The days are heating up, and my initial burst of speed has returned to a sustainable rhythm. Today the earphones were off, and I drank in the landscape – a very familiar one. I am now in New South Wales, and all set to veer off the main drag to Sydney.
Wheat
This countryside is so different to lush Europe where I’ve spent the last half of my life. The sun, blasting from above, creates this parched landscape. You can feel your skin shrivelling up and burning when the sun is overhead like nowhere else I have cycled. Only the spindly mallee trees with their tufts of grey-green on their tops provide a bit of shade. Behind the trees that line the road where before was more mallee scrub, there are vast fields of wheat. I remember that this is the fertile corner of the nation, and there is water – rain water, artesian, and from the Murray River.
Wheat
Mallee
This dry, crusty landscape feels so familiar, and makes me smile inside. This is the landscape that I grew up in, and it feels like home. The flocks of pink and grey breasted galahs that launch from the road as I pass, and that call from overhead. The magpies that swoop, and the crows that screech.
In the mid-afternoon I crashed – just over the New South Wales border. Like in Uzbekistan, I decided it was time for an afternoon snooze to pass the hottest part of the day.
Afternoon snooze
New South Wales
I decided to stop early and relax, so I find myself in the last piece of civilisation for 50km – in the little pub at Kyalite.
Kyalite
arctic-cycler.com 