After riding my mountain bike from Adelaide to Darwin in 2005, I was keen for another such adventure, but one that returned to the kind of back roads I travelled when riding from Sydney to Melbourne in 2004. I hatched the idea of riding from the southernmost tip to the northernmost tip of mainland Australia, and rather than riding along the main (coastal) highway, try and ride a straight-line route that would necessarily take me on back roads and through a variety of terrains and climates.

Wilsons Promontory to Cape York by bike - Bourke to Cunnamulla

Day: 012
Date: Tuesday, 8 August 2006
Summary: Riding from Bourke to 60km south of Cunnamulla.
Start: Bourke
Finish: 60km south of Cunnamulla.
Daily Kilometres: 194
Total Kilometres: 1495
Weather: Cold early but mild and sunny for the rest of the day with a light, mostly cross wind.
Accommodation: Camping by the road, 60km south of Cunnamulla , Queensland .
Nutrition:
  Breakfast:  Muffin and biscuits
  Lunch:  Pie and sausage roll
  Dinner:  Peanut butter roll and apple for dinner.
Encounters: Saw kangaroos, feral goats and lots of very aromatic road kill.
Highlights: Completing my ride across NSW in less than five days with great weather, mostly flat roads, little traffic and dinkum outback scenery.
Lowlights: My right ankle has been quite sore, especially when I stand up on the pedals (as I do frequently to give my butt a break), and my backpack was rubbing on a particular vertebrae.

Journal:
I decided to get going early, leaving town via the nearby bakery at 6:30am, although I was unsure what my game plan was going to be for the day.  It would be a very long day to Cunnamulla (~250km) or quite a short day to Barringun (136km).  I again made good time through flat mostly open arid grazing land.  There was virtually no traffic for the first couple of hours.  I reached Barringun on the Queensland border around 1:30pm and decided to ride on another 60km and camp by the road rather than ride in the dark all the way to Cunnamulla (I probably wouldn’t have got there until after 8pm).  Before continuing, I called the public library in Cunnamulla to make sure they would be open tomorrow and that they had internet access.  I booked an hour from 3pm.  I’ve decided that, rather than have a full day off in Charleville, I’ll have a short ride tomorrow and call my Cunnamulla day a rest stop.  That will give me two days up my sleeve on  my schedule.  I rode until about 5:30pm and found a spot just off the road to camp.  It wasn’t great, but OK, apart from the mosquitoes (no repellent!).  I set up camp, had a quick dinner and went to bed soon after 7pm with the goal of getting an early start tomorrow so that I would be in Cunnamulla in mid-morning. 
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