Day 22 - Coober Pedy to Marla - 4712km Completed

Ulls: What an experience camping underground was ...

Laying our thermarest mattresses out on the dusty gravel inside our cave, we got to bed early after our tour of the old opal mine on the property. Imagine Dr. Harry, crossed with Russell Coyte, you know, the kind of person that laugh talks (ie. laughing whilst talking). And every thing that came out of his mouth was expectant of a return laugh, and one eyebrow would surreptitiously pop up to signal the punchline.

We did finally get to bed, however, you know what everyone likes to do in a cave? Echo! Being school holidays, the tunnels of our evenings home were riddled with crazed children making use of it's natural acoustics. We did however get some sleep in the end, and tried to get off to an early start tomorrow.

Dreaming of 'joining the academy'

It wasn't to be. Torsten switched our CDI units to see if it would solve the problems he'd been having with his bike. It didn't, we were faced with the grim reality of terminating the trip. Torsten and I had played verbal ping pong on the choices we had and the ones we didn't, and how we would face everyone if we had to end the trip.

Torsten came back from his test ride all smiles. He was pretty confident, so we put his dodgy unit in my bike to see how it affected my engines running ability. If it was the problem, we could have one sent to Alice Springs and put the issue to bed.

By the time we reached Marla, we'd come to the conclusion that it was in fact the problem. Not that I'd suffered any real bucking or kicking like he did, but my performance had definitely been affected.

Anyway, Marla has been a comfortable place to rest our weary bones. Weary bikes? Yes, well they're just going to have to wait till Alice ...

262km