It rained tonight! We were sleeping on the verge of the desert and it rained! We had to get out of the half-setup tent to actually put the top tarp on it and put all our things that were scattered around under it. It was a surprise.

Today we set off for something we have never done before – crossing a desert. Crossing a desert on motorbikes that we are not that experienced in riding... We were worried a little bit about how we would be able to handle the surface of desert dirt road with road trains on it. We had lots of warning from people who have driven there.

It turned out to be a pretty reasonable dirt rocky road with the occasional shallow wheel ruts bordered by a soft sand/dirt. The soft stuff was the only worry and we both had a few close accident encounters – especially me with my heavy back of the bike I don't have much traction on the front wheel. It happened to me twice that I was really being thrown from side to side and really thought I was off the bike. It made my heart beat quick but I managed to handle the situation both times at the end. There were a few smaller ones too.

We actually saw lots of life around us. There was quite lots of grass (probably thanks to the recent rains) and we saw many cows, wild Emus and even wild horses a few kilometers before we arrived to our destination in Bedouri. There were some trees around the creeks that actually had water in them (mostly not flowing anymore, but still a rare sight as we were told). Tanja even had kind of a swim in one of the muddy pools. The water was cool and I used it to cool my had as I had problems with blood running out of my nose which was most likely caused by the intense heat.

We even saw more rains around us as we were riding in the desert. We were wishing for one to come and cool us down. We were really hot and it was mostly very hard to find shade anywhere. We also had to start saving water in case the road got worse and we would have to stop and finish crossing the desert the next day or had some other problems. Each of us drunk around 7 liters of water each day.

We were both thinking that it would be great if we could manage to cross the desert in one day but weren’t really hoping for it. However, since the road was not so bad after all we are now in Bedouri. It is another tiny little town. This one very much managed to surprise us however. They have a big community centre, a very nice cozy pub and a swimming pool full with cool artesian water!! The Bedourins (our new word for people living in this town - as opposed to Beduins… ;-) ) are as expected lovely and very helpful.

There is a campsite in the town. However, we were told that we could camp anywhere along the local creek or on the lawn right in front of the pool. So as you would guess we had a couple of cold soft drinks and a beer and straight after that a shower and a swim in the pool. It was heaven after the whole day on dusty desert road in 42C in full motorbike gear.

So now we are camping along the creek and are very tired. We can’t wait to go to sleep. The pool opens only in the afternoon but apparently we can just pick up keys for it in the local information office and go there by ourselves. Great!! They are yet not affected by all the insurance bullshit that would prevent us from being able to do this in most other places in Australia.

(355km)