IP Day 12 – Madura to Mundrabilla

Thursday 31st March, 2022

117.29km +52m
Moving 5:33:00 Elapsed 7:21:12
Avg speed 21.1km/h Max speed 42.7km/h

Strava description: Good going till the wind picked up by about 7 or 8. The last 10k into Mundrabilla were brutal.

Marc’s TwoUp FB post: Beautiful pre-dawn ride but then crazy wind gusting 45km/hr barely getting speed into the teens...

We set off at 5:05am local time (4.20am WA time) – so we actually had about 2 hours of riding before sunrise.

*Taken at 5.50am CWT – still 40 mins till sunrise.*

We stopped at a rest area about 15 minutes after this – sitting in the dark at a picnic table. By this stage, with my ‘stupid o’clock’ psychosomatic nausea, I could just handle eating an apple; the peanut butter and jam sandwiches – for me at any rate – had to wait until daylight. The toilets there smelt to high heaven – so memorable recalling that, I think they were probably the worst of the whole trip. (So if you’re ever travelling that way and drop into Moodini Bluff rest area, approach with caution!)

*50k in – almost halfway at about 7.30am. Peanut butter and jam sandwich time* – *feeling the wind picking up.*

Up until then, we’d been cruising at a pretty good clip. After about 60km, though, our stops got more frequent with, on average, only about 14km in between them, as the wind picked up and our speed plummeted. Our last stop was only 10km from Mundrabilla, and that last 10k sucked.

Well, at least we got there by lunchtime.

I have just figured out that their SA & NT time was completely wrong! Apart from the fact that it was still SA daylight savings time – so it should have been different to the NT – it should have been 1:45 for SA or 12:45 for the NT! I guess they just split the difference. Only 3 more days till Daylight Savings (in NSW, Vic, Tas & SA) finished – just when we would be crossing over into SA – which would make things a bit easier for us, and a bit easier for these Roadhouses in their unofficial time zone!)

Marc did wait till actual 5pm for beer o’clock, and he was a bit devo to find out that they were waiting on a liquor stock delivery. Not quite the Pub with no Beer, but for him it was the bar with no decent beer.

Anyone would think we were out in the sticks, like, part way across the Nullarbor or something. Given decent skinny caps were few and far between at this stage, I wasn’t particularly moved.

We’d had to plan our next few days not only on distance, but accommodation availability, and also with an eye on the wind forecast. Next, we had Eucla (only 65k), Border Village (78k from here/13k from Eucla), and then it was 184k to Nullarbor Roadhouse. Another big one for us. The forecast showed the wind dropping on Sunday, so we wanted to time our BV-NR for then. That required a rest day (yay!). No accommodation available at Eucla at all, and couldn’t get accommodation for 2 nights at Border Village. So a rest day tomorrow at Mundrabilla it was.