Farewell for now

After a year and almost 7000km of adventuring, the slowandthecurious is taking a break for a while (or going even more slowly you could say). Thanks for following my travels!
It's only the beginning though, I have a head full of ideas and dreams of future adventures. I'll be back!
Who knows, maybe I'll get the urge to post now and then- on my wanderings on the bike-paths of Adelaide (where I'm parking my panniers for a while), the lovely month I had in Tasmania at the beginning of the year, or other musings...

Thanks a million to everyone I met or travelled with, to the people who gave me beds, meals, laughs, dreams... you rock!

zigzagging east and west

Oh dear.
Sorry blog.
Sorry blogreaders. I hope I haven't lost you all forever.
I just haven't quite been making it here despite the best of intentions. And now it's almost midnight the night before I'm setting off on another adventure, as usual, and I'm doing a rushed entry without quite the time or energy to be very poetic or descriptive.
I'm in Sydney!
Came back over east (by bus) for a special family birthday.
Have had a lovely few days in Sydney seeing wonderful friends.
And tomorrow I'm headed back to the desert! The Simpson one. Helping out on an ecology research trip. (In a car). Then to the macquarie marshes on the way back.
There's a lot of different things I would like to write about but not sure when that will happen, as I'm unlikely to have access to the net till mid december (how lovely!).
Not sure when I'll be back on the bike again, maybe January.
In the meantime feel free to peruse some of my photos of my adventures- just click on the slideshow on the right and it should take you to my flickr page.
Looking forward to getting back to those big open skies. Red sands.
Thanks for still reading despite my irregularity and boring late-night posts.

Growth in the desert

[written 3/10/10]

This morning I rose at dawn and climbed the hill behind the hut I'm lucky enough to call home at the

moment. The dawn light was glowing red on the range, which dips down to Honeymoon Gap, one of the many punctuation marks in the long caterpillar sentence of the West Macdonnels. The chocolate and honey scents of cassia and mulla mulla mingled as the sky brightened with the decisiveness of a new spring heat.

I've been staying here on the outskirts of Alice Springs for two weeks now, and what a magical time it is to be here. Over 700mm of rain has fallen in the Alice this year, the biggest fall in 50 years I'm told. When we arrived there was water everywhere, in pools by the road on our bus

trip here, in the Todd River running through town, at Simpsons Gap (10km away) and in the normally dry creek the runs past the property here- perfect for sitting in on a hot afternoon.

The creek stopped running a few days ago, and the other pools are slowly shrinking, which makes me glad we caught the bus and got to see them while they lasted. We also caught a delicious week or so of cool nights (actually sleeping IN my sleeping bag!) and got to spend time with lovely friend Libby before she had to head back to Sydney. When I add all that to the thought of fiding 500km into a head wind from Tennant Creek to here, getting the bus feels like the right decision (not that there is ever only one right decision).

Last weekend we (Ryan Libby, Carny, Emma aka Crunch and I) headed west (by car) to explore some other parts of the West Macdonnels. The Ormiston Pound Walk was certainly different to my memory of it 10 years ago, with a dozen rock-hopping creek crossings, and a long swim at the end, but still just as spectacular (or maybe a bit more). We also

walked a section of the Larrapinta, from Glen Helen back to Ormiston.

The spinifex is flowering after the rains, setting the whole landscape a-shimmering. Such a bounty of seed has brought in the birds: budgies in their hundreds, in pulsating flocks, chattering in trees above our heads as we wake- I can't get over how spectacularly beautiful they are in the wild, like a totally different creature to the cage-bound house pet I once considered them; finches everywhere too, including a couple of painted firetails at Ormiston. And the splashes of wildflower colours were daubed across the hills, a thick splash of white everlasting on the rocky range-tops, a background wash of cassia yellows and eremophila purples, and cheery highlights of pink desert roses and lolly-coloured peas.

Back here at Honeymoon Gap, we are still immersed in and in awe of the riches and rhythms of these ancient hills. Sitting on the verandah of the hut (one of 6 houses scattered around the property, and the most simple, tucked away, with two beds, a table and little else) I am visited by zebra finches, hooded robins, white-winged trillers, and black honeyeaters, while I am regaled by the constant song of rufous songlarks, with sporadic input from bellbirds and willy wagtails.

Also many joys of the more human genre. The company of friends old and new. Some good raucous times with a pair of 8 year olds who have taken quite a liking to my ukelele, cuddles with one-month old Nina, and double-yolkers from some happy chooks. I've been loving having a kitchen, churning out sourdough bread (getting better every time!), sauerkraut, yoghurt (made soy yoghurt for the first time yesterday, and it's delicious!), sprouts, cottage cheese, cake. Yum.

Spring is springing and so am I.

Alice Springs

Alice and I made it to Alice with a touch of help from a bus for the last 700km. We haven't quite decided why we stopped where we did. We were having a marvellous time and the riding was lovely. But somehow we did stop and we are both very happy to be here in Alice Springs with some lovely folks and a sparkling new baby.

I think we'll both stay here a few weeks. And then Alice might cycle onwards and I might stay here a while longer.

Rainy Day No 2

We've just finished our 31st day on the bikes, stopping for lunch at 10am and now dinner at 3pm. Everything gets gradually earlier in a vicious cycle of wholesomeness.

I drank some stagnant pond water next to yesterday's lunch drain. I boiled it for sure, boiled it good. But it wasn't enough it seems today. We rode 107km today, 1km less than our next longest day. I doubt Alice will ever forgive me for robbing us of our collective PB. If I'd had a more rugged stomache or had just put less rugged ditch water in it, we might have done 109km. Or who knows, even 112km or something.

The rain only started just as we arrived at the rest stop. We couldn't find any rockin drains to sleep in so we've had to settle for a bona fide rest area. Never much firewood at these places, but you can usually pinch some from the grey nomads while they're inside tuning their TVs.

The rice was ready way too early for everything else so we had to rug it up. With these winds your boiled rice can drop to dangerous room temperature in no time. Something to watch out for.

Barkly tablelands

[written by Alice]


The past few days have been some of the flattest riding you could imagine. Not boring though although many drivers dismiss this area as such. Constantly changing skies and colours. So green! You can tell there's been rain recently. I'm no longer so daunted by the vastness of it. Although that may partly be because it's not 37degrees with a glaring sun constantly reminding me of the possibility of dying of dehydration and heat stroke.
Right now I'm wearing a jumper and enjoying warm tea(sent to camooweal by a lovely friend) by a fire. All things I couldn't have imagined four days ago. We've also been blessed with some pretty sweet tailwinds. Which do send us scurrying under bridges to cook, giving us plenty of time to practise being trolls.
We found amazing rocks by yesterdays bridge. I think they might be thunder-eggs....wish I paid more attention in geology.
Yesterday's sunrise was spectacular,bright red sky across the gently curved horizon broken only by a handful of trees. And an even more joyful event for having ridden for two hours in the dark.
I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Ryan from the past few days-"this might be one of those wash-ups where I don't drink the washing up water".

Location:Wonara bore