What is the benefit of being able to tolerate more cold?
N 22°01'54.7" E 146°19'34.1"
Day: 208 Stage three / total expedition days 599
Sunrise:
05:23
Sunset:
18:50
As the crow flies:
27,1
Daily kilometers:
35
Total kilometers:
6136 km
Temperature - Day (maximum):
44.5° degrees, sun approx. 69°
Temperature - Night:
20.6° degrees
Latitude:
22°01'54.7"
Longitude:
146°19'34.1"
Dividing Ranch-Camp – 10.12.2002
After a fantastic night with no more rain and pleasantly low temperatures, we leave the Gidyea forest. Some places on the ground are still filled with water. Our caravan leaves deep tracks on the virgin, rain-swept earth and red sand. We rush through the Heart Leaf-infested land at high speed. Leaving the homestead of Doongmabulla behind us, we cross a hill that belongs to the Great Dividing Ranch and separates the coast from the interior.
Towards midday, the temperatures rise dramatically again. Due to the rain, the humidity is so high that we have the feeling of being strangled alive. My sweaty shirt lies on my skin and no longer dries. Our goal today is to get as close as possible to the border of the poison bush. We run and run like machines. Our lungs draw the hot, humid air into the body. My heart is pumping and pounding and I feel like I’m on the verge of a dizzy spell.
We don’t reach a camp site that offers enough food for our hungry friends until 1 p.m. at around 44 degrees in the shade. Again, large storm clouds pile up in the eternal blue. A strong wind comes up and blows through the camp with unusual heat. Tanja and I work as if in a trance. The changeable weather is really getting to us. We are aware that we have passed through the gateway to the rainy season. The humidity, the extremely hot winds, the ups and downs of the temperatures, the dryness and the unusually long heatwave for Queensland don’t exactly make it easy for us to maintain our good mood and confidence. Nevertheless, we are getting closer to our goal every day. I have been giving Tanja the distance to Bowen every day for a week now. Even if Bowen is only a fictitious destination for us, it’s only 300 kilometers as the crow flies. The thought of successfully crossing the continent gives us the energy we need to defy all the challenges we have faced so far.
When we lay down on our camp beds at 19:00, the wind has blown the clouds away. It doesn’t take long for it to turn into a storm that keeps crashing into the surrounding eucalyptus trees. The treetops and branches bend with a deafening roar. It’s still 40 degrees. The air is so full of tension that we think it could explode at any moment like a petrol mixture. The hot air blower torments me so much that I get up again at 8pm, grab my towel and soak it with water. Then I wrap it around my feet. “Ahh, that feels good,” I moan loudly as my body slowly cools down. Tanja already seems to be asleep. She doesn’t mind the heat so much. To list one of my advantages, I have to say that I tolerate cold better. But this advantage is of little use to me here.
Despite my calf compresses, I still feel hot. Suddenly I have another good idea. I take my headband, wet it with water and put it around my head. Now I fight the heat from below and above. Lo and behold, from this point onwards my body cools down to a usable sleeping temperature and I enter the land of rest.
