Day 19 - Adelaide to Port Pirie - 3741km Completed

Ulls: Definately the 'Wrong Way Round'

After a couple of days in the 'City of Churches', and the bikes serviced, we hit the road north and out of Adelaide. Escorting us for some of the way was Jock, our host for a night in the South Australian capital. Taking us out for dinner to meet some of the local scooter gang was great, and a few too many pints of Coopers later we were set to watch Germany vs Argentina battle it out for a place in the semi final.

In what has proved to be our toughest day yet, we faced a fierce north westerly. This forced us to ride in a fashion that compensated for it. Holding the bike on an angle for hours made it feel like we were taking an endless left hand turn.

After about 150km, we arrived at Snowtown in search of fuel. After riding around the desolute streets, thoughts of nuclear holocaust sprung to mind. Granted it was a Sunday, but really, come on, there was nothing, no people, no dogs barking, no cars. Just this God awful wind and stinging rain. We had to get back to the highway in hope of finding fuel, and to our surprise, low and behold if we'd just stayed on the highway for another kilometre we would have found one.

Filling up and discussing the situation, we decided to turn back and find a way through the nuclear wasteland to reach another, hopefully quieter and less windy road. We did find a way, however, a wrong turn on my part (now I've made few mistakes so far on this trip), left us churning through wet sand, gravel and mud on a track to a place called Yacka, and 'Hard Yakka' it was. You can't forget we're still on our road tyres now, so keeping the back, with 50-60kg extra, from sliding around became hard work fast.

Eventually the clay path we'd been riding on for 15km reunited with the black ribbon our bikes so much preferred. Still no sign from the Gods that the weather would change for the better, and finding shelter in a small fuel station, we found out that the area had not had rain for months. Unfortunately their only supply of fuel was ethanol, a fuel our bikes do not favour.

Bracing ourselves and coming to terms with the fact that we had no other options at this stage, we geared up again after a poor attempt for a coffee, and entered the storm once more. We made it as far as Port Pirie to a not so warm welcome from a motel owner. We, soaked from head to toe and to the bone explained our situation and the details of our trip. He, a prior sufferer of leukemia was not impressed with our efforts and took a miserable $10 off the price of the already expensive room. So we took the discounted price of $92, a little sore, a bit wet and very disappointed.

Well ... what more to say? I thought this was the dry season...

346km