ROAM Australia heading to Kangaroo Island S2 E4

After a couple of days in the Flinders Ranges on the dirt, I was back on the tarmac heading south. A bit disappointed that I wasn't able to explore more of the Flinders Range due to all the road closures from the rain. This landscape began forming 8 million years ago. Originally it was sediment from an ancient seabed. 300 million years later the basin sediments were folded into mountains which then eroded leaving the folds and faltered rocks. I came across one of those dry riverbeds that wasn't so dry anymore. This one was dry when I came into the Flinders Ranges. Now with open up rain it had a decent flow going and at the peak of the deluge the water was over the road as it had left all this debris. Now that wouldn't be fun to come across in the middle of the night on a motorbike. I pulled into Hawker to fill up. While I was there a group of other bike riders came up to check out the bike. They then shared with me some other tracks in the Flinders Ranges that I might want to try next time I come through. Risking it and taking off the onesie, just filling up with gas and checking the air pressure on the tyres and yeah, keep on moving. There is cloud, there is sunshine, we'll see what happens. I put air back into the tyres for highway riding. These type of nozzles aren't the best for spoked wheels as you have to weave the nozzle through the centre from the other side of the wheel. Especially if you have a wide rim because you can't use the reverse end. You might have heard when I was riding yesterday on Skytrack a clunking sound. It was my chain coming to the end of its life. So I need to find a Royal Enfield store in Adelaide to get a new chain and new sprockets. But now I'll blast it with chain oil to try and get through. This is the road I came in on from Broken Hill in New South Wales. But now I'm heading south towards Adelaide. There are a lot of crops being grown in this valley. I gather it's South Australia's food basket. I do love riding through these rolling hills. Again something caught my eye and I had to pull over to grab a photo. I hope this train isn't too long or I might be here for a while. You know you're getting to the outskirts of a city when you see new developments in farmland. It looks like I might be heading into a storm. It seems they love a bit of colour decoration on their motorways in Adelaide. I began to wonder if this storm was lining up right where I needed to get to. About five minutes out from my destination the skies opened up and to top it all off it started to hail. I arrived at the caravan park. It was the closest place I could find to the Royal Enfield store. Timing hey? Oh well puffer jackets. Pretty wet. Five minutes earlier or 15 minutes later would have been nothing but hail we got. Anyway before the sun goes down I've got to get this tent set up. Tent set up and it seemed the rest of the storm clouds were going to sail on by. There was a strange sign. I don't think my pegs were large or triangular. What if you do have large triangular pegs? That seems a little strange for a campsite. There was one thing I had to do before tomorrow. Just at the car wash to take the mud off the bike before I take it in and get a new chain and cluster tomorrow that I've organized. Oh yeah when I was at Willow Springs one of the guys on the KTM was like oh I wish I could clean my bike straight away because the red ochre stains the bike apparently and I was like cool battle scars. It's the same thing two totally different thoughts on it. I wonder if I'll get any battle scars of red ochre left on my bike. Maybe it's just the plastics of those bikes that get stained. Anyway time to clean before the service. Well all clean and actually legal again because I've got to actually be able to read the number plate on there. I think there was too much mud on to read it before. It should be good for tomorrow. So after the rain comes the wind. It wasn't too bad earlier when I set up the tent. Breezy but not too bad. But recently it's been building up. I think they said it's going to 30-35 kilometers an hour gusting to 60 and my tent keeps getting blown down. It's eased off a bit now but it's supposed to do this all night. So I asked if I can move and the guy was like that's probably a sensible thing. There's a couple caravans over the back there with some trees so hopefully that's enough shelter so I could actually sleep tonight. Not the funnest thing to be doing. I think it's 10 p.m. I wonder if I should walk over pack it up or really a fan of packing it up and then reassembling it. So I wonder if I can drag. Let's have a crack. On second thoughts I can't see this going well. But I'm going to try it anyway. It's like a kite using them as a barrier. Finally all sorted. I'll actually get to sleep tonight. Well the weather's better this morning. Still a bit of wind but off the Royal Enfield in Adelaide to get this chain and sprocket sorted. While the bike was getting sorted I had a look around at the other toys inside. Well there's a windscreen I've never seen before. It's a lot taller than mine. New chain and sprocket on so should be good for another 15 000 kilometers if I don't trash it. Well that's a bit of bling for him alone. It probably wouldn't stay that shiny with me. Now there's a high ropes course. I would have loved that as a kid. It was back to pack the tent and then time to hit the road again. I was heading south from Adelaide down to the Flareo Peninsula then onto Kangaroo Island. So I've just pulled over as I got really cold really quickly. So I'm going to put the puffer jacket on. Wasn't that cold this morning. Winds up. You probably can hear it and see it on the lake. So it's not that far to Kangaroo Island so hopefully I'll be able to get there and book a ferry. I haven't booked one yet but it seemed there was one every few hours so hopefully there's no issue. Always remembered it with a bag. Puffer jacket in the pocket. Quick stop to get fuel and to eat those chicken legs. They look yummy. Well I made it to the ferry terminal to get to Kangaroo Island. They say there's gonna be a bit of weather over the next few days so I've got an open ticket because I might have to bunker down for a day or so in the rain. Hopefully not but we'll see. It's about a 45 minute ferry crossing depending on the weather and it looks a little choppy so it may be a bit longer. Maybe an hour. Now I might try and find somewhere to camp closer to the ferry terminal because it's probably got here later than the ferry I wanted to get on. It would have been better to get a head start but it'll be getting close to dark so I'll go find one. The ferry pulled into the harbour then the captain skillfully backed it into the jetty. They called me up into the ferry. The deck was a little slippery. The deckhand had obviously done this a lot before as he was giving me visual instructions knowing it's very hard to hear anything with a helmet on. Good mate. He started tying the bike down. It seemed he was running through the process with a new deckhand. We pulled out of the harbour and hit the chop but the bike was all good and not moving. There was a little bit of sway happening on the boat but not too bad. And before I knew it we had reached the harbour on Kangaroo Island. Thanks mate. I rode off the boat and went searching for a campsite. I headed west. There are some incredible treeline roads as you leave the harbour. Well I made it to the campground. I picked this one because I had no idea what it was like but it was sheltered. Well it looked sheltered from where the wind was coming from when I got off the boat and there is a little bit of a bonus. I'd lucked out at a place called American River. It's not bad. So time to set up a tent I think. There is forecast for weather so that's why I'm trying to have a campsite out of the wind. You can deal with rain just when it's wind and rain it gets really uh gets a little tricky. Good news I got tent set up before dark. I was actually gonna go to another campsite further around probably another 50 kilometers that might be 45 minutes on these roads. I probably would have been setting up in the dark so this one's a good one and that was more exposed. I was more worried about the wind so I mean it's not bad choices. So tonight I might actually have a look at the weather to see what's actually predicted although they'll probably get it wrong. Also what there is to see here. I've a vague idea but I haven't really done any research at all. So we might just wing it and ride around the island and I'll have a look see what I can find. Time to study up, get some food into me, off to bed and see what tomorrow brings.