Tuesday 1st February 2011 - Having fled south for the last 3 days like a Wild West outlaw, it would appear I’ve managed to outrun the most imminent danger. I’ve just seen a TV report saying the cyclone is currently heading towards Cairns.

Thank goodness, I’m not sure I could keep this pace up much longer (I’ve been doing 400-500km a day). I saw a newspaper report this morning saying Yasi was heading for Rockhampton which almost made me weep as I couldn’t have taken riding all this way and still getting hit with it.

Anyway, I’ve made it to Gin Gin today. I left Carmila at 6.15am and whacked off the first 128km to Marlborough by 7.30. One serving of bacon & eggs and 2 cups of tea later, I was back on the road and was in Rocky by 9.30. Then it all started going pear shaped. You’ll probably be aware that Rockhampton was one of the towns badly hit by the floods? Well, although there wasn’t a lot of evidence of it in the town itself (either they've done a spectacular clean up job or my route just didn't go past the worst areas), there were countless road works where they were piecing the road back together again between there and Gin Gin so progress became quite slow.

Most of the time I’m quite happy riding along by myself, but today, I could really have done with some company. Mile after mile of endless bush and only my thoughts to keep me company. So you may wonder what I think about while I’m beetling along. Well, for a long time I had the constant criticism of some anonymous person in my head justifying every move I made, but now, I seem a lot more at peace. The main thing I seem to do is read road signs, you know, “Road Work Ahead, Reduce Speed”, “DIP”, “What is the highest mountain in Queensland?” – yes, that was one of the signs today. Because its such a boring stretch of road the authorities suggest you should play “trivia games” to stop yourself from nodding off and this is one they give you to get you started. All very well if you’ve got someone to play it with! (The answer, by the way, is Mount Bartley Frere, or something like that.)

So off to Noosa tomorrow where I’ll hopefully get to stop for a few days.