Granny by Pushi around in Australia

By road train through the scorching Nullarbor

13.01.2013: Albany – Nullarbor (bicycle and road train): 7 km

I wish to move on. Soon I stand with my panniers outside and would like to fasten them. There two young men again in the conscience are talking to me not to accomplish the trip by bicycle in this ape heat. I smile at them and explain to them that 85% of mankind have continuously fear. Those are normal humans. To the remaining 15% I belong. The here present ones and inside the sittings are all soft eggs (included the Backpacker leader, what I do not say however). They disappear insulting.

I start with sunshine and blue sky. The cloud cover from yesterday took off up to small fleecy clouds. The director of the Backpacker hotel looks for me outside in order to photograph me with my start. I also give him my camera and receive on this way a starting photo.

It goes off and always easily uphill. But it cycles completely pleasantly. Soon Albany lies behind me right at the bottom. With a funny feeling due to the dangerous Nullarbor crossing I roll towards the east, always considering, how I can solve this large problem. After 7,14 km the highway divides. My distance continues to lead right hand towards the east. To my bright joy here a roadhouse stands. That smiles at me correctly pleadingly to enter.

I can not resist the feeling to drink here a bottle with cold Sprite, place my full loaded bicycle right beside the entrance, climb the stages and enter a marvellously cool interior of full shelves with treats.

Behind that the owner is dispatching a straight guest, who stands for bar. And against the bus distance from yesterday what happens to me after going away from Albany in the first roadhouse, is still nothing at all. When I tell my project to the landlord, he takes me also into a different room of his roadhouse and shows me completely proudly his recumbent bicycle, a couch bicycle, at which still in the back are the two bars with the orange triangle flags.

With this bicycle and a trailer behind it, then he tells me completely proudly, he has cycled three years ago nearly over completely around Australia. I am flabbergasted and totally fascinated by him and his bicycle! But he is a large, strong, broad-shouldered man with very much strength, actually the opposite of me.

And then he also warns me completely urgently to ride with that amount of water, which I transport with me, not through the Nullarbor. At least I need in addition still two water bags to 5 litres each, which I have to buy and to fasten on my bicycle in Esperance in the camping and fishing shop at the road. That it is impossible for my conditions, I do not tell him, but say that I will make it.

In thoughts I am despairing totally. Why isn’t my dream to become true? What for a hell inserted the nature here for the bicycle drivers, who must cycle towards the east, in order to be able starting from Ceduna further on?

While I am sitting and thinking about my problem, I am looking through the window outside and an considering, how I can come around this here existing evil, then I will cycle just to Norsemann and think, in order to look there for truck driver, who carries me forward with my bicycle trough the hell of Australia. I send prayers above after “to my large friend in heaven”. Perhaps it helps me, yes.

And while I look through the windows to the washers with the routine on the outside of the square, I see driving cars there but in fact a great red road train which stops. Oh, I think, his two trailers are securely sealed, so that there can be nothing more come in it. But I still want to ask.

With new courage I thus go outside to the men of this large spectre of all bicycle drivers and ask whether they can carry me forward with my small, full loaded bicycle, which stands there at the wall, in order to save me from certain death by dying of thirst in the Nullarbor.

They smile mild at me, look at me from top to bottom and then at my small full loaded bicycle. But nobody says something. Well, as fast I give not up, remain at them sticking and ask still twice. Therupon I am smiled at and they nod with the head “yes”!

Now I am saved and want to push directly my bicycle here. No, it shall stay there; because before they still want to shower, refuel and have breakfast here. I am to wait. That I do and ask to be allowed to pay their breakfast at least as thank you. No, I may not do that. Thus I remain sitting beside their table and do not leave them out of my eyes.

And then it is so far. All go outside. The one road train driver shows where my bicycle on the other side must be pushed in. I will get it fast and bring it with his help with my saddle inside it. This left is located under the first large trailer. Then I am in the cab on top of the upper bed.

The second road train driver puts for sleeping on the lower bed and covers themselves with a thin, dark cover totally, so that I can look from above to outside. On the passenger seat a passenger rides along, whose frozen sardines are transported in the back into the trailers. He is a fisherman from Perth.

In the environment of Esperance still many further crates of frozen sardines of this fisherman are pushed in the first trailer, until this is completely full. And the road train continues to go to still another place, where further large crates are loaded with frozen sardines into the second trailer, until also this is filled. There we receive something to drink and eat cookies.

Here the interesting fisherman stays and drives with his here already waiting small truck back to Perth. In this way the seat beside the road train driver is free for me. Now the possibility is offered to me of seeing the environment. From the upper bed only reciprocally the road or the sand was to be seen to the lip of the engine. An incredible strong feeling here in front!

With darkness we reach Norsemann, turn eastward on the Eyre Highway and roll at coolly night temperature of 20 ° C towards the east by the night. First I am so fascinated of it that I remain sitting down on the passenger seat and enjoy the night drive, as if I would sit straight on my small racing bicycle during a marathon. It is imply great!

But at 12 pm I begin to shiver and become tired. Thus I rise highly to the upper bed and put to sleep.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

14.01.2013:

Nullarbor – Ceduna (road train): 0 km

In the morning I wake up from a whistle and climb down. I look around me. We stand on the flat and tree-free Nullarbor on a stopping point in (in the taiga). It is said to me that I am to look for a toilet. That means to crawl away behind low shrubs. We are already in SOUTHAUSTRALIA. We passed the border at the night.

The two road train drivers are in the middle age. The first is married, the second not. The second drives in his spare time with his large motorcycle including a trailer through the country, sets up his tent and enjoys his spare time.

He is the owner of lots of sheep and cows. They are all the time alone in the fields. To control them he does not drive by quad, but is riding his horse.

We speak over cultivation of grain in Australia. I tell him, that our German farmers bring in the spring the dung and liquid manure from the cows on the fields, so that then the grain grows better and faster. The cows are along the wintertime in a stable. There he means that his cows are not located in the stable, but run all outside freely around.

As long they are calves, their horns are cut off. The cows are never milked. The calves stay a half year with the mother cow and suckle the milk from the udder. Then they become separated from her and floated with their-same on another pasture. The cows here are all alone bred for steaks.

This road train driver wants to come once to Schleswig-Holstein to become shown from me, where I have lived, for example, the island Amrum.

The sun shines from the blue sky. Certainly it becomes hot again. We drive on. In Ceduna I step out; because there it is the end of the Nullarbor. And the road train must be refuelled, washed and supplied with oil. I say thank you to these two completely noble men.

The caravan park is in the proximity. Still another further photo, signs – then I leave this for me cosy transition home. For me it is like the parting of a whole period of life time; again back from the sky onto the ground of the facts.

My tent, which I set up a while ago during heavy desert storm with my totally tired head, lays down on the side despite the heavy panniers in it. I nothing then quickly out of the tent, draw all tent pegs out and be astonished, why my tent does not only put itself on the side despite the heavy articles therein, but turns also in another direction.

Thus I must set up it with the pointed posteriors against the storm. Thus I empty the tent. But the same time I step with one foot onto the base, so that this shall not fly away completely; because it is completely loosely under it.

While I am now pushing my panniers with the left hand to the side, I hold the tent with the right hand above. But how can I fasten it in addition with a tent peg? I do not have a third hand. There comes a radiating smiling man to meet me, who offers his assistance to me. He belongs to the caravan, which became set up recently at some distance of me and prepared camping-efficiently. The man and his wife directly had welcomed me waving and smiling, when they arrived. The friendly man gets equal his hammer, in order to be able to knock the tent pegs into the hard earth.

Now finally it stands, however it is still pressed somewhat to the side from the storm. That must hold. Thus I distribute the bags again in a row next to each other at the internal left side. Finally also my brain again functions.

But the tent bends itself still in the strong and very warm wind. With my bags and later me myself it will not fly away.

15.01.2013: Ceduna – Quorn (bicycle and pickup): 66 km

At the night cars, which drive from the place, awake me. I could not fall asleep again. Around 5.00 am I pack my wash items and go into the sanitary house. A family with their eight little kids sits already by having breakfast. All smile at me and greet back. Now I begin to pack. With my tired head it does not run so fast. But at 7.30 am I roll by 23 ° C off from the place. Naturally I distributed still my zinc ointment on nose and cheeks.

I have fun by cycling. Unfortunately, the warmth changes in completely short time into heat. Hot air confronts me. In spite of my good and thin clothes it becomes more and more disagreeable. I drink like a hole. The street is wavy, but in a very good state. Only very few cars drive. Most road users exist of gigantic road trains. However, these do all one big curve around me. And then it is to me as if sweltering heat confronts me. My speedometer gives up his mind in this heat. I need soon a new one.

Thus I took a rest in shorter and shorter distances beside the highway and go under a short mally tree in its small shade.

And when I am so about 20 km before Wirrula, I go with my bicycle oncemore in the shade of a tree. The hot wild storm pushes down my bicycle together with its heavy panniers. I have trouble to solve all and to lay it besides. Beseechingly I look at the past driving car drivers. But all wave only and drive on.

And when from my direction a car appears far behind in the curve, I hold unbelievingly up my thumb. And really the car stops and comes backward on my roadway direction Wirrula back to me. The man asks me whether I have fallen. From loud desperation, he can go on if I say the truth to him, I confirm it. Together we load the panniers and the bicycle behind on his car. I may take a seat in front beside him and receive an ice-cold coke. What a marvellous drink for an almost died of thirst! Finally, I also cool inside and around my stomach.

In his car is a satellite phone which he lays very much to me in my heart to purchase one here also, who knows who knows? Also a burglar alarm is to the left behind me on top beside the door, if he should come with his car in the outback to difficulties. He has made provision for everything.

Because he himself is on the move as a businessman to Port Augusta to begin tomorrow his work with businessmen and workers in the outback, he asks me whether he can take me up to there; because along the distance from here up to there I can not go by bicycle on account of the high heat. I accept.

Before Port Augusta he stops at a roadhouse and invites me to a cold drink and a sandwich after my taste. Then my brain also functions better again. And when he finds out after my itinerary my route from Port Augusta and I tell him that I like to cycle from Wilmington to Renmark in the Murray Riverland, he resolves immediately to bring me shortly on a caravan park before Wilmington.

Thus we go from Port Augusta and see on a railroad route a 3 km long freight train. At the beginning and end are four railroad engines to pull it forward. Herewith diminished coal is brought to the burning at Port Augusta. As so I understood it.

During the journey my male angel explains me the sheep farming and the scenery by trough we are just going. About this I know nothing. He himself owns 5,000 sheep after which he does not need to look. His sheep become clipped all two months. The short wool is used to the climate insulation in house constructions and roof structures. After six months the lambs become separated from the mothers. The sheep eat the dry grass, however, in the morning and in the evening they have water to drink.

Here grow the small salty bushes, Saltbush called, which they eat with pleasure. The sheep are bred as meat suppliers. These sheep which eat the salty bushes and Bluebush deliver an especially well tasting meat. If black lambs are born, they are not to be used. Black wool is not welcome. It concerns with most merino sheep. This wool must be always white.

It is difficult to receive the sheep always healthy. A big illness place is under the tail. Here they are especially treated. If it becomes too hot to the sheep and enough bushes are available, they creep under it, anyway the lambs. If it is very hot over the day and at night frost rules, unfortunately lambs die. There are up to 5,000 sheep of one single owner. For so many animals nobody can build a solar protection.

We drive into the Flinders Range, a regional very nice, mountainous area. He briefly stops in Quorn and shows me how I can come along tomorrow without having to cycle over high mountains out of this further after 48 km to Wilmington.

Then he turns back again and drives to the caravan park in Quorn where he also knows all people and these him. Quorn is a wonderful small place with two churches, hotels, a railway station and many houses from the early days. I am inspired and think to insert tomorrow one inspection day. Australia is a sheep country. Here every Sunday it is usual to roast sheep meat as festival food which is dished up with potatoes and vegetables.

In the Flinders Range it is mountainous with hilly country of grass and bushes. Here the sheep graze. Also kangaroos come and drink from the drinks for the sheep. I can see them. These are whole dark animals which live on top on the high mountains besides here. Because it is much colder there at night, they also have a thicker and longer coat of hair. Their ears are round, not sharp like those of the red and gray kangaroos.

This businessman, my male angel, owns a factory, in which the stone blocks from the mountains become broken in big or small little stones and pass away for the road construction. He tells me quite proudly that he has done $ 600 clear profits with the last horse running. He has put number 3 on the horse and has won.

From the registration of the local caravan park he brings me with all my belongings to a dreadful dry and sandy place where I should put up my tent. He still writes down for me his address with telephone number, if problems appear. Then I should call him. He will help me. Then I say thank you. And he goes to his hotel.

While I build up my tent, Gallahs, the pink-coloured cockatoos, float very much for a long time around the high and ancient trees which my rescuer calls "sugar-gum-trees". The normal, half-high trees have everywhere many sheets at the end of their branches. These are mallee-trees. They donate some shades.

Today now it has already been getting late. I sit in the space for mothers with kids. Here in it, unfortunately, it is also very hot. However, I do not dare to open the door because, otherwise, vermins come in.

Because my speedometer gave up his mind after 34.5 km, however, I saw at a sign how wide it was still to Wirrula. I drove 66 km.

16.01.2013: Rest day in Quorn: 0 km

At night it cools something. About myself in the air I hear the countless Gallahs shouting and flying.

During my today's rest day I allow to concern it quietly. Thus I walk in this small, old and pretty place. At the supermarket I make purchases. A young policeman stands beside me at the counter. I ask him in which area of Australia it feels chilly at the moment. There he smiles and says that it is hot everywhere. – Thus I have to cycle on!

At the railway station I talk to a woman who had emigrated here 23 years ago with her husband from England, after he had come to pension. They feel here very well and do not have the problems like the German emigrants: other money, other language, other weights and other traffic direction.

While I speak with the second woman who stands behind the bar, she shows me the advertisement for the "Pichi Richi train“, an old-timer railroad which drives here many tourists trough the Flinders Range in autumn. I knew from my yesterday's angel that this railroad journey is also a center of attraction because on half of the journey food is distributed.

And when she hears that I write about my bicycle tour a book she orders herself quite immediately a copy. She tells me how she does it if she must work in this scorching heat in her garden: to bind a humid, thin fleece towel before mouth and nose and one in the neck. Then I should drink as much that I must go lastingly to the toilet. But I can not drink as much during the bicycle riding. Then I can not bend me no more deeply enough over my bicycle by riding by racing handlebar.

To my relative, Hans in Melbourne, I write by email: „Hans, I stay at the moment in Quorn. And because I do not want to cycle on account of the scorching heat at night and also I became warned because then the home animals walk around or cross on the street, I would like to ask you where it is not as hellishly hot at the moment in Australia.“

As a result I receive by email this answer: „Here in Victoria we have only 22 ° C. The animals would be no danger for you. Everything friendly – Kangaroos, Echidnas, Wombats. Only for the cars they are dangerous. Hans.“ “If you come here, it is again also hot. 40+ tomorrow. Hans.“

Then I can start tomorrow my tour safely. Hopefully no Kangaroo or Emu jumps into my traversing bicycle.

17.01. 2013: Quorn – Wilmington: 41 km

When my alarm clock rings at 4.20 am, I get up. Outdoors it is still dark. I am surprised, why the noise of the flush resounds again in the toilet like an echo from outdoors. Yesterday my angel told me that the pink Gallahs copy noises. They are very much intelligent and can speak soon in captivity with right treatment. And outdoors they sit on a huge scale in the high trees. Maybe one sat on the roof of this sanitary arrangement? Why not? I am alone on the camping site.

Actually, I wanted to start in the darkness. My panniers stand ready to departure in the room. But a look to the glass door immediately lets me again forgotten this wish. In the room the light burns. Outdoors it is dark. And what do I see at my glass door? At it many big wing animals are floating around which might come in with pleasure. They have the size of hornets, but look gray. They try to prick themselves mutually with their sting of the abdomen. And there I should open the door?

No, this really does not go. They all would have come in. Thus I lie down on my sofa and wait for the time, until it is light outdoors. And with the brightness there disappear my undesirable onlookers.

Wonderfully orange the sky colours at the horizon. With the ready full loaded bicycle I start at 6.30 am in the quiet morning. I know my street where to go. Thus I leave this friendly place and cycle on a healthy tarred road in direction Wilmington.

Shortly after the sun comes about the horizon and dips everything in her beaming light. Before me spread to itself a flat and wildly covered area. Behind myself I leave the mountains of the Flinders Range. A dead kangaroo lies on the right edge of the road, it must have been started at night. It is not a male animal. Maybe one more young is in its bag?

However, the animal lies on the belly. And I may not turn it. What should I do with a young kangaroo baby? No, this really does not work. Thus I cycle further. The air feels with 26 ° C pleasantly chilly. But with the time the sun begins to fling her igneous glow against me. The today's distance to Wilmington should be only 40 km. And on this distance I would absolutely like to stand the heat.

Every now and then I cross a small deepening which belongs to a river which has dried up, however, now in this season. In the middle of the deepening of the street stands in each case a water level indicator with a water level to 2 m. If I look now to the right and to the left, I see big and old trees on both sides of the dry riverbed. It seems that in the subsoil water exist furthermore, because, otherwise, these earthy and gnarled big trees would have died long time ago. I cycle further on.

Flocks of sheep graze sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right. A flock stands on a plowed up field. What should and can they eat there, remains to me puzzling. Also horses graze on another pasture.

In front of me an other mountain chain has been based. Before it my desired purpose must lie, however, I can not discover it with the best will. A fox laces straight across the street. On the right side a kangaroo jumps in the thicker bushes. In order to take photos it is simply too fast away.

Now I cycle to the next killed Kangaroo. This has got a belonging beat. On this occasion, at first sight it is not to find out whether it concerns of a female or male animal. The intestine lie around everywhere. It looks ghastly. Who will take these dead animals away from the street or eat it up?

Then I put out a single big animal to the right hand ahead on a field. I suppose a kangaroo. No, it turns out that it is an emu. I take a photo of it and further roll on. The heat is still to be bear. Nevertheless, I soon must arrive!

Yes, the crossroad appears and with her the sign Wilmington. Tearing open my eyes after the sign for the caravan park, I cycle in the little town and follow the sign. But before I hold at a small businessman's store to be able to rest there maybe a little.

Outdoors already rule 42 ° C. Inside it feels chilly pleasantly. My eyes suck themselves firmly at a big piece of a water melon. I would like to eat that and can be given them with knife, fork and spoon. Behind the front door there is a board and two chairs.

Outdoors I read also the name to CAFE for this shop. Thus I sit down there and refresh myself in the marvellous fruit. One single poem!

Both dead kangaroos do not go out of my head and I ask the businessman: „Who gets them off the street, or will they go to seed there stinking and dry up?“

"No", he says. „Our birds and the fox do this in completely short time.“

The young salesclerk recommends me the Beautiful Valley Caravan Park. The other lies further in the wild interior. To pass away, no, I have no interest.

It does not last long up to my daily objective. The owner assigns to me kindly a big day room with three tennis tables and a television. Also my bicycle can come inside. Thus I do not need to build up my tent. In it I would be also roasted and everything in my panniers become roasted through. And the thermometer registers me in the room 38 ° C.

In my notebook I receive between my emails a tip how I can cool off in spite of the scorching heat: to hold my head under water and coat the nose thinly with vaseline from the outside and inside, then I shall buy from the drugstore correct water with salt and Nasal saline spray for the nasal mucous membranes.

But I am sometimes again as killed from the heat – even if five degrees less than outdoors – and lay me on the sofa which became opened out by the owner. When I awake again, I tear me together and plan to go to the drugstore to buy for me the nasal spray.

Because this caravan park lies, however, 1.5 km beyond the little town Wilmington and I am too decayed to go free of charge to the town, I enter the office and ask my landlord, who has a white pony as friend, for a drugstore.

„No, here is none, but tomorrow in Orrorroo. Make a handkerchief wet and place it around your neck. Here the small children are already educated for the protection of drying up against the heat so: The parents search small, round little stones for them, they boil them and give one of it to every child in the mouth where it must remain always. With it it is provided for the fact that new saliva is formed over and over again and does not dry up the oral mucosa. Brilliantly, right?“

How I should stand this scorching heat the whole months here, is mysterious to me. In addition, I also can not put back as wide distances during the day as I had planned for it. My bicycle tour becomes a letter with seven seals.

It is 4.00 pm. Here in the big day room in which I am quartered rule also already 40 ° C. I will see, how hot it is now outdoors. Outdoors there rules at the moment the same heat because some clouds have gathered and cover the sun. It is not real to the endurance!! This is why I collect myself a heart, goes to my caravan landlord and ask him: „Do you have for your guests no chill day room?“

„ No. “

„In my big room where I may sleep rule 45 ° C. I can not live there. Is here in this town a restaurant in which I can sit down up to the evening?“

„No, there is not a restaurant, only one hotel. Do you want to sleep there?“

„No, I am not rich. I will sleep in the big room if it has become chillier.“

„Come along with me. I bring you in a chill space.“

So I follow him to one of his small guest houses in which he brings me. Immediately he turns on the air conditioning. After a whole time there is the temperature of 33 ° C.