Nyngan to Bourke - 200km

• Impatiently I rode out from Nyngan half past six, seeing some vast and flat farming land before the twilight. Arrived at the town of 'Coolabah', so named because there are Coolabah trees around there, at about midnight and slept on a picnic table in the rest area.

• Could not find drinkable water when I woke up, even when I snuck into the Pub's backyard where a large white purification vat was imbibing water from the town well and piping it into the Pub. Waited for the general store to open where a lady in her early 70's was stubbornly hobbling about packing the shelves. She offered to fill up my water bottles after some exclamation about the heat and road trains, and a shrug of stern apathy. Later I was packing my bike when she brought out a bag of oranges and lemons to 'flavour the water' so I was lording it up with fresh OJ that day.

• Camped that night in the camping area out the back of the Mulga Creek Hotel in the town of Byrock, about 50km up from Coolabah. At first, the camping area seemed perfect with neat and flat red sandy soil on which to roll out a sleeping mat. However, the ants were the most ferocious and numerous that I have ever seen, attacking everything in great armies. When I tried a rescue a floundering moth beset by these frenzied killers, I saw two ants straddling the moth's back and biting into its head.

• The next day I rode to the rest area 20km South of Bourke and camped overnight as Sunday evening in Bourke would not have any facilities. Arrived at the Bourke supermarket 8:30am where a big bloke, a staff member, was having a smoke outside. He looked at me and the bike, did a great big fart, took a couple of pensive puffs on his smoke, and asked how many kilometres I would do in a day. I knew I had arrived in the Aussie outback.