Day 9 - 25 May - Musgrave to Coen - 108 km

Joe makes friends where ever he goes and while waiting for the Musgrave Roadhouse to open started chatting up this dog.

Had to wait until after 7.30 am to order breakfast and get some sandwiches made to take for lunch. Baked beans on toast hit the spot nicely. Before we took off we had a chat with old ducks from a tour group that was waiting their bus. They were very impressed with our efforts, muscles and bottoms.

 8.30 am we rode across the edge of the airstrip and onto the Peninsular Development Road (PDR). We have been told how bad this road can be, corrugations, potholes and sand however we have got here at exactly the right time. The road crews repairing damage from the Wet have just left. For the most part today the surface was smooth and good to ride on.
Towards the end of the 1st hour we hit a climb into the Great Dividing Range (Bamboo Range). I tried to ride but my legs had nothing. Tony cruised past and went on to the top and waited. I walked about 500 metres before remounting. We had a rest at the top before continuing but I was thinking no way were we going to ride 108 km to Coen today.


 Fortunately my legs got better and we have covered close to 40 km by morning tea. When we stopped for lunch we had only 40 km left to ride. We hit town about 4.00 pm .  Not much in the town, basically the pub, a mechanic and a post office.  Of course, nothing except for the pub was open.  Bit of a worry, because we had to stock up on supplies here.

Went into the bar of the "Sexchange Hotel" and had a couple of beers and organised accomodation.

Tony was puzzled that I was paying $120 for a "Donga". I had to explain that it was a prefab hut, not sure where his mind was!

Had a few beers at the pub while we recovered from the ride.  Lots of Aboriginal people at the pub, all a bit drunk.  Turns out an Aboriginal elder had been buried and many people were in town.  Interesting, that the pub was selling cigarettes singly rather than by the packet as many of the people could not afford to pay for a packet.


Went to the pub for tea, because there was nowhere else to go and thought we would look at the menu.  turns out there is o menu, they only did pizzas.  We had a couple and they were great.
Big issue for us now is that we have to get and carry supplies for the next ?10 days. We were expecting a supermarket here but it looks pretty small and nothing is open.