It's funny, musgrave, although nothing more than a roadhouse, is a great place, not a lot of fun to get to on a bike, but a great place none-the-less. We had a great night and an incredidible dinner, i have never seen a streak so big, i mean it was huge. Anyone that knows me, knows that i can put it away, but his beat me, i would swear blind that it was half a cow. And, like everywhere else we have been, the people we have met have been brilliant.
ougtside the donga at musgrave
As we wanted to get to cairns in one go and arrive at a reasonable time, we set off early, knowing full well what lay ahead of us heving ridden it the day before. Although the plus side to today would be that there would be less dirt and we would therefore make better time.
The dirt was just the same as ity had been the day before but somehow knowing what was coming seemed to make it a bit easier, for me anyway.
peninsular development road
We hit tarmac just outside of lakelands where we stopped for lunch of an incredibly good steak sandwich which had to be held together with a skewer. After that and getting fuel it was on to mareeba ands the cairns. About three quarters of a hour outside of mareeba, we went over mount elephant which was an icredible piece of road with several kilometres of beautiful corners and some specrtacular scenery.
view from bob's lookout
In mareeba we met a couple of kiwi guys, one of whom had just ridden from darwion across the savannah way, which was our next route, so he was full of useful information for guys on bikes, as so far every time we had asked about road conditions, people would tell you what it was like in 4wd. Everything he told us was good so that pretty much cemented our plan. When we could get the big fella's bike serviced would determine when we would leave cairns and whether or not we would go to darwin or jus to daly waters.
On our way into cairns we took a little side trip to barron falls which was really interesting. When we got to cairns, we went straight to the hotel we had stayed at previously, as we had left a heap of stuff there, and checked in. As they had been previouisly, they were extremely helpful and accomodating to our demands of a ground floor room that was close to the bikes so we didn't have to carry our stuff very far. They were also happy for us to play it loose and fast when it came to how many nights we would be staying.
barron falls
The next morning the big fella was at the bmw dealers bright and early to see what they could do, and emma, being as helpful as she is, managed to get wal's and my bike fitted in that day. So that only left wal with trying to organise a new front tyre. The bizarre thing about that is that one of the kiwi guys we met in mareeba happened to remember seeing the very tyre wal wanted in a suzuki dealer in cairns, so when he left the bmw dealer he headed there and sure enough they had the tyre and could fit it the next morning. Things were looking good.