Day 8 - Katherine to Mataranka - 110km
I overslept my alarm in Katherine, I was hoping for an early morning getaway but unfortunately "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" was on SBS the night before and I had to finish it.
Armed with a double cheeseburger tucked in my bag, I hit the road hoping to clock up the kilometres. It was slow moving and a wrong turn didn't get me off in the best of spirits.
I fell back to an old trick, learned when I was a young kid. When your legs start to get sore, lookdown at the pedals and count each turn, 1...2...3...4...5..., go back to the smallest step and focus on that, just one more pedal and then another.
One step at a time, it really does help and I use this in the grand scheme of the trip, if I look to the end point now, it seems impossible but if I focus onto each step, each pedal its not that hard.
The train has left me for this stretch and the landscape has changed, the trees are a little shorter, the dirt a little redder and the hills less frequent. They say Katherine is where the desert meets the tropics, as I roll slowly along the heat is more bearable, the humidity has dropped even if the mercury has gone up 5°, im sweating less and there is more breeze. The main difference are the nights are a lot cooler.
Mataranka is my next stop but I think it will be brief, maybe a dip in the thermal pools and then keep heading south to Daly Waters where I am still deciding if I make a hard left there or at Three ways and begin my ride across to Queensland.