Just after Rockhampton I met another bike on the road. Turned out to be Catherine, also from England, also riding around Oz on a Kawasaki. (Gpz500) We decided to ride together for a while and rode up to Mackay. Visited Eungella National Park and Finch Hatton Gorge. On the way back we saw a snake in the middle of the road. Catherine thought it was dead, but when another vehicle went by it moved pretty fast!

Cat and snake

Onto Arlie beach where we both did our first scuba dive. Fantastic day sailing around the Whitsunday Islands. At Townsville I left Catherine as we are both on different time scales. I went up to Cairns for a couple of dives on the Great Barrier Reef then rode down through the Tablelands to Atherton and down towards Charters Towers.
The road to charters Towers on my map is the same colour and width as the main road that follows the coast to cairns. It isn’t. (Note map is inaccurate number 2.) In parts it’s nothing more than a single lane track with lots of red dirt and rocks either side of it. Also it has big signs that read Caution – Road trains 50 metres long. The first road train I saw coming towards me I slowed right down, got off the road, held on to my handle bars pre-paring for a massive gust of wind. Nothing, he sailed on past and gave me a wave – no worries! (I’d heard horrible stories of these huge trucks and how they never slow down and just sit at 140kph flattening everything in their path. It’s not like that.

Road train and bike

I spent the night at The Oasis Roadhouse, Lynd Junction. At this point this was about as remote as I’d been. There was nothing else there. It was great to meet some of the road train drivers – I even got to sit at the wheel of one and look around the cabin.