2 July 2026 – 240 kms – Broken Hill to Pooncarie
Wiljakali and Barkindji Country
Oh man, I’m so, so sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it. If there was an alternative, I would do it.
But everyone is just going to get a wake-up call, via a slamming door, at 5.25am this morning.
Because that is when I get out the door, and slamming the door is the only way you can get it to latch. That’s what the housekeeper told me when I was having trouble with it the other day. And she was right. You have to slam the door when you leave.
Sorry!
There’s no traffic as I slip under streetlights and pedal through town to get back to the Menindee Road. I never needed to see Menindee again, but route rejig after rejig and here we are.
We roll downhill out of town, over the railroad tracks and through the water remaining in the causeways before the first climb up to the waves of the Mt Darling ranges. I’m all lit up as usual and riding mostly by feel yet again. But I like it. I’ve come to really enjoy these dark starts. I am not a morning person at all – so it’s just as easy/hard to get up at 4.50am like today as it is 6.30am. Just get up and do it. Don’t pause, don’t think about it. Just get up and go.
So we climb those gentle waves of ridges and splash through the causeways in between. We watch a couple slow satellites arc-ing from southwest to northeast. We note Orion lying on his side to the northeast.
And, we really enjoy the downhill wallop in that section that has the Caution: steep hill sign with the car heading down a black wedge on the sign. I know from going the other way that there’s a little crook in the end of the hill that leads into a short uphill, but the crook is not so tight to need braking. So I just let the bike run and enjoy the whoosh of the wind past me and the sensation of speed. You can’t really ‘see’ how fast you’re going since it’s dark, but you can feel and hear the bike go. Yippeee! That was fun! When I look at the stats at the end of the day, I will note that I did 59.6 kph down that hill – wow! – I didn’t realise it was that fast!
There’s no cars and the bit of wind that’s got up early is a northerly, so it’s mostly a crosswind. Never mind, I’m enjoying the march of the light to the horizon and the peeling back of black to purples and pinks.
We have Stephens Creek in our sights by the time the sun starts to rise. Well, distance is a funny thing out here. The line of trees along Stephens Creek, the only thing really poking up from the landscape, can be seen a full 10 kilometres out as we come down off a gentle rise.
After all that rain, Stephens Creek is flowing today. Not too many tourists probably get to see that with water in it.
On we go. Pedal, pedal, pedal. We’re making good time even without much tailwind assistance yet.
I stop at the first road to Wilcannia for a drink. It’s about then that the first glug of cars is let loose. A campervan and a guy in a clapped-out Holden pulling a trailer-load of goats both honk and wave.
Then we turn southerly and let the tailwind blow us into Menindee. We’ve been riding for 5.25 hours. We’ve done 115 kms. That’s a full day, really. And it is just a quarter to 11am.
I stop for a good break here. I sit in the sun outside the grocery store after I’ve gone in to purchase water. I’ll take 5 litres with me from here. I watch all the farmers go in and out of the post office and get back in their muddy utes to go home. I watch two well-dressed young tourists go into the supermarket and come back out empty-handed. Everything was probably too plebeian for them – they’re probably looking for Melbourne-quality coffee.
Then we head on. Let’s see where we get to before the rain or the darkness catches us.
The wind is about a 15-20kph tailwind and I enjoy that push. We’ve just had so many headwinds on this tour, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to get a bit of assistance! You have a whole different position and angle on the bike when you aren’t grunting into the wind.
The traffic is very, very light – a lot lighter than when I went the other way. We’ll take it! At one point, I go 1.5 hours and see not a single vehicle.
We just pedal and pedal. And pedal and pedal. Somewhere, at about 160 kms, I decide it’d be really cool if we could do 200kms today. That’s a nice round number. So we pedal on, and hunt down those 40 kms.
I stop for breaks twice. Once, somewhere near Tolarno station, I get a taste of how wet the dirt still remains. The driveway is quite wet and I leave tyre tracks and footprints on the edge where I’ve tread. We then stop again in a station driveway just before we get out of the BOOMS landscape (the river floodplain). There’s a decent-length hill to get back up into the sandhills here. As I’m standing there on the gelatinous dirt driveway, the farmer comes down it. (The homestead is way back somewhere – you can’t see it from the road). He goes around me, as I can’t really move, but he does pause, roll the down the window and ask if I’m good.
Those high sandhills are scenic and this would be a decent spot to camp on the side of the road with the flowering grasses and big callitris pine. But I’m wanting to do 200 kms today and there’s still plenty of daylight left. On we go.
It’s interesting how this section looks a bit different going the other way. It’s actually kinda interesting to look at and appreciate how many hills we climbed going the other way that I don’t really remember (they are all like 2% grades, so not real hills, anyway).
We get our 200 kms. There are clouds to the south that have been building though it remains clear behind us. Now I think: my distance record is 209 kms. We have just got to go 210 kms today and beat that. And so on we go.
210 kms passes by. We’ve set a new PB. But I’m not done yet. There is definitely dark clouds to the south. But 30 kms is a dawdle. Surely we can make it all the way to Pooncarie before the rain. I’m not sure about daylight, that is gonna be close. But let’s go.
Let me say, my butt was pretty done somewhere after 190 kms. Not terrible – just tired. I just want to note that.
The wind is still pushing us along. It’s a 20-25 kph tailwind, nothing super duper, but definitely helpful nonetheless. I need that if I’m going to beat that rain.
The sky grows darker. The sun gets lower. The sky grows even darker. The sun goes even lower.
I’m really racing daylight and precipitation in the final 15 kms. I keep telling myself, ‘C’mon legs! C’mon! Let’s go, Em! Go!’. It almost becomes a mantra.
But when you’ve already done 225 kms, there are no more reserves to call on. There is no ‘kick it up’ gear to find within. There is no more oomph to increase your speed. You are just pedalling and proceeding at that point.
Race the rain. Race the sun. Pedal.
I roll into the camping area at Pooncarie right on sunset. I roll past the powered sites and down onto the muddy area down by the river. There are sites further down the main track that are nicer and more private, but those don’t have picnic tables. I am lured by picnic tables and proximity to the toilet block (a necessity with Pooncarie water). I am scared to roll down on that mud – I would rather pick the bike up and carry it due to thorn risk – but the rain is imminent.
So I roll down, find what looks to be the highest ground that won’t get puddly, which happens to be right next to a picnic table in the centre of it all, and quickly set up the tent. I get a victory photo, get everything in the tent, get myself in the tent, and then it rains.
Phew – I could not have cut that any closer!
I never thought I’d ever ride 240 kms in a day. My last distance record was on my touring bike back in 2014 (the 209 km day). I had no wind assist that day and even had a headwind for a bit through a canyon at the start. I had a lot more cumulative elevation climbed than today.
So we’ll note in the record books that this record was with wind assist for the second half. Back in 2014, I was riding a much lighter bike, I would not have been carrying 8 days of food or 5 litres of water, I didn’t have 2.8 knobby tyre resistance, and I was 12 years younger!
So I still feel really good about the accomplishment today. I was tired in those last 40 kms, but I could have kept going if I had to. I don’t feel as tired as I have on some of those days I spent riding into the wind all day. I suppose it’s what the ultra runners and Tour Divide riders get to – at some point, you just keep turning over the pedals. As long as you don’t stop, you can just keep going. Your head just sorta detaches or disassociates from the present and your body just does it. But once you stop, that’s it, you’re not going on without a rest.
So we’ll have a rest. Several days of it, in fact. Another break enforced by conditions. Let’s see if the roads to the east of here reopen in the next few days.
