The Black Jack shelter is a cold hut. It used to be an office for some group and I could tell as soon as I knocked on the walls there s no insulation. We had them in Telstra. They were either very hot in summer or very cold in winter to work from. As the sun went down I could feel the chill come up through the floor.
I usually try to air my feet out in the afternoons for as long as I can. But last night the bed socks went on pretty quick.
It was 30 kilometers or so to Burra but there were some tough hills in the way so I left the hut about 5.45am to walk down to a road and then there was a couple of kilometres of road walk. The arrows light up in the torch light so I thought I was doing OK but as I found out at sun-up this section of the trail shared the road with the Mawson Mountain Bike Trail and I had followed their arrows instead of the Heysen. I was about 30 minutes into my mistake when I worked it out. 30 minutes on a road walk is about 2.5 kilometres. I should have just gone back the road to where the Heysen veered off but being a man I plotted an intercept across country.
It only added about 1 kilometre to the journey but in the end I had to climb a much steeper hill than if I had taken the road. Then I intercepted the fence line that I would follow for the next mind boring hour after hour as I climbed up and down tree less hills that the map said looked like the Mongolian Steppes. Well if I had seen a Yurt or two then it would have been something but to only see sheep and their shit for the 10th day of wandering it was becoming a bit much.
I was very much looking forward to arriving in Burra. As I was covering a few more miles than planned I was going to relax for two full days in Burra and that gave me incentive to keep plodding through the fields till Burra appeared.
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