Potholes and punctures come with the extraordinary terrain on the 900km Mawson Trail. So does a sense of pride – if you make it.
We’re only two days into our 10-day, 900-kilometre Mawson Trail bike ride in South Australia, when things take a distinct turn for the worse.
We limp into Hawker as dusk falls. The only good news in an otherwise bleak afternoon is that the service station owner hears our knocks on the window as he is clearing up for the day. We sit outside on a bench inhaling salt and vinegar chips and chocolate Big Ms, wondering what on earth we have got ourselves into.
Happily for us, after day two the tracks and roads improve, as does our outlook, despite a headwind that persists for several days. Brett Gillett, the chief executive of Bicycle SA, says the advent of e-bikes and a general growth of enthusiasm for adventure/eco cycling since the pandemic has significantly swelled numbers on the Mawson Trail. Many cyclists attempt the whole route in one hit, others prefer to do it in parts.“More and more cyclists are coming from interstate and overseas to try the Mawson and other off-road trails in South Australia,” he says.
The nine maps are well annotated with the history of sights and regions, each covering around 100 kilometres and showing the topography for each day. We pass many ruins and animal carcasses at Goyder’s Line, which bisects the Mawson trail around Wilmington, a third of the way along the trail heading south. In 1865, the state’s surveyor-general, George Goyder, studied the rainfall and flora of the region and presented a report to the colonial government drawing a line running roughly east-west, with some bulges here and there, that divided South Australia into arable land, and country to the north that was “liable to drought”.
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