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Journal: |
I woke several times during the night to the sound of torrential
rain outside and anticipated a wet start, but it wasn’t raining
although the roads were very wet. There was a slight following
breeze and low rain clouds with stars visible through some cloud
breaks.
I didn’t know how far I would go for the day, but
had decided that, if I felt OK, I would ride through the night in an
effort to regain the time I had lost. I made good time through
mainly flat scrubby cattle country although there tended to be cane
fields around the towns. Lots of palms and other tropical
vegetation around many of the Queenslander-style homesteads (houses
built on stilts with wrap-around verandahs) making them very shady,
cool and inviting. In the distance there were always
green-clad mountains rising up at the edge of the flat plain and
occasionally closer.
The wind was mostly following and I
made good time, although dealing with the long-distance cycling
ailments of a sore butt, feet and hands, the contact points.
My right Achilles is also gradually becoming more painful. I
have some anti-inflammatories I can take if it gets too bad.
In the late afternoon I passed through Townsville and at the town of
Deeragun, 15km later, bought some fish and chips for dinner and
decided to ride through the night rather than look for
accommodation. It was a decision I regretted not too much
later. I headed north towards the next town, Ingham, 89km away
in the darkness. There was quite a lot of traffic on a
relatively narrow road and, when it began to rain steadily, life
became miserable. As I neared Ingham around 10pm I began to
feel really tired, wet and cold and decided to get a motel room if I
could. They were all booked up and there were a lot of hoons
driving around town so I didn’t feel comfortable trying to sleep in
a park shelter. I had something to eat at Mcdonalds and
continued on into the night. The road climbed steeply through
a mountain range and it began raining heavily again. I had to
sit on the brakes all through the winding descent because I could
barely where the road was going. At the bottom of the hill
there was a truck parking bay and I noticed a concrete picnic table
with a small roof over it. It was midnight, the table was dry
and I wasted no time in climbing into my one-man tent, using it as a
sleeping bag, on top of my self-inflating mattress. Although I
was wet through, it was warm enough, and I soon went to sleep with
the intention of getting up around 3am.
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