Filled water bottles from the gnamma holes behind the White Cross, dosed ’em with tincture of iodine (3 drops/litre, leave at 20C for half an hour to kill most waterborne bugs) then headed to Tjukayirla roadhouse.

Stopped en route …

More blandness on the GCR.

One horizontal dismount today because I didn’t watch the dust as I pulled in to the Surfers Paradise road side layby about midday (everybody sees it marked on the maps and goes to have a …

Warning to cyclists: The famous Limestone Bore 20 km east of Cosmo Newberry is no more! Dead, non-functional. No water.

Don’t panic though – there is a stock water bore (Murrays bore) right on the road about 11 km east …

A couple of hours checking emails and blogging at the Laverton community centre before hitting the frog_n_toad at about 11 am.

Ten kilometres of bitumen before the gravel and sand. The Great Central Road sees a surprising amount of mining …

Camping in abandoned fettler’s cottages has its issues: dingoes howling from near the front verandah being one.

Wangianna fettlers cottage

Seeing graffiti from Gunzel, a blogger on a Rail Page Australia forum, was also a surprise. The cottage is absolutely …

Carried on chilln’ at the Lyndhurst Hotel.

Chats with Talc Alf, the talc rock sculptor and lower Strezlecki track mailman (Alf is very knowledgeable about aboriginal and early white history of the Lyndhurst areas and world history), meeting a station …

The main interest in this southern part of the track was the Dog Fence, supposed to keep dingoes out of the sheep areas, it is still in pretty good nick so

someone believes it works.…

More corrugations, some loose stones.

Highlight was passing the Blanchwater Station ruins. Blanchwater was the horse and cattle station that Burke and Wills tried desperately to reach after they missed their support party. At one stage it was carrying 12,000 …

Snuck out of my discrete camp in amongst the nitre bushes a couple of km from the (abandoned) Mt Hopeless homestead and on to the Strezlecki track. Mostly good road but long stretches of corrugations.

A highlight was the stock …

From a gravel pit 32 km south of Moomba gas plant to the new KJM desert hotel motel was a straight forward ride.

Moomba gas plant was plonked in the desert like a set from a Mad Max movie. The …