Day 16 - Bedourie to Hilary Creek

We weren't too sad to see the back of Bedourie, and particularly the dingy pub, so the cyclists did a predawn start - as we had a 110 km to cover during the day. We had half dirt and half bitumen for the day. The tail wind made the riding good fun and not too tough with one of our longer distance days. We seemed to comfortably eat up the distance, chatting away and stopping to relieve the odd niggle and saddle sore every 10 km.

About 45 km out of Bedourie we stopped for another visit by the Puncture Monster for Pete, also discovering that Pete's rear tyre explosion way back as we left Birdsville had also busted one of his spokes. We rechecked the other bikes for damage and found a front spoke broken on Dom's mighty mount as well. Dom's previous theory that flats and breakages are due to rider error is looking a little shaky now!

While we were stopped, three 4wds from the Ballina 4WD club stopped to make a donation to us for the Inspire Foundation. Many thanks to Graeme, Yvonne, Col, Lyn and Jan.

The camp site at Hilary Creek was a great bush camp for the team, Alan and Julie found a superb spot under some trees, and we saw one of the more spectacular sunsets of the trip. Andrew and Julie went off for a walk along the river in the afternoon for some bird watching, while Alan, Pete and Dom read some books. Ric went for a run in the afternoon sun.

Julie cooked up a storm with some laksa that was demolished in short order by the team.

We found enough fire wood (harder in the desert as there are very few trees) and had a camp fire under the stars. Andrew and Peter competed for the biggest pyromaniac award - probably a draw at the end.