If I Had A Hammer

Yesterday we spent the whole day in Fitzroy Crossing. I'm not pleased with the location - this is an unpleasant town - but I appreciate the necessity. Dave needs to get his badly mangled pannier bent back into shape so he wanders off in search of a panel beater. I start chatting to some fellow travellers; they snapped a leaf spring and bent an axle on their trailer driving the same road we'd taken. I realise how lucky we are to have suffered such minor damage.

Several hours later Dave wanders back into camp looking pretty pleased with himself. Although he didn't find any panel beaters he did meet a mechanic who had lent him a hammer. Dave has beaten the pannier back into a rough box shape. That's good news because it means we can get back on the road.

To make up for lost time we are riding straight to Wyndham which is at the opposite end of the Gibb River Road. It's a full day's ride and I know it will be exhausting. The morning is fine but by the afternoon I'm flagging. My seat has turned into an instrument of torture. The motorcycle gear traps the sun's heat and threatens to cook me alive. I stand into the rushing wind in an attempt to cool down but it feels like the convection from an oven against my body. I hide behind my puny windshield and think cold thoughts instead. It's times like these I wish I had a more convincing imagination.

The sun is setting when I reach Wyndham, bringing some welcome relief from the heat. It's an uninspiring town with many shops boarded closed and houses in various states of disrepair. The big tourist attraction here is the hill which overlooks the convergence of five rivers before they flow into the sea. Somebody invested serious effort into naming this attraction The Five Rivers Lookout.

However the real attraction to me isn't the lookout, it's the hill climb. After weeks of long, dull, flat, straight highways, punctuated only by the offroad insanity of the Gibb River Road, I'm enjoying this short section immensely. It's fairly steep and twists back onto itself so tightly that I can look over the sheer drop and see the road from mere seconds ago. The corners aren't well signposted which results in a hair raising moment as I barrel over a crest into a hairpin turn, going far too fast, so I brake hard while downshifting, blipping the throttle to keep it smooth. I power through the hairpin on a perfect line and I feel like a motorcycle racing champion. I'm not disillusioned in the slightest when a bus overtakes me; it's probably a turbocharged racing bus.

The lookout itself is a disappointment. One side overlooks the tired gray town. Another side overlooks the abandoned abattoir. The rivers are visible but it's still not high enough to get a bird's eye view. The busload of aging tourists that passed me earlier are standing on rocks and on benches, attempting to get better views, but I don't think another half metre is going to make all the difference. I stick around for the sunset before leaving.

The descent down the hill is made all the more exciting by the lack of light. I pull into the campsite in darkness and find Dave. He's talking about camping at El Questro resort tomorrow. That means riding the Gibb River Road again. I'm not keen on the idea. I'll have to sleep on it.