Round Australia by bike - Day 008 - Proserpine to Ingham

Day:	008
Date:	24 May 2008
Start	Proserpine
Finish	Ingham +10km
Daily Distance:	392km
Daily Speed:	25.4kph
Relative to Schedule:	-41km
Daily Podcasts:	Here
GPS Track	Here
Journal:	I woke several times during the night to the sound of torrential rain outside and anticipated a wet start, but it wasn’t raining although the roads were very wet.  There was a slight following breeze and low rain clouds with stars visible through some cloud breaks. I didn’t know how far I would go for the day, but had decided that, if I felt OK, I would ride through the night in an effort to regain the time I had lost.  I made good time through mainly flat scrubby cattle country although there tended to be cane fields around the towns.  Lots of palms and other tropical vegetation around many of the Queenslander-style homesteads (houses built on stilts with wrap-around verandahs) making them very shady, cool and inviting.  In the distance there were always green-clad mountains rising up at the edge of the flat plain and occasionally closer. The wind was mostly following and I made good time, although dealing with the long-distance cycling ailments of a sore butt, feet and hands, the contact points.  My right Achilles is also gradually becoming more painful.  I have some anti-inflammatories I can take if it gets too bad. In the late afternoon I passed through Townsville and at the town of Deeragun, 15km later, bought some fish and chips for dinner and decided to ride through the night rather than look for accommodation.  It was a decision I regretted not too much later.  I headed north towards the next town, Ingham, 89km away in the darkness.  There was quite a lot of traffic on a relatively narrow road and, when it began to rain steadily, life became miserable.  As I neared Ingham around 10pm I began to feel really tired, wet and cold and decided to get a motel room if I could.  They were all booked up and there were a lot of hoons driving around town so I didn’t feel comfortable trying to sleep in a park shelter.  I had something to eat at Mcdonalds and continued on into the night.  The road climbed steeply through a mountain range and it began raining heavily again.  I had to sit on the brakes all through the winding descent because I could barely where the road was going.  At the bottom of the hill there was a truck parking bay and I noticed a concrete picnic table with a small roof over it.  It was midnight, the table was dry and I wasted no time in climbing into my one-man tent, using it as a sleeping bag, on top of my self-inflating mattress.  Although I was wet through, it was warm enough, and I soon went to sleep with the intention of getting up around 3am.