The toughest bit so far (14/4/14)

I got up early as was becoming the norm now, and got on the bike as I wanted to eat breakfast down by the seafront as I'd spotted a nice spot yesterday. I took with me my cold hot cross buns and ate them whilst people watching. A family, a short distance away, had chosen to stop there too and were just packing their things up when I arrived. They had three kids with them and the trailer that they were pulling was absolutely loaded with camping gear. I smiled, as it reminded me of camping trips with my family when we were younger and how totally crammed every possible space was with our things. I spent about half an hour here before going back to the site to pack up my things, take down the tent and load the bike for the journey. On the way out of town I filled up with fuel and started the long journey at about 9am. It's nearly 400km which isn't my longest journey so far but as I'd got cock all sleep last night it would certainly feel like it. I stopped at the first roadhouse, called Minilya Roadhouse, for a fuel top up and was already feeling tired, which wasn't a good sign as that was only a third of my journey so far, so had a strong coffee to wake myself up. It's nice and air-conditioned in these road houses too so I was able to cool down a bit. Whilst sitting there enjoying my coffee something caught my eye in front of me that amused me a great deal. I'm saying nothing more about what I saw except that that's about all there is to do on these roads, and they weren't embarrassed so why should I be. Just look at the first picture when you come to them, it'll make sense lol. After my private show I got back on the road hoping the caffeine would kick in soon and shortly after I passed over the Tropic of Capricorn which I thought was quite a unique event so turned around and pulled over for some photo's. Further along the road I was soon distracted by what appeared to be giant red mud coloured boulders randomly dotted around the fields either side of the road. They were really odd and not something I'd seen so far. I stopped to take a few photos, and get a closer look, and they turned out to be giant termite mounds. I thought they usually rise from a narrow base to a point but these ones were more round and fatter than I'd expected. They pretty much appeared randomly like this for the next 200km or so and it wasn't till the last 10km that a sign appeared at the side of the road saying 'Termite mounds'. They've obviously expanded their neighbourhood since that sign was put up.
Most of the land on either side of the road for pretty much my entire journey so far is red/ brown dirt, the odd green bush or small group of trees and the rest of the undergrowth is ground hugging parched bushes that are mainly greyish brown or black in colour. But on this part of my journey I suddenly rode into a section of thick green bushes/ trees about 6-7ft in height lining each side of the road. And there were butterflies everywhere. So much so that, although most of them flew past me, I'm sorry to say not all of them survived my ride through but they just couldn't be avoided. The cars going the other way had their windscreen wipers going and it definitely wasn't raining. This went on for what must have been about 20km and then stopped just as quick as it had started.
I started picking up signs to Coral Bay and as it wasn't that far off the highway I made a snap decision to ride there to see what it was like and to take a few photos. To be honest there wasn't really much there except a few caravan parks and hotels. It was clearly a holiday destination town and the crowded beach proved this. It was certainly picturesque but I wasn't that disappointed I hadn't chosen to stay there longer. I took some photos and then rode back to the highway. After a few more kilometres I was nearly at Exmouth, which was good, as I was really starting to get dispirited and depressed with the really long journey times, lack of conversation, lack of other people on the road, and sheer nothingness between towns. I had already seen some really great things on my travels for which I was grateful and glad I'd done but the distances between them really was a surprise. It could be described as naive, yes, but I really didn't think there would be literally nothing between the towns. I expected to meet a few other bikers perhaps doing the same thing or people with similar agenda's but all those I had met and chatted to were either planning on working, or taking much longer to travel up the coast than I had planned. Where I was stopping for the night or a few days I was always surrounded by families or groups of people who, yes, were willing to chat but ultimately had their own circles. I was starting to feel lonely and, when I looked at Google maps, my tiny little location marker two thirds of the way up Australia was so far from everyone and everything I knew, it really brought the feeling home. When I did see other people on the road they would pretty much always wave which was a nice gesture that you don't get at home but I think the lack of others made me realise that if I did break down for whatever reason I would be absolutely helpless. I had no room for spares of anything like most other vehicles did nor did I have much room for water and food supplies and it was becoming more daunting how isolated I was the further from Perth I got. You see all these cross country treks by the likes of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman and, ok, I'm not as isolated as they were but they've got big support teams behind the camera, and people cooking their meals and above all they had each other. I had me. And it had had a bigger impact than I could ever have anticipated. This was hard and by far the toughest bit so far. I distracted myself by stopping at a memorial on the side of the road called 'Potshot Memorial' and it gave a brief history of how the military had started using the area many years ago and it's development since then. I took some photos and then carried on. I was maybe about 20km from Exmouth when I looked down at my dials and realised my fuel gauge was just on the start of the reserve section. I hadn't ridden the bike to past this before so had absolutely no idea how much further I had to go before it ran out. I was a little worried to say the least. I had been doing speeds over the speed limit on the way here just to shorten the length of travel time, and it was easily done on this monster bike, but had no idea how much of a difference to fuel economy this might make. Just outside town my fuel light came on but thankfully I made it to a petrol station without the bike juddering on its last dregs of fuel. I checked my odometer, it read 250km. So my tank range was approx that as I had reset it when I filled up at Milinya. I would have to remember that for future journeys. I stopped at the tourist information centre on the way past and found out where my hotel/ hostel was. I'd booked it yesterday evening from the caravan park just to make sure I had somewhere to stay. I'd chosen this place from my lonely planet and upon arrival it appeared to be more of a resort than a hostel with a proper reception, big impressive sign out the front and plenty of land to its name. I checked in and they told me where to ride to and where I could park my bike. I found it with no problems and lugged my ever increasing amount of stuff inside the room. There were 10 beds (five bunk beds), with bags and clothes on most of them bar about three. I found one of the unused ones and chucked my stuff on. I walked back to the reception to collect my bed sheets and when I returned to the room with them there was a girl now sitting on one of the beds. After some discussion involving her repeating how to pronounce her name I found out it was Camille. She was French so it's pronounced more like Cameeoo but she accepted I was English and pronunciation isn't our best quality. We chatted while I unpacked and I found out she was also travelling alone too so picked her brains about what she thought about that. She agreed it had it's ups and downs but the freedom was the best advantage. As I now knew how far my bike could get on one tank I took a bit of time to check out the distances between roadhouses for the other parts of my planned journey. I found that my next leg was 280km between fuel stops and another one further up was 290km. This meant I had some decisions to make. Would this be the straw that broke the camels (my) back, and therefore should I make Exmouth my furthest destination and turn back from here? It was very tempting considering how I was feeling too. Or should I buy a jerry can and try to find somewhere to stash it on the bike and eliminate my chance of running out of fuel? And was it safe to carry a can of fuel right behind me in such an exposed position to the very hot sun? I put these thoughts to the back of my mind as there were some other things I wanted to do. It was now about 3.30pm and so I chose to ride back out of town to see some gorges that had been signposted on the way in, and the tourist information centre promised they had sealed roads for the most part. I left the highway and started up the tarmac road to the gorges. They were quite far from the main road but it did remain tarmac for most of it. At the end of the tarmac I tried to go a little bit further to see how bad the roads were but after about 200m of trying to get the bike across the small rocks and pebbles I gave up and stopped to take a look around. The view was beautifully panoramic. I could see right out to the ocean with the gorges dropping away dramatically either side of me and not a sole in sight. I checked my phone to see if I had reception just in case the bike chose now to not start and was surprised to see I had some which was a good thing. I got on the bike and started riding back slowly, stopping every so often to enjoy the change of view and take some photo's. In total I was there about an hour but decided I'd better head back to town so I could get to the shops to buy dinner before they closed. I got back about 5.15pm and decided that instant noodles would be the easiest option. I'd checked out the shared kitchen earlier and as there weren't many pans thought that for one person a quick one pot meal would be fairest to the other kitchen users. I dropped the bits of food that I'd bought back to my room and bumped into Camille again. I told her I had a couple of phone calls to make but if she wanted to eat dinner together I wouldn't be long if she didn't mind waiting. She said she'd wait a while to see how long I'd be and so I went outside, where the reception was better, to call my Aunt and Uncle and let them know where I was. I told them how I was feeling and asked my uncle what he thought about jerry cans in this heat. He said it would be fine from a safety point of view. My Aunt went through the pros and cons with me of carrying on and said it was entirely my decision and that if I turned back then getting this far was still a great achievement. I thanked them for their advice and told them I'd call to let them know my decision in a couple of days. I'd got a message from Molly while I was on the phone asking where I'd got to and how I was doing and so called her back to chat about the trip so far. She'd been travelling round Europe for a year, with her cousin a few years ago, using England as her base and so I was interested to know whether she thought her trip would have been much different had she done it alone. She agreed it would have been entirely different and probably as tough. We chatted for a while but my stomach was starting to grumble from hunger so we said goodbye and I went back to the room to grab my noodles. Camille wasn't there as I'd been longer than expected and so I went to the kitchen to make my dinner. I got talking with a few, surprisingly not French but English, people in the kitchen but didn't see Camille there so ate my dinner and went back to the room. By the time I got back there she had reappeared and we decided to go to the bar to get a beer. I shouted her a beer and we sat outside to enjoy them. My first sip tasted really good and we chatted for a while about our lives in France and England. The hotel had a movie playing on a big screen outside and there were loads of people dotted about on giant bean bags, chairs, loungers and benches enjoying it, but a problem had occurred and the staff were just trying to sort it. They managed to get it going again and so Camille and I turned our chairs to face it and watch it too. It was 'Finding Nemo' they were playing. I hadn't seen this in years but we both really enjoyed watching it. Sitting outside in the nice warm evening air with a beer in hand definitely made it more enjoyable and it was nice to relax after the days emotional and physical journey, especially with someone in a similar boat to me. We finished our beer just as the movie ended, chatted for a bit more and then went back to the room. Most of the other people had also returned so we said hello to them too and talked for a while. We both had to be up early as Camille had also booked, earlier on today, onto a shark dive with a different company for tomorrow too. All the companies, it seems, arrange to pick their customers up from all the hotels in the area at about the same time and so we would both be waiting outside our hotel together tomorrow morning. Just in case I missed my alarm I asked Camille to give me a prod if I was still in bed when she was about to leave. After a quick shower I got in bed to get some rest.