Alice to Coober Pedy . . . through flood on a broken motorcycle . . .

It was still raining when we arrived in Alice. The weather satellite showed storms from Elliott to Kulgera on the SA border, with a deluge expected the next day. The Todd River was full of water, something I’ve not seen in fifteen years, and the Stuart Highway was flooded coming into town. Moon and I decided to hole up in a donga for a couple of days, at Heritage Caravan Park, while the weather passed.

Many places advertise themselves as “pet friendly accommodation” out here. Most of them aren’t. Katherine Motel took my booking online then asked for a very large cash deposit in case my dog destroyed the joint. Heritage Caravan Park in Alice, though, is a genuine haven for dogs. It has a dog wash and an off-lead dog park on the premises, and it’s run and operated by dog lovers! To make things even better, the owners of the place are motorcyclists!

I bought Moon a new toy, put him through the dog wash (which he hated) and settled in to wait for the rain to stop.

Over the next two days I tinkered with the bike, in the company of the caravan park manager… who has raced the Finke several times, and another motorcyclist! Through those two days of heavy rain, the DR650 stayed in a dry and well-lit garage. My friend Penny, a talented film maker in Alice, took me to Emily’s gap and to visit a botanist friend, so I could collect the last of the desert plants for my book. I even had time to get some of those fancy earmold earplugs — the ones where they pour silicon into your ears.

Two days in Alice flew by, and by Monday we were ready to brave the flooded desert. We headed south toward Coober Pedy.

The whole place was underwater. From Alice to Coober Pedy, both sides of the Stuart Highway were a lake. Water over the road. And it poured. I’ve always heard stories about rain in the centre, but I’ve never seen it until now. In all directions, the desert looked like networks of shining rivers — all the way to the horizon. Lightning dancing along the ridgelines, and clouds of emerald green budgerigars lifting from spinifex.

Moon had a raincoat but it didn’t do much. By the time we hit the turn off to Uluru we were both drenched. Then, without warning, I ran out of fuel… after only 210km. We limped into the next roadhouse on the reserve tank.

My 25litre Acerbis tank usually gives me between 400km and 450km depending on conditions. It has never given me only 210km. Maybe it was just bad fuel, I thought. But 210km later we ran out of fuel again. By this time the rain had totally stopped and the first dugouts of Coober Pedy appeared on the ridges. We made it to town just on dark.

As the bike slowed down I noticed a suspicious rattle coming from the front end. Oh Jesus…I thought, a front end rattle and halved fuel economy could spell problems with the carby!

We set up camp after dark. Like an idiot, I put the tent on an ant nest — so when we got up, next morning, we were bitten to pieces. After a coffee in the servo, with some very charming opal prospectors, I visited the Bridgestone garage to ask where I could find a motorcycle mechanic in Coober Pedy. The guy running the place told me there were no motorcycle mechanics in town, no car mechanics who might work on a motorcycle, and no motorcycle community either. The guy recommended I just try to get to Glendambo… a roadhouse 250km south of here, in the middle of nowhere (with no mechanics).

With no possibility of help, I phoned my mate Vince Strang (one of my three mechanic guardian angels during this trip — along with Ben and Pete) and he suggested checking air, valve clearances and fuel line blockages. I started pulling the bike apart on the side of the Stuart Highway.

Under the fuel tank everything was covered in sooty black residue. I started disassembling the bike… until it dawned on me that I was on the verge of pulling an engine apart on the side of a highway. So I booked an airbnb place with a carport in the hope of working on the bike without losing screws or finding myself stuck when the sun went down.

Arriving at the dugout, a car pulled up beside me. My new friend Dean told me he worked for the local council. He was a drone enthusiast and wanted to take footage of me and Moon, riding through Coober Pedy, to promote the town. I explained the bike was broken, that there were no motorcycle mechanics in town, and that I was about to use YouTube videos to show me how to pull an engine apart to try to fix it.

Dean looked shocked... and not just at my YouTube plan (which had some flaws in it, I have to admit). He explained that there was, in fact, a great motorcycle community in Coober Pedy, including several mechanics — then he phoned in the cavalry. Below is a photo of three non-existent motorcycle mechanics in Coober Pedy. If that guy from Bridgestone, who tried to send me out into the desert alone on a broken motorcycle, is reading this — go screw yourself.

And to my female rider friends, let me tell you — chivalry is not dead in Coober Pedy. With the help of these three magnificent motorcycle mechanics (one of whom is racing in the Finke this year), and their cute dogs, we had the problem solved in no time.

Turns out that my attempt to clean the air filter in Lajamanu, using engine oil instead of air filter oil, had totally starved the engine of air. The air filter housing was just swimming in engine oil. And the rattle? Well that was totally unrelated. I had shattered one of my indicators internally on the corrugated roads. It looked ok but everything inside it was loose. These guys pulled another indicator, exactly the same as my broken one, off another bike and replaced it for me — while Moon ran around like a lunatic with their dogs.

Having helped me get the bike going again, including replacing the indicator, they refused any payment—chalking it up to doing their bit for the motorcycle community.

I’ve joined their facebook group “Coober Pedy Adventure Riders”, and encourage other Adventure Riders to do the same. I’ll be stopping in here again on my way up to watch the Finke race this year, and maybe there’ll be time for a ride!

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, Moon and I will hit the road again for the last five-day stretch of our desert adventure. Oodnadatta track is under water, so our plan of taking that route is dead. Apparently Mt Dare had 140mm of rain yesterday. So we’ll take Stuart Highway tomorrow, aiming for Burra, or at least Port Augusta. I don’t know how much more flood water we’re going to hit, but the satellite images are… interesting. We’ve been lucky this trip and I don’t think that luck will desert us now.

Tonight we’re sleeping in a Coober Pedy dugout. Tomorrow we’ll make a drone video with Dean, then drop into the motorcycle garage (that doesn’t exist) to say goodbye to our new friends. I’ve learned a lot of things on this trip — 1. I need to know more about fixing motorcycles, 2. It’s easy to get bitter about the state of humanity, we all do that — but there are so many genuinely good people out there. I got to meet some of them today.