Cania Dam to Cracow

Heading west we got into open plains grazing county. Few fence.

On the plains

At lunch time we found our way up a hill near the track. There is something about a landscape where you can ride anywhere without tracks. I have always enjoyed this sort of “overlanding” I guess.

Raman celebrating reaching the top after a challenging climb.

Reading the landscape is really important when riding without a track. There will be gullies and steep sections of hills that can be avoided. The climb to the top of this hill was a challenge and I felt particularly rewarded by the view of the country around.

Raman added some more “character” to one of his side boxes one the way down by dumping the bike upside down. As he put it, “I found my self looking at my reflection in the bash plate”.

No harm done, we were back on the track shortly and on our way to Cracow.

Getting almost lost in the middle of a huge cattle station on old stock routes.

The pub at Cracow is a real bit of history. The walls are covered in scrawlings and the ceiling adorned with old saddles, mining lamps, rusty tools and all manner of other bits of times past.

Mining is a booming industry there once again and the bar is as it once would have been, filled with noisy, dirty, uncouth men making passes at the girls behind the bar while pissing away their wages. Although the wages are so ridiculously high these days it would be hard to piss it all away without getting liver poisoning. Wages start at 140k these days.
This country of ours is mining mad! And it’s all happening out here away from the eyes of most Australians. There are mining vehicles everywhere, thousands of kilometers of pipelines going in (one has to see these to realise just how big an operation this is), new mines opening, exploration and old mines being reopened. A profitable gold mine get 1g/ton of ore! That means they dig up and process a ton of ore for about twenty bucks! Fossil fuels really do enable amazing things.