ULURU ODYSSEY
Uluru was closing. There would be no more climbing of Australia’s giant monolith, and I wanted to get there while I still had the chance. That was the goal. The plan was to take a brand-new SWM RS650R from my East Coast home across the Great Dividing Range into the outback, doing some of the trip on my lonesome, some with a friend I’d meet up with in Broken Hill, the last big town in New South Wales.
Cobar was the first stop, sleeping off the road – a test for the gear (and me) while I was still close to civilisation. The rain overnight pushed my patience, but I managed to pack up between showers and hit the road, heading for Wilcannia, then Broken Hill on the boring western NSW bitumen.
INTO THE DIRT
Yunta, Curnamona, Martins Well, Wilpena Pound… sandy tracks almost lost in the scrub… tracks so rarely used the bush almost reclaims them before the next travellers come through.
At Wilpena Pound we made camp for the night just out of the national park in a creek bed. I nearly froze that night and awoke to a bike covered in frost. Starting the SWM on a cold morning required patience, good technique and a good battery. In my opinion, a bike with fuel injection should fire into life much easier than it does. It seems to start reasonably easily once warm but it’s stubborn on a cold morning.
Into Blinman for breakfast before the scenic ride up past the Glass Hut Ruin. We stopped at Angorachina Village for fuel before heading on through some scenic country to the Outback Highway. The highway was bitumen through Leigh Creek all the way to Marree, where it turned back to dirt as we hit the Oodnadatta Track. I would hardly call it a track these days. It is as wide as a four-lane highway and
