BEYOND CHARTERS TOWERS

Jim is our fearless leader. Sarah, Diana and Nigel also in the photo.
Charters Towers was huge! I mean the friendly welcome and great treatment we received.
We stayed at Columba Catholic School, in their boarding school while students were on hols. Real beds! A beautiful swimming pool, a kitchen. Ian drove us round CT on a guided tour. He and his lovely wife Robyn organised all the churches to chip in and they bought us fish and chip dinner which we had at the lookout. (Can't do that in Dubbo I guess!) They also had us round to their home for a BBQ on Friday lunch and invited everyone from the other churches to join us. The pool was a big hit. We sure enjoyed our two days of rest after tough days of 143, 143, 178 and 200.

CT to Belyando Crossing was another 200 km. A BIG DAY again. All riders did the distance. (I even rode 100 - from lunch to BC.) The accomm and meals at BC were ... different. It was a roadhouse. A warm roadhouse which received a huge dump of rain 5 mins after our last rider (me) arrived. It just bucketed down.

Some navigational problems at the start of Saturday had the tandem "lost" at the beginning of the day. At least that gave the Goodies (there are basically two teams) a head start on their more-fancied "competition". [How could you lose a tandem!!!]

There have been a few problems with bikes and bodies but no mega ones. Thanks Lord.

Sarah and Diana have both ridden BFB before. Great to have experienced folk on board.

John, Ross and Stuart are three of the "boys" in the "other team". They're learning to work together!!

Kevin and Paul were happy that the traffic was fairly quiet heading to Clermont.

Tonight (after riding 172 from BC to Clermont) is the last night in a flash pub (see above) with separate ROOMS. After this we're back to sleeping in church halls, school halls and the like. Togetherness! The Commercial Pub is a typical country pub. Sure been good to stay here so far!

Our support team is awesome! (Gotta say that because I'm one of them!!) The food roadies are just so good! They sure are looking after us.

Off to Emerald and beyond.