18/05/26 And Just Like That.

If I could have ridden away from Bourke I would have done so in a heartbeat.  

I would have ridden toward the head of the river, so tantalisingly close, along the little gravel roads and riverside bush camps that I'd plotted and planned for, across the 14 river crossings of the Cambanoora Gorge where the Condamine tumbled in its hurry to leave the mountains.

But I didn't.

On Monday I worked in Bourke while rain clattered on the roof and outside of town the claypans turned to sheets of raindrop-dimpled water.

Bourke was the final part on the Darling,the point where the steamers could no longer navigate the fickle river.

Rain just starting to fall.

From the verandah, Port of Bourke Hotel.

"My doctor's gonna ring you," said Daughter on Monday night.  Doctors don't usually ring the mothers of adult daughters just to chat now, do they?

For the last couple of months, while she played with her cat and caught the tram and went to work and took photographs at soccer and made toast for breakfast and did all the hundred and one other mundane things that make a life, an infection crept through the linings of her heart. It colonised the valves and disrupted the flow and set up home in the scar tissue from the previous six surgeries. If it weren't for an alert technician at a routine check up we probably wouldn't have known about it until she was dying. Which she wasn't. Yet.

"Surgery!" said her team. "On Monday." Which was a little unsettling, to think of all the people who needed their hearts operated on and she had jumped to the head of the queue. Not the do-this-now queue, but definitely the next-working-day queue which was more urgency than was entirely comfortable.

We discussed her funeral wishes because that's what you do when your 27 year old daughter's heart will be stilled and sliced and stitched for the seventh time. "Cremate me," she said. "And take my ashes clubbing." And we cracked up laughing because she doesn't go clubbing and the idea of me going clubbing was... interesting, to say the least.

I didn't plan for the ride to end there, in Bourke, in the rain, but it did. As the sun came out on Tuesday I hitched a ride on a truck that did a bi-weekly shuttle between Bourke and Dubbo. 

My ride.

Allison of A&L Couriers contacted me on Tuesday morning after I put out an SOS on the Bourke Community Facebook page. I couldnt meet NSW's stringent packing requirements for carrying a bike on the bus. "We'll take your bike, she said. "Les will be in Bourke with the truck today. He'll pick you up after lunch." 

Panic station! So much to do, including finding a way to carry my panniers without a bike under them.

"Can you hold onto the bike until I get there on Wednesday?" The next bus left Wednesday morning. "Goodness no!" said Allison. "Get on the bus with Les. We'll get you there today." The Bourke Community page cheered her on, and caravanners who had passed me on the road left messages of encouragement and support.

Les, the L of A&L Couriers. "Ive driven this road for so long that the truck knows where to go. I'm just along for the ride."

Painted silos on the way out of town.

We stopped to deliver stuff at all the little villages along the way: a washing machine to the Mulga Creek Hotel; pies and sausage rolls to the Bushcraft Cafe; packages and boxes and pallets of dog food to shops and houses and hotels.

Mulga Creek Hotel, Byrock.

Bustling Byrock.

Old railway station, Girilambone. Under renovation with a plan to tempt more tourists to stop in Girilambone. 

Goats and kangaroos ignored us as we roared past, and the claypans and table drains were full of water from yesterday's rain. In a week the country would be bursting into bloom and leaf, a joy to ride through. As the sun set behind us I watched the clouds ahead flush salmon pink and then settle into the rising night.

Back of sunset, Nevertire.

Last light, Trangie. 

On Wednesday in Dubbo The Bike Shoppe packed my bike into a box to meet NSW's ridiculous requirements for carrying bicycles on coaches and trains. I didn't pay much attention to the packing, having a few other things on my mind and making an assumption that The Bike Shoppe would know what they were doing.

Ready to go on the coach at Dubbo Railway Station.

On Thursday I caught a bus to Cootamundra and then a train to Melbourne. The train staff were very crabby with Dubbo for letting my bike on the train. "It's over size and over weight! You'll have to help the staff lift it off in Melbourne." I grovelled and made whatever promises were necessary to keep the box on the train.

The train crew changed at the border to Victoria. In keeping with Victoria's bike-positive reputation, that was the last I heard of the incredible difficulties my bike was allegedly causing in the luggage van.

Some 1200 km and 12 hours later the Southern Cross station staff happily popped my troublesome bike box on their motorised luggage trolley and illegally zoomed it up the platform, through the barriers, and along the concourse to its storage spot.

I stepped out onto Melbourne's night time streets where the last leaves of autumn still clung stubbornly to the trees. There was not a skerrick of red dust in sight and the city lights had scrubbed all the stars from the sky.

"I'm here," I messaged daughter, where she existed in the parallel universe otherwise known as the Royal Melbourne Hospital. "I'll see you in the morning."

And just like that, the ride was over.