23 March 2016: What a day!

Well what a day. After an amazing breakfast by the Murray, Chantelle and I headed off towards our destination of Renmark. We need to collect some copies of our rego papers for the bikes in order to get our carnets. Mabel is a Victorian and Rosie is a NSW bike. We figured if we get to Mildura we can get one there and one just over the border in NSW. Easy!

It was a gorgeous day for riding. Clear blue skies, not too hot and not too cold. I set the GPS for Renmark via the backroads. We ended up on wide gravel roads with no traffic.

We were eventually spat out onto the highway of death, full of big trucks and speeding cars until we managed to get off at Berrima for a lunch of ham, tomato, cheese and spinach sandwiches by a lake!

After that we passed through Renmark and pointed our little bikes towards Mildura. We ended up following the old Mail Route Rd through the Murray Sunset National Park. WOW. WOW. WOW.

Stunning fun riding on a wildly bumpy and corrugated road. The surface changed from hard pack gravel to hard clay to sand to marbles and everything in between. We were having a blast.

Until…..

I saw a massive cloud of dust in my mirror. I knew instantly that Chantelle was off. She had hit a ridge of gravel and after a big snakey and a tank slapper she went down. Hard. Rosie was twisted, her headlight pushed in, front rack snapped off, broken bolts on her horn mount, front guard twisted against the wheel and her steering stop sheared clean off.

Chantelle was laying face down, her leg under the bike. But she was more worried about Rosie than herself. So that was a good sign. I dusted them both off and straightened Rosie up as best I could. One of Channys ankles hurt a bit so we took her boot off to have a look. Then we both watched as her ankle started to swell up. So we jammed her boot back on and skedaddled.

With Rosie reasonably straightened out we made the last 40 kms to our camp on the Murray near Mildura. Tomorrow hopefully we can get the process started for our carnets. Might even go to a Mad Max museum. What do you think?