Palm trees whipped over Todd St mall as black clouds closed in. The wind had swung around to the south and cooled down, giving me a push straight up and across the tropic of Capricorn.

            200kms later I came around a corner to find a row of parked vehicles, their owners nervously eyeing the 300 metre wide river that had formed across Australia’s main North-South arterial. Grey nomads with caravans and wives named Shirley watched road trains and Landcruisers bash through the torrent.

            “Look Norm darlin’ let’s just go back to Alice. You know what happened last time,” said the Shirleys.

            A group of aboriginal men drove through from the other way in a beaten up EB Ford, one fella driving and the others wading through knee deep.

            “Deep, eh?” I said.

            “Yeah. Gettin’ deeper, too.” One of them smiled at me. “But you’ll be right, eh.”

            Yeah, ‘course I would.
 

The Stuart Highway north of Alice Springs. It was even deeper farther on.

            On my first day riding I had stopped at Kaniva in the Western District and taken to my motorbike boots with a Swiss army knife, hacking three inch-wide ‘air vents’ in each boot. Up until now it had been a great success, giving my feet some air flow and preventing my socks from evolving into complex life-forms. Now, however, I discovered a downside as I rode through fast flowing water up to my ankles, over the little bike’s brakes, chain and engine covers. Can that be good for it? I wondered, as my boots filled with water and the current tried to push me into a road train which had decided to cross from the other side at the same time as me for, I presumed, some sort of moral support.

That night, after nearly 800kms and 12 hours riding, I made it to Mataranka thermal pools. I set up my tent poorly and lurched to the bar to get a meal and a beer. Just as I got to the open-walled bar, the sky exploded. Water streamed off the roof and within five minutes the road was six inches deep. That was about all I had time to see because as I attempted to order a beer over the din of rain on the iron roof, the power cut out. Cyclone Yasi had got me.