Birds

14^th November, 2011

We are now just over the Western Australian border at Eucla having ridden our greatest distance in one day, 128 ks, to get here. Fortunately the wind was behind us, the road was flat and the sky overcast which makes a big difference to our progress. Eucla is more than a road house, there is a community here and the camp site is the best we have stayed in since Ceduna.  We have had only scrubby scenery for some time now so today’s change of scenery was welcome. It was a very pleasant sight to see the ocean , the Southern Ocean, along the Great Australian Bight as we rode along.  Whales can be seen between June and September, but we are too late.  For about 40ks we had the arid land on our right and the sea to our left. There was an opportunity to go into viewing areas and there we saw the Bunda Cliffs.  The cliffs are magnificent craggy outcrops which line the shore along the coast.

 We had an enforced rest day at Eucla, Mike is working on some adjustments to his bike and I had a minor fall off the bike and have a sore leg, nothing serious and we should be on the road again tomorrow. In the meantime it is a lovely day, we have trees for shade and a sea view – we also have many field mice to keep us company, there is a plague.

Because of the time change at the border, we had to put our clock back 1 ¾ hours which means we get up 3:00am and set off at 4:30 a.m. at sunrise.  As we left Eucla we went through the pass, a road all day with the escarpment, which would have been originally the sea cliffs, on our right.  The wind was behind us and we had a flat road so we made good progress. There were flocks of budgerigars flying everywhere, unfortunately there were also many killed on the road, I am not exaggerating when I say hundreds.  The birds flew alongside us and one perched on Mike’s back as he rode along.  We stopped to have a snack and the birds landed on us and our bikes, we were amazed, these were wild birds and they were acting like tame house birds, they allowed us to hand feed them and to stroke them.  A ranger pulled up and was laughing, he said he had never seen anything like it.  The birds stayed with us for some time, still landing on us as we rode and stayed on our handlebar bags or shoulders for about 2 kms.  Most of the birds had left us by the time we got to Mundrabilla.  The 68 ks to Mundrabilla passed quickly and Mundrabilla roadhouse facilities were not too inviting.  We decided to make use of the roadhouse and have our main meal there and continue on and bush camp.  We were pleasantly surprised to see the menu offered had more than deep fried food.  It was here we saw emus for the first time on the trip, three in all.  We rode another 55ks and camped at one of the many roadside parking areas.  Because Eucla had a camp kitchen Mike was able to freeze all our water bottles so even at the end of the day we still had nice cold water.   It had been a great day of riding, we had covered a good many ks with easy riding and the birds were a bonus.