Round Australia by bike - Day 015 & 016 - Mount Isa to Three Ways

Day:	015 & 016
Date:	Friday & Saturday, 3 & 4 August 2007
Accommodation	Motel at Three Ways
Summary	Riding from Mount Isa to Three Ways
Start Time:	1:30am Friday
Finish Time:	3:30pm Saturday (Central Time)
Daily Map Kms:	641
Total Map Kms:	4,293
Map Kms To Go:	10,118
Map Kms ahead (+)/ behind (-) schedule:	-150
Daily Odometer Kms:	638.8
Daily Average Speed:	24.58kph
Weather:	Cool to cold nights, warm and sunny days.  Gusty southerly winds.
Nutrition:	Big Brekky, sausage roll & ice-cream for brunch on Friday.  Big Brekky for breakfast on Saturday.  Pie and milkshake for lunch.  Roast of the Day for dinner.
Encounters:	At breakfast early on Saturday morning at Barkly Homestead Roadhouse I was chatting with a number of guys who turned out to be part of the film crew for the new Nichole Kidman/Baz Luhrmann movie “Australia” who were midway through moving all of the film gear from Byron Bay on the east coast to Kununurra on the north-west coast in a convoy of trucks.
Highlights:	Cycling right through a surreal Friday night out on a very dark, cold and windswept savannah with almost no other signs of life.
Lowlights:	The last 100km into Three Ways was really hard work as I was exhausted.
Daily Pictures:	Here
Daily Podcasts:	Here & Here & Here & Here & Here
Journal:	I left Mount Isa reluctantly and with little motivation at 1:30am on Friday morning with the prospect of two long days in front of me.  It was cool and breezy with a slight headwind, but at least the winds weren’t as strong as yesterday afternoon.  The road climbed a bit, but then opened out onto a vast plain with occasional small rises and a creek crossing every so often.  The further I went the less tress there were and sometimes it just seemed to be brown grassland as far as the eye could see in any direction. I made reasonable progress and reached Camooweal (189km), a stereotypical Australian outback town with some very run-down old buildings and stores, two roadhouses, a pub, a very wide main street, lots of vacant rubbish strewn vacant lots and a few dilapidated houses with bright red earth visible through the scant brown grass covering. I had a breakfast at the roadhouse and then, as I was leaving still a bit hungry and realising I was not going to see another store until tomorrow morning, I returned to the roadhouse and bought a large sausage roll, and ice-cream and a big coffee milk.  I left about 1pm heading directly west back out onto the brown grassy plains.  After 12km I crossed the border from Queensland to the Northern Territory. There was a cool strong crosswind.  I rode until about 5pm when I reached the Avon Downs Police Station, a small green oasis in the brown desert, and stopped in the rest area across the road.  I decided to have a 90 minute nap while the weather was still warm, before trying to ride through the night to the Barkly Homestead Roadhouse.  I found a concrete picnic bench and stretched out and had a fitful nap, before crossing the road to get a cup of coffee from the unmanned “Driver Reviver” (gold coin donation) stall outside the police station, and eating one of the pieces of carrot cake I had bought at Camooweal. As the sun set, traffic became rare and I soon found myself battling the strong crosswind, zig-zagging across the road, in near complete darkness as clouds had now rolled in with the southerly change.  The night took on a surreal feel with me battling the elements, fatigue and the endless kilometres in the isolated darkness.  To break up the long haul (265km from Camooweal to Barkly) I began stopping briefly every 20km to have a snack and drink and just kept soldiering on in between.  Eventually, I rolled into the seemingly deserted Barkly Homestead Roadhouse at 3:00am and saw that it opened at 6:30am.  I wandered around and found my self a corner on the concrete flooring of the verandah where I was somewhat protected from the icy wind and had a sleep for three hours.  It was cold and I woke up shivering several times, but 3was tired enough to go back to sleep. At opening time I went to the café and ordered breakfast along with a number of other chatty travellers.  They were very interested in my trip.  After stocking up on some more snacks and drink, I left at 8:00am for the 187km haul to Three Ways.  The wind was now predominantly a tailwind which made for fast initial progress, but I soon got tired and the last 100km, during which the wind often switched to cross/headwind was a long drag. I got to Three Ways, the junction with the Stuart Highway (from Adelaide to Darwin), turned north and pulled into the Three Ways Roadhouse at 3:30pm where I got a motel room for the night.  I was in time to do a load of washing and look forward to a good night’s sleep and a relatively easy day tomorrow (242km to Elliott).