Mildura, Victoria to Broken Hill, NSW - 389km (924km)
Day 2 of the Long Ride started with a great ride out of Mildura onto the Silver City Highway towards the sister town of Wentworth, across the border in New South Wales. It's amazing how the Australian landscape changes in such a short distance and as soon as we cross the Murray River, Australia's largest river, the landscape became more scrubby and stunted.
Wentworth sits on the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers and at one stage was one of Australia's busiest ports - it's nowhere near the ocean. It was a good starting point to head towards the dirt and this was 117km further up the road at Pooncarie.
Pooncarie is a tony hamlet on the Darling River, and although official figures suggest that the population is around 350, the town folk would have you believe it is only 98. So who knows?
For a place of such a small population and one that sits in the middle of a very dry area of Australia, it's quite an impressive town, mostly green parkland as well as a service station come café and a great old style pub - it went without saying that a beer had to be had. Although the last time I had a beer before hitting unfamiliar dirt I spent a few days in hospital and wrote off a bike.
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| Peugeot 203 up a pole |
A great thing about Pooncarie was a strange advertisement for the local mechanic, who is no longer in operation. Just outside of town is a Peugeot 203 Utility (I didn't even know they made these things) up a pole. If it's as rare as I would suggest it is I'm surprised it hasn't been stolen yet.
Just out of town the dirt started, the road to Menindee. I'd read on a few forums, and mind you 4x4 sites, that it was a track not for the faint hearted, it was said to be extremely rough, a track that would destroy vehicles. A lady at the Mildura information centre earlier that morning had said not to tackle it as it was extremely rough. With this in mind we said "bugger it we are doing it". It has to be much better than taking on the Silver City Highway, one of the worlds most boring roads.
At around 120 kilometres long, with a short stretch of bitumen in the middle, we were up for the challenge. Not long into it we were to discover that it wasn't rough at all, in fact was quite good, except for odd patch of quite deep sand. Sand shits me to tears, I hate the feeling of the bike moving around the way it does, but hey, you just get on with it and power through.
This proved quite tricky for a few of the riders with us, and for the sake of their loved ones nerves, I won't mention names. The first was quite spectacular, I came around a bend to see an almighty tank slapper and then the bike ploughing violently up and through the sand berm on the side of the road. The rider kept it upright but soon discovered that the bike was bogged, he was able to eventually get it out and keep it going.
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| The deep and caught a few riders out |
The second was said to be even more spectacular as the rider had a similar incident although this time he was sort of spat off the bike and into the sand, we are just hoping the GoPro caught it all. The bike suffered some minor damage in this incident, but nothing to stop it from continuing.
The third was again a similar incident with the bike ending up on its side in the thick sand at the side of the track.
In all incidents the riders weren't hurt but by this stage I was sick of picking up Vstroms, perhaps the mid capacity Suzuki's really aren't suited to this sort of stuff, or the riders need to learn not to fight the bike and let it do what it needs to do in sand.
Apart from the sand the next thing that was taking it's toll were the emu's. These things really are dumb and when scared just run in all directions, we were constantly having to keep an eye out for the giant birds to make sure they didn't run in our direction.
After a few hours we were off the dirt and in Menindee. With a population of just around 450 it's a town in serious decline, sad considering it's the oldest town in western NSW. This marked the end of the first real day of adventure as we headed towards the second days rest at Broken Hill.
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