Day 138: Elliston to Mount Hope rest area

October 13, 2022

Start: 9am
Distance: 79km
Ride time: 3:41hours
Average: 22km/hr
Max: 46km/hr
Finish: 1:55pm

The park was quiet last night and I had a great sleep. I picked up some snacks from the bakery before hitting the road.

Elliston had a few art displays before I left town.

And some murals:

Today was all sheep grazing land and no wheat.

I was surprised to see an emu with chicks. This is likely to be the father caring for the chicks.

It was very windy today. I was mostly heading south. For the morning it was a tailwind and then it became a crosswind. It was gusting at 60km/hr.

I stopped at a tiny servo in Sheringa. It had a couple of agressive signs:

I went inside and bought an orange juice. There were no food options. It was very dark inside. No lights and no windows. There was an old lady in the darkest corner that served me.

The only redeeming feature was there were several cats inside and outside:

But even they were not friendly and behaved like feral cats even though they appeared tame. I have been in some rough roadhouses and some rough pubs. This is strangest shop I've seen. Very weird indeed.

I later spoke to Geoff via phone who stopped in at the shop yesterday he agreed it was very weird too.

Later on the roadside, was the Lake Hamilton Eating House. Built between 1851-1857.

I went inside. Half of the house had a stone floor and other half was dirt.

All day I've seen dry stone wall fences. This is the tallest wall.

Most of them were very short. I like them. I like that they take a great effort to build and they last a long time.

A few times I saw that the farmers had used machinery to destroy the walls and push all of the stones into heaps. Then they replaced it with standard wire fencing.

Today's road was inland and undulating. At one time I took a short detour to Cummings Lookout. The sea was rough that day my friends. It was so windy that I struggled to hold my phone level to take the pics.

I arrived at my destination and it was still very windy. I had ridden through some intense isolated rain storms and was happy to stop.

On the picnic table I found a rock:

This was on the back of the rock. Perhaps someone with facebook can tell me what it means?

I killed at least 20 mozzies that were biting me while I made camp. I was surprised at how capable they were in the strong wind.

I spent most of the afternoon happily sheltered in my tent from the mozzies and the occasional rain storm.

I found the biggest rock I could carry and used this to stop people driving over my tent. Free!

Today's ride: 79 km (49 miles)
Total: 8,287 km (5,146 miles)

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Annie O'Sheaso enjoy seeing the rugged coast line photos, just beautiful
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