Round Australia by bike - Day 019 - Mataranka to Victoria River

Day:	019
Date:	Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Accommodation	Motel room at Victoria River Roadhouse
Summary	Riding from Mataranka to Victoria River Roadhouse and visiting Casuarina Street Primary School in Katherine.
Start Time:	3:50am
Finish Time:	7:10pm
Daily Map Kms:	300
Total Map Kms:	5,151
Map Kms To Go:	9,261
Map Kms ahead (+)/ behind (-) schedule:	0
Daily Odometer Kms:	306.0
Daily Average Speed:	24.50kph
Weather:	Cold early.  Very warm and sunny later.  SW winds.
Nutrition:	Big Brekky for breakfast.  Snacks during day.  Schnitzel Parmigiana for dinner.
Encounters:	Visiting the students of Rod Gregg’s class at Casuarina Street Primary School to talk about my trip and answer their questions.  They were interested and well-behaved children and I very much enjoyed the visit.  This was followed by a photo session in front of the school.  Rod plans to write an article for the Katherine newspaper and will e-mail the report and photographs to me later.
Highlights:	Despite fatigue, the last hour riding through the valleys of Gregory National Park surrounded by high craggy bluffs at sunset.
Lowlights:	The last 100km was very hard work on a hot afternoon against a moderate headwind.
Daily Pictures:	Here
Daily Podcasts:
Journal:	I rose at 3:00am and left at 3:50am to ride into Katherine and my appointment with Rod Gregg’s class.  I miscalculated how long it would take me for the 100km trip, compounded by residual fatigue meant that I ran behind time and called Rod to say that I wouldn’t get there until about 8:15am when school was due to start.  He didn’t seem to mind and the visit was a lot of fun. I left the school and rode into downtown Katherine where I decided that I needed to have a good breakfast given there were no other towns between Katherine and Victoria River my goal for the day.  I ate at a roadhouse, then did a bit of shopping before leaving town about 10:30am heading southwest towards Western Australia. The day had become very warm and I heard it reached 29C in Katherine later in the day.  Compounding the heat was a slight headwind and some gradual hills, which meant that progress was hard work and a little slow.  The countryside was predominantly lightly-timbered cattle grazing country with lots of Brahmin cattle around a good covering of brown grass. As I grew more fatigued I increased my break frequency to every 30km and found I was drinking lots.  The tedium of the afternoon was broken by seeing a cattle drive of a several hundred cattle and eight or ten drovers parallel with the road.  A little while later I got a wave from a small helicopter whizzing along about 50 metres above the road. The last part of the ride was through Gregory National Park was scenically spectacular with the sun setting over craggy mesas and dappling the valleys.  I finally reached my destination of the Victoria River Roadhouse which looked like it might be an attractive place, but I won’t see it in daylight. I tried booking a room at Kununurra for tomorrow night while having breakfast in Katherine but had no luck.  Therefore I will aim to reach Kununurra (316km) around dusk tomorrow and if there’s nowhere obvious to stay will continue on towards Hall’s Creek grabbing a nap somewhere along the way. One downer today was discovering that the two podcasts I had recorded had not worked.  I messed around with the Voice Recorder for a while and seem to have managed to reset it.  Hopefully it will work tomorrow.