Just wandering about...

When you arrive at a place that sums up what you try and spend most of your time doing it's only natural to take a photo really, and then just keep on rolling by.

I spent a weekend wandering around the highways, byways and mostly no-ways of the south-western bits of Western Australia the other week and experienced something quite novel, at least for me.

A flat tyre! Gosling One's first ever flat tyre. In the entire 44,347km travelled of the original Arse About Face expedition I managed to avoid, mainly thanks to dumb luck I would imagine, any flat tyres at all so I was probably due one. In fact I'm probably due more than one to be honest, but don't spread that around lest the idea catches on.

The valve on the inner tube decided it'd had enough of being stuck inside the rear wheel and made a bid for freedom, persuading all the air to escape along with it the silver-tongued, erm, valve.

My natural tendency to plan for when I meet the many screw-ups that tend to lurk in Australia waiting for me, meant that I had along a spare tube. So with a fallen tree serving as the centre-stand Gosling One doesn't possess, I managed to switch out the ruined tube in a surprisingly efficient manner and with a minimum of swearing or fatal injuries.

As always the flies were enthusiastically persistent in their attempts to lend a hand, wing or whatever, in my wheel changing exercise. Thousands of the airborne menaces made my first ever tyre change a more irritating experience than it probably could have been, but they certainly helped lend a sense of urgency to proceedings.

End point of the riding was Nalyerin Lake in Western Australia:

Click this for a bigger version [fair warning, it's pretty big]

I was thinking about camping in the middle of it, but (and here's a tip for fellow travellers out there), just because it looks pretty dry on a satellite photo doesn't mean it actually is. Still, plenty of room elsewhere in Australia to throw up a tent.