The second road train driver puts for sleeping on the lower bed and covers themselves with a thin, dark cover totally, so that I can look from above to outside. On the passenger seat a passenger rides along, whose frozen sardines are transported in the back into the trailers. He is a fisherman from Perth.
In the environment of Esperance still many further crates of frozen sardines of this fisherman are pushed in the first trailer, until this is completely full. And the road train continues to go to still another place, where further large crates are loaded with frozen sardines into the second trailer, until also this is filled. There we receive something to drink and eat cookies.
Here the interesting fisherman stays and drives with his here already waiting small truck back to Perth. In this way the seat beside the road train driver is free for me. Now the possibility is offered to me of seeing the environment. From the upper bed only reciprocally the road or the sand was to be seen to the lip of the engine. An incredible strong feeling here in front!
With darkness we reach Norsemann, turn eastward on the Eyre Highway and roll at coolly night temperature of 20 ° C towards the east by the night. First I am so fascinated of it that I remain sitting down on the passenger seat and enjoy the night drive, as if I would sit straight on my small racing bicycle during a marathon. It is imply great!
But at 12 pm I begin to shiver and become tired. Thus I rise highly to the upper bed and put to sleep.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
14.01.2013:
Nullarbor – Ceduna (road train): 0 km
In the morning I wake up from a whistle and climb down. I look around me. We stand on the flat and tree-free Nullarbor on a stopping point in (in the taiga). It is said to me that I am to look for a toilet. That means to crawl away behind low shrubs. We are already in SOUTHAUSTRALIA. We passed the border at the night.
The two road train drivers are in the middle age. The first is married, the second not. The second drives in his spare time with his large motorcycle including a trailer through the country, sets up his tent and enjoys his spare time.
He is the owner of lots of sheep and cows. They are all the time alone in the fields. To control them he does not drive by quad, but is riding his horse.
We speak over cultivation of grain in Australia. I tell him, that our German farmers bring in the spring the dung and liquid manure from the cows on the fields, so that then the grain grows better and faster. The cows are along the wintertime in a stable. There he means that his cows are not located in the stable, but run all outside freely around.
As long they are calves, their horns are cut off. The cows are never milked. The calves stay a half year with the mother cow and suckle the milk from the udder. Then they become separated from her and floated with their-same on another pasture. The cows here are all alone bred for steaks.
This road train driver wants to come once to Schleswig-Holstein to become shown from me, where I have lived, for example, the island Amrum.
The sun shines from the blue sky. Certainly it becomes hot again. We drive on. In Ceduna I step out; because there it is the end of the Nullarbor. And the road train must be refuelled, washed and supplied with oil. I say thank you to these two completely noble men.
The caravan park is in the proximity. Still another further photo, signs – then I leave this for me cosy transition home. For me it is like the parting of a whole period of life time; again back from the sky onto the ground of the facts.
My tent, which I set up a while ago during heavy desert storm with my totally tired head, lays down on the side despite the heavy panniers in it. I nothing then quickly out of the tent, draw all tent pegs out and be astonished, why my tent does not only put itself on the side despite the heavy articles therein, but turns also in another direction.
Thus I must set up it with the pointed posteriors against the storm. Thus I empty the tent. But the same time I step with one foot onto the base, so that this shall not fly away completely; because it is completely loosely under it.
While I am now pushing my panniers with the left hand to the side, I hold the tent with the right hand above. But how can I fasten it in addition with a tent peg? I do not have a third hand. There comes a radiating smiling man to meet me, who offers his assistance to me. He belongs to the caravan, which became set up recently at some distance of me and prepared camping-efficiently. The man and his wife directly had welcomed me waving and smiling, when they arrived. The friendly man gets equal his hammer, in order to be able to knock the tent pegs into the hard earth.
Now finally it stands, however it is still pressed somewhat to the side from the storm. That must hold. Thus I distribute the bags again in a row next to each other at the internal left side. Finally also my brain again functions.
But the tent bends itself still in the strong and very warm wind. With my bags and later me myself it will not fly away.
15.01.2013: Ceduna – Quorn (bicycle and pickup): 66 km
At the night cars, which drive from the place, awake me. I could not fall asleep again. Around 5.00 am I pack my wash items and go into the sanitary house. A family with their eight little kids sits already by having breakfast. All smile at me and greet back. Now I begin to pack. With my tired head it does not run so fast. But at 7.30 am I roll by 23 ° C off from the place. Naturally I distributed still my zinc ointment on nose and cheeks.
I have fun by cycling. Unfortunately, the warmth changes in completely short time into heat. Hot air confronts me. In spite of my good and thin clothes it becomes more and more disagreeable. I drink like a hole. The street is wavy, but in a very good state. Only very few cars drive. Most road users exist of gigantic road trains. However, these do all one big curve around me. And then it is to me as if sweltering heat confronts me. My speedometer gives up his mind in this heat. I need soon a new one.
Thus I took a rest in shorter and shorter distances beside the highway and go under a short mally tree in its small shade.
And when I am so about 20 km before Wirrula, I go with my bicycle oncemore in the shade of a tree. The hot wild storm pushes down my bicycle together with its heavy panniers. I have trouble to solve all and to lay it besides. Beseechingly I look at the past driving car drivers. But all wave only and drive on.
And when from my direction a car appears far behind in the curve, I hold unbelievingly up my thumb. And really the car stops and comes backward on my roadway direction Wirrula back to me. The man asks me whether I have fallen. From loud desperation, he can go on if I say the truth to him, I confirm it. Together we load the panniers and the bicycle behind on his car. I may take a seat in front beside him and receive an ice-cold coke. What a marvellous drink for an almost died of thirst! Finally, I also cool inside and around my stomach.
In his car is a satellite phone which he lays very much to me in my heart to purchase one here also, who knows who knows? Also a burglar alarm is to the left behind me on top beside the door, if he should come with his car in the outback to difficulties. He has made provision for everything.
Because he himself is on the move as a businessman to Port Augusta to begin tomorrow his work with businessmen and workers in the outback, he asks me whether he can take me up to there; because along the distance from here up to there I can not go by bicycle on account of the high heat. I accept.
Before Port Augusta he stops at a roadhouse and invites me to a cold drink and a sandwich after my taste. Then my brain also functions better again. And when he finds out after my itinerary my route from Port Augusta and I tell him that I like to cycle from Wilmington to Renmark in the Murray Riverland, he resolves immediately to bring me shortly on a caravan park before Wilmington.
Thus we go from Port Augusta and see on a railroad