Day 41, Tuesday 25th March. Margaret River - Road Stop near Preston Beach

Day 41

Tuesday 25^th March

Margaret River – Road stop near Preston Beach

162kms

I woke up in the morning feeling quite good considering the awesome party we had the night before. Wheetbix and Banana for brekkie. We put our bikes back together and said our goodbyes to our wonderful new friends that no doubt we would meet again somewhere along future journeys.

We made our way out of Margaret River with the intensity of Easter weekend traffic. It was quite daunting and felt pretty unsafe to be riding on the road. A sea of caravan’s and people in a rush to get back to life in the city for work commitments.

We pulled up at the beach in Busselton near a huge pier for some lunch. Harv was keen to check out the Busselton pier because of a huge Triathlon race that goes on there once a year. A spaghetti sandwich for lunch and we head off on our way.

Next stop was Bunbury. We headed into town to get a good feed before some long kms that night. I got myself a huge Pasta Salad and Harv hopped into a Chicken Parma. Before leaving we went to a supermarket that ended up being closed, and when I came out of the shops I found my back tyre completely flat. So I pulled everything off the bike and changed the complete tyre. Pumped her up and no worries. This just happened to be out the front of the bottle shop just by chance, and for some reason both Harv and I felt inclined to have a couple of drinks. We grabbed a six pack and headed to the lake side in Bunbury to relax and have a chat on a park bench. We sat and enjoyed our beverages as people completed their afternoon exercise of cycling or running around the lake. We met and interesting young fellow who spoke about living in the bush’s around Bunbury, eating out of the bins, and protesting to save the trees. After a bit of a chat it felt as if we were in some way escaping as we headed off on our bikes.

The road felt dark but the riding went quite fast as I listened to Harv ahead of me working on his singing techniques. After some hours of riding we had made good progress, but we both felt tired and needed to eat something. We pulled up at a road stop in hope there would be a good place to camp. It was quite open and right next to the freeway, but I didn’t mind and was keen to camp anywhere in my state of fatigue. Harv wanted to keep going and see if we could find somewhere more sheltered. I agreed and we had a can of tinned stew each to keep us going. We jumped back on the bike and headed off. I rode about 20 meters and could hear Harv calling out to me. His chain had snapped. We made the decision to camp there the night and lock our bikes to a power pole. I set up the tent and instantly past out into a deep sleep.