It’s not grim up North but a puncture can be a pain.

Over the next few days I headed towards Maryborough. I was doing only short distances as I had plenty of time and wanted to enjoy a slower, shorter pace. I stayed with various hosts along the way. Barbara and her family in Kin Kin a stunning rural town. They had a beautiful house with a big garden containing fruit trees, ponds and animals. Sue from Gympie, a yoga and well being teacher. Hers was a quaint house with a relaxing work area where she could do private sessions and also teach. I made dinner and Sue made the desert. I offered up a stable camp site meal of Pasta and Vegetables. Sue made Greek yoghurt with frozen fruit and a touch of honey. Gympie is famous for being a Gold town. In the late 1860’s someone struck gold and it created a boom in the area and from that the town evolved. It was in Gympie that I had my first puncture. Almost 3 months of cycling, thousands of kilometres on road and track and I hadn’t had a single one until Gympie. Next I cycled to Cooloola Cove and stayed with retired couple Graham and Diane. They had travelled and lived in many countries and had moved to Cooloola around a decade ago. Graham was head of the Tin Can Bay sailing club and took me down to the estuary to see his boat. On the morning I left them they and 2 of their friends cycled with me to the turn off point. This was after a hearty breakfast of Avocado and Poached eggs on toast. Salt, pepper and a dash of BBQ sauce. The furthest point North on this trip was my next stop over with Melinda and Andrew is Maryborough. They let me stay for 2 nights so that I could complete the Maryborough Parkrun on the Saturday morning. They were actually the people who had first bought Parkrun to Maryborough. I completed it in under 21 minutes but  sub 20 is not looking good for this tour. Before I left the town I did the Mary Poppins walk and had my photograph taken with her statue. This is all in Maryborough because the author of the books lived there when she was a child. Sue in Gympie had said I could stay over again on my way back to Deception Bay so I finished the Parkrun and headed south. I wouldn’t be able to make it in one day so I stopped off and camped in a free spot in a small town called Tiaro. It was baking hot but luckily the camp was close to the river so I was able to cool down. There was a sign mentioning Crocodiles but there were other swimmers so I felt safe in numbers. When I left Tiaro I headed on the back road for 25 miles. There were a lot of up and down hills but as it was a quiet road it was nice uninterrupted cycling in the sun. When I stopped for lunch I noticed my tire had very quickly gone down. This was the same tyre that had the puncture a few days earlier. I tried to fix it but the valve had split. It is basically game over for the tyre when that happens. Unfortunately I didn’t have a spare inner tube as I had forgotten to pick one up when I left the UK. At this point I was around 30 miles from Sue’s house, I didn’t have a SIM card for my phone so was not able to call. No bicycle shop was close but they wouldn’t have been open anyway. The closest train station was 15 miles back and at this point the temperature was hitting 40 degrees. I weighed up my options and decided to push my bicycle fully loaded onto the main highway and try to thumb a lift. Luckily only a kilometre along the road was a service station. I positioned myself in the best place outside the entrance to the shop with my flat tyre on show. I put on my best stranded puppy dog face, my poshest accent and started to appeal to the kind Australian public to get me out of my predicament. The first 3 people said they were all going in the opposite direction but number 4 came up a winner. We put my bike in the back of his truck, introduced me to his wife and 20 minutes later I was sitting outside Sue’s house enjoying a cold bottle of Gatorade. Not long after Sue returned home and as a thank you for letting me stay again I made Turkish Bread Pizza’s. All turned out good in the end.