The last Day of Dirt

Day 6 Warrakurrna to Yulara

We had a reasonable sleep the previous night but we were still getting used to the sleeping mats. We packed up early and then took off to the Giles Meterological Station with the rest of the tourists to see the balloon go up at 8:30am. Was a great tour and now we know why they send a balloon up each day. If you want to find out feel free to drive to 2000 odd km's and see for yourself.

Sending the ballon up

We then started the last offroad leg of this part of the trip. The road from Warrakurna to Docker River was great until about 20km out when you hit deep rutted sand. I got to the border and waited for Rod, and waited for Rod, and waited for Rod. In then end I just took a photo of my bike at the border sign which upset him a bit but I still don't know what he was doing back there....???!!!

NT Border Crossing

We then meet up down the road in Docker River to re-fuel. By this stage we were on the Opal Fuel (the non-sniffable version of unleaded). Rod's CRF seem to go fine on it but the KLR's fuel efficiency wasn't crash hot  on this stuff so I had to fuel up where possible. We then took off for the last 200km of dirt. I somehow got into the zone and rode 180km non-stop. Poor Rod's bum gets sore after 70-80km so we normally stop every 100km or so. By the time I remembered to stop I had a very grumpy Rod. While he was ranting I decided to put the time to good use and check over the KLR. Lucky I did because I noticed one of my lower sub-frame bolts (holds the bike frame together!) had shaken loose. Luckily I had a spare but then Rod realised he had lost one of his back rack bolts as well. Love those ruts!

We headed off again and twenty minutes of dust choking later (plenty of 4WD traffic!) we got to the end of the dirt and what a view!

We then had half hour ride to Yulara along some smoooooth bitumen. It was a surreal ride. Rod just out front pealing through turns, the Olga's on the left and Uluru on the right. We got into camp, set up the tent, put on a wash and had a long shower!

Yulara Camp

After we had recovered we hit the supermarket. While there we meet a group of guys in wheelchairs riding quad bikes through the desert. These guys are legends. They are following a trek across OZ that visits where each of them was injured. They had tackled the Gunbarrel a day ahead of us ON QUAD BIKES! I have a lot of respect for these guys and their trip puts ours into so much perspective.

We then headed for the (one and only) pub in town and had dinner with the tag along crowd before they all took off the next day.