After spending a night before Quilpie we arrived to the town around 10AM. It was so hot that we had to have a big cold lemonade that we normally don’t drink. Tanja is having trouble to start the bike sometimes since she has a kick start and the bike leather bags are in the way of the kick lever. Today it ended up in Tanja loosing her balance and the bike fell in a way that she broke her clutch lever at the end. That is nothing that would require an immediate repair though.

The distances between cities are getting bigger. Quilpie is 200km from the previous town and the next one – Windorah – is 243km from Quilpie. The next town that we are heading now towards is 378km through the desert. It would be nice to make it tomorrow, although the possibility is quite remote since the road is not sealed and might not be in a very good condition after being closed for almost 2 months due to flooding (believe it or not… J).

My bike fell over twice today when we stopped in Windorah to ask about the best way to take. It fell first on one and just a few minutes later on the other side. It is really hard to work out the best way to stand it so that it won’t fall either way.

Tanja had her own fall as well. The road trains have been getting bigger and now they all have 3 trailers so we have to get out of their way when we see one. The road is not wide enough to accommodate more than the road train alone and staying on the road could mean that we could become just another road bump. As we were getting out of the road we hit some pretty shallow (fortunately) bull dust – a dust that you sink into almost like into water. Tanja didn’t manage to keep the bike up this time.

Now all my additional tanks are full and ready for the most difficult and longest stretch so far. My bike is now so heavy that I don’t think I can do anything else than going straight with it. This might prove quite dangerous on the road that awaits us tomorrow. I am a bit worried. Now we are here and have to do it though. Let’s get some sleep for it…