Saturday, March 1, 2008

Miles and miles of bugger all.

Feb 18

Woke from a deep sleep, and the wind that had shifted from the east to the north – a crosswind. Still tiring, but it was a wind that let us keep up a pretty high speed.

The Nullarbor Plain proper was not the shrubby land we had rode through so far. The actual plain only comes to the coast for 15 km. The majority of the plain is farther inland and nearly the size of England. It is quite treeless; they don’t lie; there’s not even a shrub higher than my knee. The locals say, "miles and miles of bugger all." Translated, this is means a lot of excessive amounts of nothing. Everything is either gray or straw colored and looks dead; yet a few hardy settlers chose this harsh land to make their home.

15 km out, we spotted the Nullarbor Roadhouse – a one-story building that stood out like a sore thumb on the horizon. Too hot to ride, we took a pink trailer room that was too hot to sleep in. We dozed, had beer and burgers, and planned our ride into the night. "Good old Australian bush" was said to be coming up. Having not seen any for 400 km, I was quite happy in anticipation of this.

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