Long Ride - Day 10 - Ayr to Mackay

Long Ride day 10 - Ayr to Mackay

Today was supposed to be a short run down the coast to Mackay on what we thought was a coast road, it turns out the Queenslanders have no idea what a coast road is, in fact this road only caught a glimpse of the ocean once or twice in 300 kilometres.

 

While packing the bikes three old ladies in the Barcaldine Cascades Caravan Park stopped for a chat, they were really impressed with what we had done and were continue to do.  It almost seemed that they were jealous of us and would like to have done something similar.  One was the owner of the park and told us about a time when the Rebels MC once stayed at a hotel she used to own.  She said after setting down the laws they turned out to be "lovely young lads".

 

It was a late start in Ayr which was fine but once hitting the town we couldn't find a single place for breakfast except the local McDonald's which, was packed.  A quick feed and we hit the road heading south towards Home Hill.  In fact it seemed that these two towns were one in the same, they were so close together, perhaps suburbs of another town.

 

Home Hill was like everything else in the area and surrounded by cane fields.  The sight of them do amaze me, but come on, it's starting to wear thin, even the little train networks that run around them.

The view at Home Hill was amazing.  This whole land is
amazing.

At Home Hill we found a look out that gave the most amazing 360 degree view of the area.  This part of the world is quite amazing.  Vast flat plains with massive mountains sprouting from them here and there.  From the height of the lookout the whole area looked quite surreal.

 

From here we headed off down the Bruce Highway towards Bowen, the town that was made to look like 1930's Darwin for the film Australia made by Baz Luhrmann.  It was quite amazing to see what they did in a display at the local information centre, but I still couldn't see how it looked like Darwin, to start with the harbour was completely different.  Anyway, it didn't matter, it was a great place to have a mango sorbet ... delicious!

 

While sitting in the shade, by now the temperature was well into the 30's and the humidity must've been in the 90's, we noticed something a little odd.  Some sort of palm trees that had sprouted appendages. 

Good God.  Bowen's trees are well hung.

It was at this time I noticed something else.  Tug boats, and lots of them, moored at the end of a pretty old looking pier.  I took a walk to see what they were doing, as there were no ships in the area, and I doubt whether anything that would've needed a tug would've fit in the harbour anyway.  It didn't matter, I do love a tug.

 

After a bit of a look around Bowen we set off for our destination, Mackay.  Along the way we met up with a few others riders who had stopped to see what the whether would do.  We had been told that this area was expecting 100mm of rain in the next 24 hours, bugger, we still had over 100 kilometres to go.  No wonder the cane grows so well, and yes, it was still down here.  It's bloody everywhere.

 

We followed the other bikes to Prosperpine in the area around the Whitsunday Islands, they were staying there for the night, we continued on as by now it had started to rain and quite heavy.

 

Big or small, I love a tug.

A little further down the road, we started to go into the hills, at least the road was becoming exciting, maybe a little too much.  Rounding a left hand bend my rear wheel spun up and slid towards the outside of the corner.  My first thought was to back off, I didn't, I held the throttle and powered through the slide.  My bum had taken a fairly decent bite out of the seat ... that'll need repairing.

 

The rain was a bugger and almost cost me the lot.

I was thankful that over 500 kilograms of bike, gear, and rider had stayed upright.  It felt pretty close, so I backed of to around 80 kph until the rain cleared a little.

 

It was nice to get into Mackay however, as we pulled into the motel (the Bona Vista), I couldn't help think about some of the motels I stayed in during the last Long Ride.  If the reception had a few stuffed birds and a wombat of something on the counter I was out of here.  I'm sitting here with the feeling that someone is peeking through a hole in the wall.  Does Bona Vista mean Bates Motel? 

 

Once settling in we received some pretty distressing news that one of the riders who had spent some time with us had been taken to hospital in Charters Towers.  He had been hit by a kangaroo that had jumped into the side of his new Harley.  The bike wasn't too badly damaged but Bob had suffered a broken leg.  There's no doubt that the lovely people of Charters Towers will look after him.  Bob our thoughts are with you, and hopefully you will be back in Swan Hill pretty soon.

 



I'm sure there's a guy dressed as his dead mother somewhere
around this place.

We took a walk to the local pub, the Mt Pleasant Tavern, where the food was pretty good and reasonably priced.  What's better they gave us a meal for free so that went into the kitty as a donation.  It's only small but it all helps a great deal.

 

Today we covered a total of 358 kilometres, taking the total up to 4,153.  Tomorrow is planned to be a much longer day that will see us head down the coast road, that doesn't actually follow the coast.

 

The total raised is now just short of $12,800.