Spalding - Burra 29km (bike) 25km (Ute)

Pushed off into drizzle - a bit gloomy. The town was dead this morning, perhaps as a result of a few sore heads from the rodeo last night. Soon a gentle uphill on good gravel roads, but unfortunately this turned into sticky clay as I attempted to climb over the Brown Hill Range. Mud so sticky that my rear wheel was soon jammed with clay. I'd clear the mud only to have it jam up again within a few meters. I found that the only way of making forward progress was to push my bike through the long grass on the side of the road otherwise I'd be literally dragging my bike, wheels not turning, through the mud. Was a bloody hard slog!

Eventually topped the range and a clear downhill run appeared on the otherside. So I hopped on hoping to shake the mud off on the downhill - something I'd done on a couple of other occasions on this trip. Instead the rear derailleur jammed and collapsed into the rear spokes, twisting beyond repair and snapping off the derailleur hanger! As you can imagine after having literally dragged the bike for the last 5km or so through the mud, up a hill, in the drizzle, when this happened the language got a little bit colourful. It was a pretty low point to say the least. I could see all my plans for the trip evaporating. This was just about the only breakdown I couldn't repair myself.

I was a fair way from a main road and I had to get moving somehow. So I removed the derailleur and took out some chain links in a fairly unconvincing attempt to turn the bike into a single speed. I managed to find a chain length that gave a reasonable chain tension on a fairly low gear. But the without the derailleur for guiding and properly tensioning the chain it would shift to other chain rings unannounced, often with the increased chain slackness causing it to jam in the front derailleur.

I guessed the direction of the nearest main road (off the edge of the Mawson Trail map) and pushed off, stopping every couple of hundred meters to reset the chain again. Eventually got off the dirt and onto some bitumen and was trucking along reasonably well with the smoother road surface causing less side-to-side movement of the chain. But then the chain jammed again, and this time snapped a link. On cue it started to drizzle.

Fortunately as I was crouched down fixing the chain by the side of the road, a local farming couple pulled over and very kindly gave me a lift in their ute the 25km into Burra. Their generosity saved the day not to mention saving my sanity.

No bike shop in Burra, and even if there was the derailleur hanger is a fairly specialized part. So it was time to put my bush mechanic skills to the test. Booked myself into a hotel. I was muddy and in no mood to sit in the fairly dreary Burra caravan park in the drizzle waiting it out in my tent. The hardware shop was closed and I needed to wait for it to open in the morning to get some materials to fix my bike and get going again.

This was all part of the adventure. I was determined to get back to Adelaide under my own steam. I got myself into this situation, so I would get myself out of it, single speeding all the way back to Adelaide.