Heading North: Tennant Creek NT

Mark and I left Mt Isa @ 6:15am and headed for Tennant Creek. For me, this going to be my 2nd longest day re km's for the trip. 660km. After leaving Mt Isa, I turned on my GPS and then added Tennant Creek as the destination. I noticed my next turn was 606km away. That was turning left on the Stuart Hwy and travelling 24km's until you hit Tennant Creek.

They are doing roadworks and they moved left hand traffic to a dirt road on the left of the tar road. I didn't see this and Mark was way in front of me and he did the right thing and veered left. So there's me in the right lane sharing it with 4wd's coming against me and rather than doing 60km's I got my first chance to ride my new bike on a crappy dirt road, so I gunned it. I noticed Mark way over to my left and in front of him a water truck spreading water all over his track.

At that time, I thought I had chosen right as who would be watering a dirt road in front of traffic. I flew past Mark and up ahead an official looking lady came accross and stopped me. I had thought she was a copper and given the speed was sign posted at 60kms, my license was gone. She was a road worker and advised I was in the lane for oncoming traffic and I needed to get off. (Thank god).

So I ventured off to the left and Mark was also venturing to my lane. The reason he tried to venture across was as result of the watering truck. Mark almost dropped it his Harley a few times. Bloody stupid thing to do to a motorbike and I wonder if the watering truck deliberately let the water out make riding on the road a challenge.

Barkly Homestead was 211km's from Tennant Creek and a KTM 990 rider rocked up. We chatted (as you do) and discovered very quickly he is another kiwi. None left NZ :) He was an interesting chat and he joined us to Tennant Creek. He rides with a bunch of kiwi's and what they do is ride their bikes from destination a to B and leave the bikes at B and fly back to NZ. A few months later, they came back B and then ride to destination C. He was on his own, rather than the group who landed in Darwin as the bike he was riding, was in Normanton QLD. The previous rider made it to Normanton and had to fly urgently back to NZ for family matters.

So it was great riding with 3 to Tennant Creek, however it was short lived. I have a tow rope with me and was thinknig I would be towing the Harkey, but alas it was the KTM that had issues. (surprise surprise - KTM's are the king of outback travel and geared heavily towards long miles in the scrub, however they do have reliability issues).

We were cruising at about 140kms and after overtaking a car/caravan, Murray was finding it hard to overtake. He eventually did and I let him pass me. His engine was coughing and carrying on like a pork chop. Thankfully we were close to Tennant Creek and we filled up, hoping it was bad fuel causing his issues. After a quick fang after fill up, it was confirmed something was seriously wrong.

We all stayed at the same motel that night, had several beers at Tennant Creek and then bid farewell to Murray in the morning. He was hoping a m'bike mechanic could help him first thing Monday morning as there are no m'bike service shops in Tennant Creek, or his mates would organise for the bike to be transported back to Darwin to a KTM dealer. Really sad as they had a great 2-3 week trip going across to the west coast via dirt. We have his contact details so I am hoping to find out how he went. He runs his own business renting out cars, trucks and m'bikes. He kept offering bikes to us if we came over to NZ, so that maybe a great trip sometime in the future.

Tennant Creek is a real eye opener. The closest pub to us was an indigenous pub (no white fellows) so we ordered takeaways. VB is the choice beer in the outback. $20 for 6 and thats the allowed quanitity the publican can sell an indigenous person. 1 6 pack per day.

The pics below are out of order as they include some Winton and Mt Isa pics.