Friday 19 December 2014

Day 8 (Renner Springs to Elliot)

Km's: 95
Weather: 41 (very humid)
Time: 6 hours

Today was another challenge. I feel that the heat and humidity has taken everything out of my body. We packed up our gear in the morning and stayed in the roadhouse till around 11 to try wait for the strong wind in the morning to die down. We are faced with midday heat or strong morning head winds, for me the heat is probably better and I think Davi agrees. This was also a good opportunity to watch the cricket in the roadhouse, as I'm always very glad to see a television with good reception for the cricket out here.

The tap water was also surprisingly very good at this roadhouse so we loaded up on that before we shot off for the day.

We made some good time for the morning, having done 45km in around 2 and a half hours. We stayed under a tree for a break, with about another 45km or half the distance to go. The humidity just kept building and building and by the end of the day my whole body was just covered in a thick layer of sticky water, I'm assuming it was sweat.  We stopped into a store as we came in and bought a few cold drinks. The man in the store seemed like a bit of a creep, so I was pretty keen to keep moving. He said they have a camp area for $10 but I decided to keep moving and have a look elsewhere. We went a km up the road to the BP and was told that a camp spot there was $30. At this point it didn't look good for us. I decided to not pay for either and take our risk on the street. The man at BP was not so friendly, so I waited for the young Irish lady working to ask her what the town was like, if it was safe etc. She was saying that she thought it was payday today for the community and assumed it would be pretty noisy and perhaps not so safe, but the fact no one came into buy alcohol she believed it would be alright to sleep at the back of the servo in a park area. I had a look and it seemed ok to me. Davi was freaking out a bit, as I think he was worried we didn't have a place to stay. I actually thought he was crying at one point. I tried to explain to him not to worry, and to look at these situations with confidence. Ideally this is a situation that you want to thrive in, a situation where only your self is in control and you can't depend on anyone else to help you. I tried to explain that you need to switch into a survival type mode and realise that you have to accept the worst possible outcome straight up and be prepared for anything. Once you accept this than you have no trouble. 

I set the tent up and got some dinner cooking for Davi. I've noticed he's been eating biscuits for dinner the last few nights so he needs to eat something proper. As we were sitting down a police car drive down and Davi freaked out a bit saying "we're going to have to go" I just explained don't worry mate, there's going to be no issues. In the end of the night everything was all good and we managed to get to sleep alright with no issues. Tomorrow we're going to look into getting a ride up north a few hundred km's, in order to make sure we get into Darwin with time for our flight. 



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