The challenge is on for the next 226km of dirt track to Finke.
Out to the racetrack with bike and rider and team members in separate cars. Unloaded rider, unloaded bike got him kitted up in protective race gear. Fed him up with yoghurt, gave him food to keep; muesli bars, a sandwich, bottle of Powerade and the boys headed off to the starting line to park their bikes and go out to rider’s registration. They took off at about 1 o’clock after lunch. Rider’s sign up and registration was at 10 am. Richard‘s sister Belinda stayed at the track till the boys left and the rest of us went off in convoy to Finke. Graeme and Chris were in the lead. I followed them and then Heinz and Luke were in the car with the bike trailer behind us. We stopped at Erldunda for some lunch keeping in touch with the two-way radio. From Erldunda we headed off to Kulgera and then onto the red sand track road out to Finke which is 144 km of red dust. A total trip just over 400km. The road was in pretty good condition but that didn’t help too much when there was some traffic that kicked up enormous amounts of dust which made it difficult/impossible to see.
We arrived at Finke and turn left at the water Tower and went to locate a good camping spot, intending to camp near where we have always camped on the right-hand side of the road past a couple of gullies. There was an enormous number of campsites already set up, much more than past years. Anyway, we went to the same location roughly as we had been before. Chris and Graeme went ahead while I waited on the road for Heinz and Luke to catch up so they could see where we were going as they had not been there before. We all drove in on the Sandy point track for four-wheel-drive and then turn left to find a good spot. The first spot was a bit too close to other campers so we walked around looking for a good location and then moved all the cars. As Heinz had Telstra communication he was able to communicate with Belinda back in Alice springs to find out when all the boys were going through the checkpoints. Roy made it through the first three checkpoints & had still had plenty of time to finish the race within the cut-off time. So, we waited to hear more and then there was nothing until it got to the point where he would’ve been timed out and we still had heard nothing. Rich and Luke went up to the finish line on Rich’s bike to see what they could find out, and it seemed that Roy had broken down at what they said was the 190 km mark. There was some confusion with communication at that point and so Graeme and I went back up to the finish line in the car to see what was going on. They thought that the team was going to go and retrieve Roy and his bike but I said I was the team and they started to direct me down the road to go and pick him up but the 190 Km spot. Then they thought better of it thinking it was too dangerous. It was a (pitch) dark, unknown track unknown riders, and unknown location. So, they phoned the sweep team while I was there and asked them to pick him up telling me that they would pick up Roy and the bike but it might take some long time. Graeme and I returned to the camp only to find that Roy had been in touch with Rich and that he had managed to get a lift and was going up to the race headquarters to let them know that he was retrieved. The kind passers by who had picked him up then brought him to our campsite. Fortunately, Rich’s team had some spare 4X that they were able to give over to those kind people. Having waited until Roy got there, we were able to heat up our dinner and have a late dinner and sit around the fire to relax and recuperate. After that we got into our swags; it was a really, really cold night. Fortunately, the swag was quite warm. It was a good mattress and we had a good blanket and sleeping bags on top of us. Next morning there was frost over everything. It really was a cold night and a cold morning.