Havn a blast reading thread.....:mchappy:

Met you in Castlemaine!
 

BaldBaBoon, I just found your ride report here and have enjoyed reading it. :thumbup1: I am sure you are the fellow I met early in the morning at the Overlander Guest House

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/420168904_v8TnB-M.jpg

provided by Claudia and Heinz. I was just about finished with my 3.5 month tour of Oz and Tassie. I had returned the DR650 (btw: I brought a Corbin seat with me from the US :mchappy: ) that I had been riding as they wanted it for another customer since it had the 32 liter tank and I only had a couple more weeks up thru the Snowy's and Sydney to go. Not "quite" as adventuresome as you but still enjoyed every minute of it especially, the Savannah Way, Gibb River Road and the Gunbarrel/Great Central to Ayers Rock. You can see my adventure here! www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/rickmcd

Rick McDermed

Hello Rick.

Yep that was me, we only had time for a little chat unfortunately before I was off. If I remember rightly, you gave me your details on a Harley Davidson card.....this turned to mush after getting hit by the first freezing storm though.

Been reading through your trip, sounds like you had a great time as well.....I will be keeping an eye on your site, as your Norwegian trip is what I want to do this August.

Keep safe.

Darwin.
 

The initial plan was to stay in Darwin for a couple of weeks at most then head south again and take the Gibb River Trail or the main road to Perth.This gave me time to explore the area and do some investigation into actually emmigrating out to Australia.

I like Darwin, I do not like cities as a rule...but I do like Darwin.

Maybe because its just so damn hot and humid and the people just cannot put up with all the bother that corrupts other cities or some other reason I really enjoyed the place, good bars and good clubs and all the other stuff that the big towns provide.The next week I went into full on tourist mode and thoroughly enjoyed the various sites like the old WWII fort/museum and other hidden delights.

My current trade is a mobile crane operator and the job has taken me to Canada,Bosnia,Kosovo,Macedonia,Kuwait,Iraq etc and most of Europe.....in fact after so many years working overseas, I struggle to think of England as ' home ' anymore...and always try to get work abroad.

So for the next week I was popping into various heavy lifting companies and enquiring about pay,licence and the possibility of being sponsered to emmigrate....I got quite a few favourable reponses and seriously started to make some plans.

P.S

If anyone wants a crane op...give me a call.

Move your date up just a bit!
 

We start in Frankfurt on Jun 24th or 25th. Not that much before your plans. Maybe you could start a little earlier. :thumbup1:

I'll be looking forward to the rest of your entries!
Rick

The First backpackers me and Dan stayed in was a damn busy place and consisted of all night parties and general noise and ruckas....I declined to get involved with this as there was a fair bit of drugs involved. I do not do drugs, never had or will....its one of those rules that I live buy, and I just cannot associate with people who are in my eyes ' druggies '.....I make no allowance for soft or hard drugs.

The next place suited me and Dan fine, as he was working in Darwin he needed somewhere that didnt turn into a free for all after dark, and it was on the edge of town which worked good for me to go off and explore for a few days.

The time stretched into 3 weeks after going out on a multiple double/triple night stays in Kakadu National Park and Litchfield.

However, due to the massive flooding, vast swathes of the park were closed off and quite simply could not be travelled, made it a hell of an adventure trying to find places safe enough to camp to be away from salt water crocodiles that were infesting the area.

Saltwater Crocs
 

Are Mahoosive...that means several times bigger than huge.

The ban on croc hunting came into being in the late 70's and since then and now the crocodile population has exploded. They are incredibly aggressive and will have ago at anything and grow to very considerable size...biggest in the world. They are a genuine concern when out rough camping and great care needs to be put into action to protect from any surprise meetings....common sense in big dollops helps here.

Due to the flooding they have also managed to spread hundreds of miles further out than there normal environments....take care.

Or use my survival plan....always go camping with someone weaker/fatter/slower than yourself.....remember..you do not need to outrun or swim the crocs, you only need to outrun or swim your friends.

The relaxing passtime of fishing.
 

Every night without fail, a couple of the lads who went out fishing during the day came back with fish that were big enough to share with everyone on the barbie.

Every night.

Dan talked me into going out for a fishing trip for the next day and having assured me that we would dehydrate because of the icebox full of beer, I decided to lend my natural hunter instinct bless us with a bounty of food this coming night.

First picture is Dan the day after, even Aussie's get sunburnt.

Last Picture is the only fish/shark I caught.....you can see from the expressions on the other lads how impressed they were!

I would love to Rick, but work will let me take five weeks over August time....but too busy before and after that.

Zombie frogs from hell.
 

A pest that was introduced into Australia is the cane toad. Brought in as a natural remedy for one problem it ended up having far more adverse impact than anyone could have forseen.


On one of my daily rideouts to the south of Darwin, after pulling over for a mug of tea I saw an impressive roadkill sort of aftermath a little along from where the bike was parked.The biggest toad I had ever seen in my life was spreadeagled on the floor in a very much dead state.... this hoofing great dinner plate sized frog/thing was a sight to behold.

Somewhere in that part of my brain where ' good ideas ' form....a spark of genius made itself felt. This beast of a frog could provide many, many photos of humorous content if I could get it back to the backpackers hostel in one piece.

An album of photos of said frog.......who I had named..Steve

1) smoking a ciggie and holding a beer...

2) holding a knife and fork with a knapkin...

3) Fishing while holding a rod....etc

The problem was of how to get a huge dead frog back on a fully laden bike?

The solution came like a bolt out of the blue....put the toad into the brown paper bag that my lunch ( now eaten ) had come in and strap it to the bike, the only avaliable place being the little fairing mounted directly above my main headlamp. Mission completed, and with my new friend secured I headed back.

Just as I rode into Darwin's main high street a rather disconcerting event occured.

Either Steve the toad was indeed a creature from the abyss and rather than being granted rest..was thrown back from the gates of hell to stalk the land as a zombie...or Steve was very,very good at playing dead...either way resulted in the same effect.

The heat from the headlamp must have started to slowly cook the toad above it and almost unseen at first and then incredibly frantically in the space of a few seconds the zombie came back to life/ toad stopped pretending and started thrashing around violently until it completely ripped free of its paper bag.

Im now sat a set of traffic lights in the center of Darwin with dozens and dozens of pedestrians staring at the nasty outlaw motorcyclist who has a living and now smoking toad bungied to the front of his bike,and the bike itself is starting to smell like a mobile amphibian bar-b-q.....women were staring in horror and small children were starting to cry.

The lights changed, so I shot off and swerved down streets at random until I got to the seafront and without ceremony screeched to a halt and with a overhand bowl and a flourish of a salute.....launched Steve off into Darwin bay, apart from the little smoke trail he left in the air, he sank without trace.

Bon voyage Steve.

Man eating Spiders.
 

Dan had the weekend off, So we decided to go to Darwin Zoo and Darwin Botanical Park. Even though he had worked up here on and off for several years, Dan had not seen either of them himself.

Darwin Zoo...lots of Crocs. Far bigger than I imagined they would be, the ones in the zoo were just shy of 6 metres in length, they had a skeleton of one that was hunted in the late 70's who was almost 7 metres long !
The zoo staff said that they have teams out that try to trap any big crocs that are a problem in the area, and some of the signs are that there are some very, very big crocs out there.

Next was the Botanical gardens, nice place to wander about until I saw the spiders.....big freakin spiders......big freakin spiders in a massive web just dangling above the path.I kept my distance and was trying to take a photo when I heard a sort of thud sound on the floor next to me, and then a couple of more thuds.

Looking down I saw big freakin spiders have leapt out of the trees onto the path next to me............I may have used a couple of naughty words at this point.

Bloody schoolkids just ahead of me had thrown a rock up into this massive web that could have caught a low flying jumbo jet and rather than damage the web, it made a load of spiders abseil down like a arachanid SAS attack squad.

As good fortune would have it, I instinctively resorted to my old army training.

I screamed and sprinted off down the path and the schoolkids not being as agile on their feet as me....found themselves shoulder barged off the path and thrown into the woods as I sped off down the trail until I reached the carpark.

Dan could say anything as he did the exact same thing as me and ran over the top of the kids and was only 6 feet behind me the whole way.

Great read BaldBaBoon. Just did it start to finish. You're an entertaining writer.

Thanks for taking the time to share with those of us grounded at the moment. Looking forward to more.

Eagerly waiting for the next installment.
Bloody good read. :clap::clap::clap:

Rory

Kingslake Bushfires.
 

Walked into the backpackers TV room/library and found a large gaggle of the Aussies all huddled around the television watching a news report, after a few moments watching it transpires that a massive bush fire has erupted north of Melbourne in an area called Kingslake. Already the news was suggesting that a large number of casualties and missing had been reported, and a few of the Aussies were getting very worried as they were from the area.

I met Dan back in the hostel room and found him frantically trying to get in contact with his own familiy...the lad looked absolutely gutted and explained to me that the few calls he could get to his family had said that a lot of his cousins were missing....to put a focus on this...19 of his family had been reported missing.

I delayed my departure from Darwin for another week to try and give Dan some moral support as he had turned into a good mate and he was taking it bad.

I will not drag this story out as it was a genuine loss for a good mate, and it just doesn't seem right to go into it too much.

Dan lost 5 members of his family that week.

Bound for Perth.
 

I arranged to meet up with Dan in a few months time in Melbourne when his contract finished and headed south, with the initial plan of heading to Perth.

Plan Alpha

There is an ' adventurers route ' called the Gibb River trail and from what I could find out, even in the busy season and in perfect weather it is what could be described as ' bloody challenging '. One single roadhouse services this 800km route and I could not get a straight answer if it would be open this time of year.....I might be a little crazy, but I am not crackers....and this sounded a little bit too much of a gamble to me.

Plan Bravo

This plan was to ride down to Katherine ( the city, not the foxy little minx of a young woman I had met a while back ) and then take the main road along the coast to Perth via Broome, Port Hedland and and Geraldton.....this was a very long trip ahead.Mostly road and infact I could not find a do-able alternative route at all around this part of the country.
The first main checkpoint would be the Timber Creek and I checked into Katherine Police station to get a road report......absolutely atrocious was the general outlook.

The massive storms and rains that had been hammering Australia had played complete havoc with the road and bridge network and the board was lit up with downed bridges and road closures.

East was completely cutoff at this time.

South was cutoff at this time.

West was cutoff, but was being checked again with a possible limited opening.

The main point of concern was a new bridge several hundred kms down route that although being 4 metres higher than the old bridge was now under water, the only fuel point for that part of the route was on the far side of the bridge....The police officer said it was my call, try it and see if it opens.

Good luck meant I was fuelling up at the same time as a couple of camper vans who were trying the same thing, they packed an extra fuel jerry can for me...in case the service station at the bridge was shut for a day ot two and I basically sat behind them and used them as a windshield from the horizontal rain.