Plain Sailing - Against The Wind - CycleBlaze

May 15, 2021

Plain Sailing

Mundrabilla to Madura

The entirety of yesterday and today’s ride was along a the bottom of a massive, coastal  valley on what used to be a sea floor. Riding from Eucla Pass to Madura Pass, is over 160 km of traversing a flat, often straight road through grassy woodland.

A light tailwind was beneficial today, and we easily covered the 119 km in about 5hrs 30mins of pedalling plus a lunch stop at a roadside rest area.

One of the Road Trains which rumbled by today
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Some of the numerous fossils and sea shells along the roadside. A reminder that the valley was an ocean floor not long ago in geological time.
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The scarp runs parallel to the valley for almost 200 km. This was the coastline in times past.
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Keeping well clear of the explosives truck.
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Bill ShaneyfeltAs a retired Explosives Safety guy, I can assure you that if the van was full, at that distance, if it detonated, you would not know it... And nobody would be able to find your remains. The crater in the ground would likely start about half way to the van.

On the other hand, safety measures are taken so that a detonation would be a rare event, even if the van was involved in some catastrophic event.
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2 years ago
For the mining industry
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Bill ShaneyfeltMy guess would be ammonium nitrate/fuel oil used in blasting rock. Tamped into holes drilled into rock, detonated to fracture the rock, which is then fragmented enough to remove.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO
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2 years ago
A grim sight. A kangaroo skeleton. Every few metres by the roadside are skeletons like this. Thousands of them. From many decades of roadkill.
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Kangaroo skull
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There weren’t many stock in the unfenced grazing areas.
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Typical view of the roadside scrubland
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Madura Pass.
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This vehicle has been waiting a while at the Majura Pass fuel pump
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Today's ride: 119 km (74 miles)
Total: 2,535 km (1,574 miles)

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John SaxbyLove the landscape photos, Graham! The brief descriptions of the seabed geology are engaging, too. Should you ever visit Ottawa, I'll show you a plaque atop an escarpment about 25 kms from our house: it says that 12,000 years ago, this point was under a mile of ice, and 10,000 years ago, there were whales in the sea below.
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2 years ago