Hard work today.

The road is a minor road short-cutting from Winton down to the Birdsville road. It is basically the old stock route following the Farrars Creek down towards the Sturt’s Stoney Desert. As such, much of the road is on the flood plain in soft silts, sand, bogs, short gibber ridges and several creek crossings.

I was the second vehicle across it ( a motor bike had been through some days earlier – station bike checking waters and stock?) since the grader had re-opened it after the big rain 4 weeks earlier.

The challenge was the crossing of the Farrars Creek which looked like it could be quite deep. So strip off the clothes and wade across to check the depth to find that it was only 40 cm deep with a solid rocky bottom.

Dress, remove panniers from bike, carry panniers and bike across in three moves, reload, eat fruit cake for lunch, ride on. Situation normal.

No vehicles passed me all day except for a ute with two ringers going in to Mt Leonard homestead 400 m from the Betoota pub.