ripper

Shed a tear, friends, for Russell is dead! He was simply too crook. Had no oil inside and collapsed under the pressure, apparently. His heart simply gave up. RIP mate, you were great. You got me where I most wanted to go, and though our time together was brief, I'll never forget it. (Inquest on 'why' the bike had no oil is for the service engineer back at the hire firm, and his boss.)

So, what now? Well, the hire firm - bless 'em - is flying me back from Alice Springs to Melbourne tomorrow morning, and they're prepping me a new bike for collection in the afternoon. I SHALL make it to Sydney on two wheels! And hopefully on a newer bike too.

Sad as I am at Russell's demise, this means I don't spend five or six days on the road in 'less interesting' country, simply putting in more miles. The down side is that I HAD hoped to visit my old Westcountry TV and South Today workmate Lisa Batty, who emigrated to Brisbane a couple of years ago. It's still possible I'll make it as far as Brizzy for her promised barbecue... but the original route would have made her house a perfect halfway stop from North to South of the country.

My day in Alice Springs has been uneventful... apart from retrieving my stuff from the Desert Bikes garage, I wandered round town, went to cinema to see 'Warrior' - not bad - and did some shopping. Saw a few of the local landmarks, and took a few snaps, but Alice isn't an exciting city destination - it's a small, hot and dusty town, with bland shops and not an awful lot going for it. It's just a convenient 'somewhere' in the middle of nowhere. Harsh but true.

Back at hostel now and preparing to cook myself an omelette for tea and settle down for evening. Less of a make-do-and-mend place, this one, but ok. Nice friendly people in my dorm last night, including a South Today viewer who recognised me as soon as we started chatting.... 'aren't you on tv?' She lives in Chichester! Watched Avatar in the communal tv lounge, and it had strange parallels with here - the white man comes to Australia and shunts the Aboriginals aside to take advantage of the mineral wealth, mirrored what Sigourney Weaver and the gang were up to on Pandora. Or am I reading too deeply into James Cameron's 'smurfs in space' epic?