We started the day from Wolfe Creek 67.2km north of Billiluna, arriving Billiluna around 9:00AM. We bought $60 of fuel to top up the Suzuki, and left at 9:41AM (phone time). I turned on the GPS logger (an app. on my Android phone) when we left, but the phone was not fully charged and it went flat before we'd stopped for a break at 11:19 (thus losing the track-log). We then passed Bloodwood Well a km or so along the track. The phone was now charged so our GPS log starts at 11:20AM. We continued south.
At 1:20PM we stopped for lunch. But despite a very fast start, doing 26.2km in an hour and 38 min out of Billiluna (about 16.0km/h), we made only another 21km after lunch (averaging less than 9.3km/h for the whole day). It had became hotter, more sandy and the track more corrugated. And I tired early because I wasn't used to riding for so long each day.
Outback Spirit (tour group) passed us during our lunch and I had a quick chat with the driver and some of the passengers. The driver recalled giving Tom Walwyn and Scott Felter fruit salad at a well (46?) in 2013 when they arrived late and very tired from the south. The driver also mentioned that there was a German travelling north towards us on the CSR - Outback Spirit is certainly a very effective part of the "Bush Telegraph" network!
I continued south but, as the shadows were getting longer, I saw another cyclist coming towards me. It was Thomas Kreis, the German we'd been told about. Although we both had a lot to talk about, it was getting late and we were both also thinking of where to camp for the night - our conversation was so rushed I forgot to take a photo to record the encounter. While we were talking, another 4x4 also travelling south, with a lone guy, who had gone back to Halls Creek when the diesel had run out at Billiluna while we were there earlier hat morning, arrived. And that's when I said goodbye to Thomas and wished him well - I assumed he'd arrive at Billiluna the next day - he was going to camp at some trees we could both see just north from us (he arrived at Billiluna the next day, and Halls Creek 3 days later on 15 Aug)
Dee had arrived so it was getting crowded (two cars, two bicycles!) so we continued south. And just before dark, I left the bike beside the track, and went back, with Dee in the Suzuki, a couple of km to camp for the night at a claypan I'd passed earlier.
It was our first night on the CSR and we'd done only 65.1km. I'd had an idea that I could do at least 100+km the first day (ie. Well 50, maybe even arriving at Well 50), but given that my training for the CSR was zero in the prior ten weeks, and I'd done zero cycling in the last two weeks, I'm not surprised. Honestly, I was expecting to treat the first week of the CSR as my training regime - and that's what actually happened.
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