No plan, no research....Australia, here I come.
 

Mortality

I cannot see anything, my ears are ringing and I cannot move.

My eyes are streaming from a mixture of petrol,sweat and rancid mud that has forced its way past my shattered goggles.From what I can gather in my groggy state, I am lying facedown in very deep mud and immobilised with a heavy weight across my back and a rather potent mix of blood and fuel seems to be scenting the air.

Several minutes of gradually gaining my bearings seems to come up with the conclusion that my lower body is trapped under my bike, my right arm is not responding to any instructions to move from where it is beneath my chest and apart from being able to lift my head up and spit out a mouthful of blood/mud/petrol...all I can do is flail my left arm around.

The temperature is just below 40 celcius, I am on the Oodnadatta trail in Australia about 150km from the nearest habitation and have not see a single living soul on the track in the last 8 days apart from the trail ' Servo's ' fuel stations.

Instead of trying to get some use out my years of military training and coming up with a solution..... a single thought creeps into my head, maybe I should scrawl some last....deep meaningful message into the mud, for when somebody finally finds me....something like...

Bollocks!







Australia

I would love to say that this trip that I did back in 2008 to 2009 was something that originated from some noble ideal to interact with people,travel and immerse myself in foreign culture or even some charity driven event to help others.....but I would be lying.

It was simply a ' great ' idea that sprung into my head when I was looking for a solution to ' where the heck can I go for 6 months ' , so I did not get hammered by the British tax system after returning sooner than expected from working in Iraq and Kuwait.It eventually turned into one of those cliched " life changing trips " but that was not the original aim....just a very welcome side effect.

Planning

This consisted of no more than the following checklist, done within a week.

1) Get Visa.

2) Pack rucksack with summer bike gear ( Australia never gets cold ! )

3) Wear the bulk of my motocross gear on the plane, to save luggage weight/cost and to also live out my robo-cop fantasy.

4) Book one way ticket to Melbourne.

5) Hire a Suzuki DR650 for 6 months, pickup at Melbourne.

6) Shave my head bald, so that I can ride faster and save weight.

I left the Uk at the end of October 2008, a bit of a tearful goodbye at Gatwick from my dear old Mum and Dad..( .having only seen me for a week since working overseas ).

The absolute shambles of the British airport security system was then my first hurdle of the trip, 3 hours before the flight is the time to report.About and hour and a half, the airport checkin decided to open and then it was an absolute delight trying to get all my gear on board.

" why is there body armour in the bag "........checkin girl. ( motocross armour )

" I am a nervous flyer "...... me.

" why have you got big boots and stuff on "........checkin ( wearing bike gear )

" I'm Batman " ....... me.

Finally got onto the flight and with out a doubt it was the best I have ever flown in terms of looking after the customer...Cathay Pacific..I salute you.

Even better, they had the entire series of Man vs Wild with Bear Grylls.....which I watched back to back the entire trip and constituted my entire research on Australia and found that they have very big and dangerous spiders which is awesome as I hate spiders and apparently you can drink your own urine 3 times before you die from toxic shock....who says you can never learn anything from TV.

Finally landed at Melbourne late at night after a pleasent stop over in Hong Kong where I stretched my legs and have a very nice egg and bacon sandwich for a few hours....and more hilarity setting off all the alarms with my robo-cop suit.

Claudia was waiting for me at melbourne, nice girl who works for the company who I hired the bike off. Picked me up at the airport and put me up for the night, to be ready for the morning for all the documents and bits and bobs that need signing before I dissapeared into the outback with one of their bikes for half a year.....I didnt get too much sleep due to my obsessive hunting around for camel spiders....a habit that I picked up in the middle east.

They may not have camel spiders in Australia, but they do have camels and that was good enough for me....if you have ever seen a camel spider up close, you will understand the horror that these abominations of nature inspire in most people.

The start of the mis-adventure

First thing in the morning I took a stroll into town and put my well researched travel plan into action.

One of the service stations had a Australia Atlas that would prove to be my navigation aid until I found something better.....in truth actually riding down roads at random proved better as it was a tourist map that consisted of nothing more than big arrows saying ' Here be dragons ' and ' big desert ' and other intricate detail.

Then it was time for collecting the bike.

I had been told so many stories and advice off people that it would be an absolute nightmare to fly my own bike out ( BMWR 100GSPD ) and clear customs with it/insurance etc, that I just gave up on that idea and took the easy route and hired the Suzuki DR650.

The little fella was sat waiting for me, a new and low mileage Special Edition DR650 fitted with Hepco and Becker panniers and a smattering of tools and items laid out on the floor around it.Suggested routes for touring and contacts and sundry other items were all ready and the paperwork proved painless. A lot of the items I decided to leave behind that proved too bulky or of no obvious use and pretty much said my farewells and heading south....the plan being to head for Melbourne and find a spot for the night in my tent.

Suzuki DR650 Seats

Suzuki DR650 seats are designed by a masochistic git who must have spent years of travel to find materials that in no way or form offer comfort to the backside of a rider...70kms is all it took for agony to set in and then a constant acrobatic display of riding on one bum cheek and then another and standing up to stop the pain....DR650 seats are hideous, a granite slab would be an improvement.

In the morning, the decision that dictated the entire course of the trip was settled by nothing more than a flip of the coin, Heads and I would head west along the Great Ocean Road or tails and I would head east towards Brisbane.

Heads!

In hindsight this proved to be a rather nice play by the hand of fate as no more than 4 days later Brisbane was hit by the biggest storm in living memory, with vast swathes of the area under water and several fatalities.....and also an omen for the weather that I was going to face ahead.

Australia is never cold

Somewhere in my extensive peperation and planning I seemed to recall that Australia never gets cold and I would require nothing more than lightweight gear....the sort of gear that would be ideal to wear in Spain in summer for example, in fact the only riding gear that I had with me.

After a lazy week of milling about about places like Anglesea, Torquay and Barwon Heads, equipping the bike with a rather spiffing homemade GPS navigation system...that consisted of a $99 car navman hardwired onto the bike battery..a clear sandwhich box to mount it in...foam and several tie wraps I was faced with the rather uncertain challenge of high winds and snow falling horizonal across the road....Snow in Australia?....- 5 celcius ?....absolutley no warm riding gear ?

If these pictures work...

Homemade GPS....worked without fault and was 100% accurate, cost $99.

Great Ocean Road...bloody freezing.

more of the great ocean road.

I have worked in some of the more interesting places of the world and the one that springs to mind is several winters working as an engineer with the United Nations in Bosnia in the early nineties..This is what I would call ' proper nippy ' when you add the effect of the howling windchill.....with the right gear I never suffered any problems.

However, on the Great Ocean Road I was suffering a severe case of sense of humour failure and also possibly freezing to death partly because I was still used to working in + 40 celcius temperature from the middle east andpartly because of my ill thought out special Australia riding gear.....so bad that I had to pull over at the first chance at what fortune would have, was a backpackers hostel.

As any male knows, and I do not care how metrosexual or enlightened they are, this applies to us all.....if you pull into a backpackers hostel and see about 10 teenage to early twenty female backpackers watching the grizzled biker turn up, you suddenly forget your aches and pains and possible frostbite....and just calmly park your bike and saunter up to reception as if the biting winds and atrocious weather are nothing to bother us manly bikers at all. ( even though we are in real physical pain )

The weather cleared up after four days, but as the hostel was a cracking place and consisted of spending the days impressing/lying to the captive female audience about my daring days as a camel spider wrestler and drinking games at night.....this 'recuperation' turned into well over a week.

No photos to be posted here....as we are all too civilised on this site, and no-one wants to see loads of teenage girls having their photos ruined by a bald,bearded biker during their nightly parties.

Nice girls.

Hehe, nice.

More! :D

Great Ocean Road

Stunning.

This road is simply stunning. This is one of those areas that can have an effect on you, even an old grizzled git like me, if you have a tight timetable to travel this route.....be advised that you will need to revaluate that timetable.

The road itself is very good condition and has none of the bike devouring potholes often associated on the travellers trails,There are regular places to pullover and just stop and drink in the view.

Long swooping corners, tight switchback corners, dozens of kilometres of utter bike heaven if you push your speed up above the tourist 5 mph. steep gradients and fast, then slow sections that can prove quite technical....I thought that I had outgrown my sportsbike days, but this road brought it all back........Ahead of me I could see a couple of Yamaha R6's grinding out on the corners, I started to draw in the distance to them until I was sat just behind them, and sat on their tails for the next 10 km.

They were quite possibly upset that a little DR650 with panniers and off-road tyres was keeping up with them, and it was without doubt silly of me to really push myself and the bike on a road like this....but what the hell.

I then turned round and did the best parts of the road another couple of times.

Word to the wise, watch out for other tourist's....they tend to slam on the brakes and pullover with no warning or tend to travel in convoys like snaking caravans trying to fend off the bandits with safety of numbers.

You need to have a play on this road.

Small World

You will have to indulge me a little during this road trip tale, as I will admit that I am pathetic when it comes to peoples names and place names....I have worked with people for 10 years and unless they have a pretty wife or daughter, still cannot recall their names....its me, I am rubbish.

I have a routine that I use of trips and that is the routine of random chance.

This amounts to nothing more than having a rough destination in mind and maybe a rough date if time is not important, but the route and method of getting there is open to whim,chance or flip of the coin.

Riding along the great ocean road, I glimpsed a track going to the right up into the hills...looking like nothing more than a logging track. Its real name escapes me now, but it humoured me at the time as it was something like Dead Donkey/Dog Road or something and that decided the route.

A few hours of light left and I decided to take this track and see what is what, not much more than a gravel,dirt track it meandered up into the hills hanging above the ocean and eventually went up into the cloud line. Heavy forest was the predominate terrain from now on until it suddenly opened up into rolling hills and farmland.

Long story short. I met a lady who was cleaning up outside her cottage and I thought would be ideal to ask directions from, we spent the next 30 minutes nattering.

Sarah had emigrated to Australia from England 20 years ago to live with her husband on this farm, the town she came from was only 6 miles from where I live back home and we actually knew a few people in common,.

She got an gossip update from home, and I got a mug of tea and some scones and cream...fair trade.

I traveled NZ in the same way, although in a small Ford (I think at its core it was an old Mazda 323). I had to do a lot of backtracking when the road ended at a gate to someone's house, but it's a great way to travel.

Attack of the Spiders.
 

I am an ugly man, I am also an ugly ex-squaddie and tend to pride myself on not being a indoors type of person.I can deal with most deprivations without moaning and do not need lifes luxuries to function, however some things still trigger me off.

Big freakin spiders the size of your hand that can actually kill you is one of those trigger points, call me silly but I hold no ill to any living thing except big freakin killer spiders.....and people from Sheffield, but thats another story.

Waking up in the morning and seeing a plate sized monstrosity sat on top of my tent ( outside it thankfully ) ellicits an immediate neaderthal like response from me......in fact for those that know me, the response is very similar to when someone tries to take food off my plate.

I whipped out Sasha and gave a robust swing and with a resounding ' BOING ' sent the offending spider into orbit......maybe the same spider that got into the international news after falling out of the sky in France...Australia to France, thats quite a hit.

# Best point out that Sasha is my army shovel, that was brought along on the main purpose of launching spiders into the low stratosphere #

I have a routine when setting up camp in any area, let alone the forest I was in.

1) Keep all equipment off the floor.

2) check entire area for nasties

3) prepare area, ( anything that can damage tent )

4) Build tent

5) move all equipment into tent.

Sounds simple, but you got to get in the habit of never putting anything on the floor.

Number 2 needs special mention as this envolved me making lots of noise and trampling around, to ensure anything around knows I am there......very much like someone doing the Irish river dance while wearing motocross boots.

Food...this is the rough amount I carried on a day to day basis.

Due to the weather turning wet and very cold, I stopped off and bought a piece of equipment that was possibly one of the best items of clothing that I have ever bought.

A Kakadu Ranchers coat, the kind of thing that the Aussie, American cowboys wear when horseriding. It is made from heavy grade wax cotton and although heavy, proved to be a perfect bit of waterproof,windproof clothing.Also doubled as a very effective blanket on cold nights.

Another major plus point is it made you look like a reject from a Mad Max film.

Warrnambool
 

A nice slow pace was put in place to continue up the ocean road, because of the need to constantly divert and explore and stop to take photo's....if you sped along this siezable road you will miss a huge amount of hidden gems.


To be 100% honest, another main consideration for the slower pace was that I had discovered the delights of backpacker hostels and the welcome novelty of people being friendly and of like mind.I met many,many people even on this stretch of the trip and in the interests of international relations I humbly concentrated most of my diplomatic missions on the German and Dutch girls.

I have always had a soft spot for German girls, having been stationed in Germany as a Soldier....first in Hameln for 5 years then later in Fallingbostel for another 4 years.( In fact I was engaged to a German girl for 4 years ), Its not that German girls look much different, but its their attitude and the way they carry themselves that I like....anyway I digress.

You would have thought that being stationed in Germany would give me a good grasp of the language, however you would be wrong....every German girl I went out with spoke perfect English and always spoke English.

However I did pick up the Deutsch phrase for......" I am an underwater Tank driver with hot sause in my underpants " ...and how to order food and drink, so it was not a total loss.

Dutch and German Girls......I salute you.

Great story. I enjoyed reading it and I'm looking forward to the next part.

Warrnambool
 

Ah, I got distracted there...Warrnambool.

This was the first sizeable town on the ocean road since really leaving Geelong/Melbourne, and was to prove to be a resting place for a week or so due to the combined effects of meeting some new friends and also coming down with a chest cold that will have killed an office worker :)


Bob and Brian ( yes I know thats rubbish, but names are not my strong point ) were both holed up in the backpackers and were two English lads that were working in Oz as brickies/builders and were going to try to emigrate when they could. Good talking and as usual with travellers, everyone swapped their tips/tricks and experience on where they had been.

At this point I decided to post back my tent to the UK as even though it was an awesome tent, it was too much weight and bulk to lug around on the back of the skinny DR650, this would haunt me later on.....Vango Typhoon 300....great tent especially if camping for long periods, as I can now say in hindsight.

In its place I purchased a lightweight, single person tent that was eventually nicknamed ' the coffin ' because it was so small after using it days on end.....you live and learn.

Technical Problem.
 

Fuel Range.

There are arguments galore about the fuel range of motorcycles, and this site is not exception.

Do I fit a 50 litre tank ? etc.

To be honest there are not many places in the world that really do require a motorcycle with more than a standard tank to safely get A to B....unfortunately I happened to be in one of those very few places that you needed a large fuel tank.

A DR650SE off road spec has a 27 litre tank with a possible tank range of at least 350km when taking into account the temperature,terrain,weight and tyres.

However, as I had only booked the bike in a bit of a rush all the off-road spec DR650's were already out.....what I had was a DR650SE road spec bike with a fuel tank of only 13 litres.....and from what I had achieved on the ocean road, that was no more than 160km tank range before it started sucking fumes.This was a situation that had to be fixed before I got too far into the trip.....and the age old solution of the jerry can proved its worth.

A normal 5 litre fuel can is what I carried on the back of the bike when riding along the more populated parts as a comfort zone.Later into the trip I attained a square plastic 15 litre jerry can that was strapped to the back of the bike and doubled my fuel range......bungies and straps prove their worth yet again.

Anything bigger in fuel capacity and I would be chasing that very thin gain of extra range against extra weight especially when added to the water that would be carried as well.....always a compromise.

Started to get the old wunderlust towards the end of the week in Warrnambool, and looked ahead to where I would go next. Having had a chat at the local bike dealers, a Ktm dealership if I remember rightly , they suggested a ride up to the Grampian national park....a bit of a ways in-country but worth the visit.

At the KTM dealer I had fitted a few essentials that would later on prove their worth....

1) A set of rimlocks for the wheels front and rear

2) Heavy Duty inner tubes front and rear ( Rhino tubes )

3) A hand pump....and binned the heavy foot pump, that came on the bike.

4) spare front and rear inner tube of normal thickness carried in a rather snazzy pouch on the front fender.

Actually bought some ordance survey quality maps of the area being travelled and a decent compass to start brushing up on my old map reading skills/bearings.

# this is out of sequence of the trip timetable but I can not put enough spotlight on the fact that later in the trip, if you travel off route...your map reading skills really need to be on the ball #

The Grampians
 

My destination and rough plan was to head to Halls Gap that was in the middle of the mountains and held a selection of camping sites and hostels.

The trip here was a combination of beautiful views and where I started experimenting on being all artisic with my camera and excruciating pain from the long distance on the DR650's seat from hell.

Riding through Halls Gap, I just wandered about and got a feel for the place....popping in and looking at a few hostels and such until I got to one that I liked the look of.

Tims Place

This is a smallish set of accomodation that proved to be an utter gem of a place to stay.

Tim, the owner immediately came over and greeted me like a long lost friend as soon as he saw the bike pull up and we immediately had a talk about motorcycling as he is an avid rider himself.

He insisted that I use his own garage to store my bike and gear and this effectively became my base camp for the week where I could go off on an unladen bike and explore.

If you are ever here....this place is great to stay at.

The Grampians are an explorers dream, take a road at random and you will see something worthwhile....and also learn about how fragile nature can be in an area like this.

Even though there was greenery everywhere,the main resevoir for the Grampians was down to 5% when I was there and was really starting to cause concern and promote some lateral thinking....I never realised how much of a problem water supply was in this country...far more pressing than most Middle eastern countires for example.

The Aussies themselves have great water discipline, but it just goes to show how areas can struggle with human habitation.

Of all of the dozens of shots I took of the Grampians, due to a technical mishap that may or may not involve beer and falling into a swimming pool while carrying my camera....this is the only shot that I have managed to find at present.

And a shot of the DR650 in full travel load.

Blue and yellow theme going there. Did you know, that here in Scandinavia, when someone gets beaten black and blue, we say we get beaten, you guessed it, blue and yellow. The lonely red canister sort of dots the i.

Other than that it's looking good :)

TwoUpFront

Hehe, yeah it was not intentional with those colours...but it seems to work.

While I was out riding around the area I noticed vast swathes of forest lowland that had obviously been ravaged by a massive fire. On returning to Tim's place, I asked Tim about this.2 Years before, the entire area had indeed been almost wiped out by a forest fire......thousands of acres of prime woodland. This started a argument amongst the locals and the government in their approach to forest conservation.

The official government approach was a complete ban on any removal of trees or vegetation and no controlled fires were allowed to clear areas of old brush wood, this was to promote a ' natural state ' for wildlife.

The locals pointed out that what this actually created was vast stockpiles of old tinder dry brush and an uncontrolled woodland expansion. Fires occur and have always occured naturally without human involvement and its natures way of revitalising an area.....a few regular minor fires can prevent a massive forest fire basically.

The locals were ignored, most of the forest was wiped out.

To continue the trip, I decided to return on my inland route and start travelling the ocean road again, starting from where I left it at Warnnambool.Long, straight roads to get back there, and the only distraction was the DR's seat that at this point was making my backside feel like I had been hit by a 12 bore rock-salt blast.

Next few days were spent at a slow pace moving to the west and passing through various little towns and stopping off at a whim.Lots of nice views and pleasent places to stop off and stretch.


Mount GamBi er

Camped out for the night on a campsite and this was my base camp for another couple of days, where I scooted off at random and visited various touristy bits and bobs.

This was a slow, mellow part of the trip in preparation for what I classed as the real start of the adventure at Kangaroo Island and then heading north......nothing to tell at this point, except doing the final tidying up on the bike for the big distance involved in the next few weeks.

Mad Max.
 

I am a self confessed nerd. I love my sci-fi films and books and the thought of being within 2 days travel of seeing the Mad Max interceptor and memorabilia at the Silverton pub near Broken Hill, proved too much for my self discipline.It was a far way to travel, so I just cracked on and knocked out the miles until I got to Silverton.

This is where the terrain was starting to be noticeable different and changing form the coastal hills and woodlands into a more barren type of affair.

Broken Hill used to be a huge mining area that has been all but exhausted, and as the mines died...the town started to as well. There are some new industries that have moved in, but nothing what the town was what I would imagine in its hey day. Big rocky hills slowly gave way to sand and then desert on the way to Silverton and as was the norm for Australia, the roads became gravel tracks.The route I had been up to this point was the part of Australia that was most populous and had the bulk of the roads tarmaced......once you left this, only the main roads tended to be.

Pulling into Silverton, it became obvious that I was the only person there.....a problem on these trips is that you lose track of times and dates and also forget that other people stick to them slavishly.Yep it was Sunday, it was closed....but what the hell, 1000km to see the Interceptor was worth it.

We don't need another hero
 

Having got all the way to Silverton and found it deserted, I decided to put plan B of my Mad Max fantasy to good use.

I must put all humble pretensions aside and honestly state I did a cracking rendition of " We don't need another Hero " by Tina Turner when I draped myself across the Interceptor while wearing my chainmail bikini and blonde fuzzy wig.....you try explaining why you have that in your luggage at customs.

Robe

Stopped at this great little place on the off ocean road called Robe that reminded of the little coastal town in Jaws, the locals were getting a kind of festival up and running and it proved a pleasent few days just exploring my new found appreciation for the drink called Mead.....you Northen European type Viking people.....I salute you. What a great drink you created those thousands of years ago.

Met a great German girl called Sylvia while I was there and we sort of just clicked. Sylvia was a school teacher by trade and just decided one day that she needed to just go and travel for a year or two.She was in her late twenties and had never travelled outside her home in Bavaria before....now she was travelling by rail/road all around Australasia on her own.

Us Horizons tend to not realise sometimes what a massive effort it takes for a normal person just to up sticks and do something like that, without any previous travel experience.

We got on well and agreed to meet up in Adelaide at a certain hostel............... I reckon it was my " unter wasser panzer fahrer " line that did it.

Wet T-shirt competition.
 

I happened to arrive in Adelaide on the weekend of the big cricket match between England and Australia, now as this was a couple of years back this was not when England beat Australia by such a margin that I actually felt sorry for them...no that was what happened recently.Back then, England lost on purpose just so the Ozzies didnt go and sulk for another 2 years.

As I was staying only the night before heading south for Kangaroo Island and was not really bothered where I stayed, I just resorted to gut instinct and whatever ever hostel had a wet T-shirt competition that night....and I found one !

Sometimes I just love it when a plan just comes together as that wise philospher Hannibal Smith often said....I managed to get on the judging panel for the competition on account of me being the oldest one there and them foolishly thinking that being British with natural integrity, I could not possibly be swayed by the teenage girls, hoping for my vote.

They did not fall the part that I was blind and would need to feel the competitors as they had all seen me ride up on my bike...but it was worth a try anyway.

The rest of the night was hazy, but did involve lots of drink....rematches between some girls and other stuff that would not be of interest to hardened travellers on this site.


I missed my ferry, in fact I missed the next 2 days as well due to my exceptional performance as a judge was required for the next night...and a hangover that would have killed a lesser man.

Kangaroo Island.
 

Kangaroo Island is about 2 hours ferry ride from the mainland and about 4 hours or so ride from Adelaide.This is one of those enjoyable roads you travel where you get an itch to turn round and repeat sections of it due to a combination of swooping corners and the chance to take some shots of the green, rolling terrain. Local History goes that a single man swam or sailed out to the island many years ago and effectively claimed it as his own and lived there as a hermit until the day he died.

The ' offical ' tours of the island involved being bussed around and being shown their selected sites for no more than 1 1/2 days, how you could ever see the island in those days is beyond me.I set myself about 4 days to wander at random and camp out.

There are only a few main roads on the island that cross section it and the remaining roads range from gravel to dirt track made up of the reddish brown soil and are well worth exploring.No off-road ability really required if you take it sensible, but a great laugh scooting along through the dirt and leaving dust plumes in your wake. The campsites I used were the National Park sites that mostly just contain a basic toilet and refuse bins, at this time of year ( off season ) I could just turn up and break out the tent without worrying about the sites being over crowded.

The first day I found some stunning little beaches by following unsigned tracks and then following the coast, bouncing about on rock strewn trails until you just popped out out over looking a wide, white sanded beach framed by the rocks and blue sky and aqua waters......the temperature had been increasing for the last 2 weeks and was a very pleasent 30 celcuis at the moment.

After 2 days of trail riding in the red dust and camping out with only my carried water I was starting to get a bit of a scavenger look.

I just wanted to let you know that I'm still reading and enjoying your trip report immensely!

I'm mentioning it, because I know the feeling of writing in a void.

Although, now I have this image on my retina (lol) of you in a Tina Turner outfit. I'm not sure that's a nice image.

Naked Beach Dancing
 

I found a lovely little alcove on the coast, quite a trip to get there down a dirt trail and parked up the bike. I found that as long as I was not in a city I can pretty much leave the bike unattended for a while in complete confidence, pretty much unique to Australia I think ?

The actual beach was reached by going through a tunnel in the rocks, at one point on hands and knees and was quite a squeeze for someone in bike gear...anywhoo, I emerged from the tunnel onto a beautiful deserted beach that curled in a crescent shape to the north and consisted of white sands backed up onto steep cliffs and a fully protected pool made by a naturally occuring low rock wall.

After strolling about in perfect isolation and taking a few happy snaps with my camera, decided that this was a perfect spot to give all my bike gear a wash in the sea from the accumalated sweat and reddish/brown dust ingrained in it......so in short order I am stood naked up to my waist in the sea whilst hand washing the bike clothes ( all synthetic,mesh type stuff )

I was just finishing up washing myself which involve with performing Elvis style hip swivels in the water and turned around to find an entire bus load of tourists either stood on the beach behind me or still emerging from the tunnel......I bet their tour catalogue didnt mention about seeing a bald,bearded,white skinned fat bloke doing naked elvis hip swivels in front of them.

I had to wait until most of them staggered off and then stride out of the water with only my motocross socks covering my strategic areas until I could get back into my already dry gear.

Pure chance, I also met Sylvia again on the next beach and had a fun couple of hours walking about, talking and agreeing to met later.

TwoUpFront

Glad you are enjoying it matey.

Fortunately I cannot post any more photos up until my account is upgraded to gold..or I would have posted the Tina Turner photos up :)

I'm with TwoUpFront, awesome thread this :thumbup1:

Ha ha, for once I consider myself lucky!

Priorities.
 

The last night on Kangaroo island camping out, I set up next to an Australian family that consisted of Dad, Mum and their young son and daughter.

What a lovely familiy, immediately came over and offered a cold beer and a sandwich and we sat down talking. Errol ( forgotten name ) had decided that now was the time for him to take a full year off with his family and travel Australia with his wife and youngsters living inside his off-road spec camper van....pretty much a year long tour including the central desert.

Errol said it was far more important for his kids to learn about their home and experience it firsthand and survive in it than being sat at school and learning nothing but forced fed education.....what a great bloke, the ideal Dad in my mind....those kids absolutely loved him.

Susie was his wife and she was 100% of the same mind, a nurse by vocation....she said that most people are just completely disconnected with the land they live in and try to force the land to fit with them...rather than learning to adpat to the land.

Intelligent lady and in my opinion, very much correct.

Big trip Preperation.
 

Adelaide

Met up with Sylvia again at the Hostel she was staying at and booked myself in there for 3 days as well. The name of the hostel escapes me, but it was in the centre of the city and was painted in a rather fetching purple inside.....good place to stay and the helpful fellas in the nearby NCP multi-story carpark said I could leave my bike in the carspot right outside their office for $10 for the week..absolute bargain.

Went out for a few meals and had a good laugh with Sylvia and sadly enough this is where we parted ways, she was heading towards Alice Springs the same as me....but she was taking the overland/off road bus and would take only 10 days to get there...I was going by off-route trails and would take at least 2 weeks by my chosen route.

Said our goodbyes and good lucks.

BIKe Prep

Serviced the bike, checked over the bike and fitted another set of knobblie tyres to it...a Kenda off road selection I believe.

Bought 2 containers for storing water and this gave me a capacity of 15 litres including my camel back and bottle....plus I carried a life straw that was a compact water filtration device about the size of a fat cigar.

Purchased a 10 litre petrol container to go with the existing 5 litre.

Purchased 2 Hoochies...these are Australian army shelters that have a 100 and 1 uses and can provide emergency shleter and shade....great bit of kit.

Bought another set of up to date and very detailed maps for the next section of the trip, especially essential as I was riding alone and off-season/off road..

Bought a very compact and sturdy notebook called a Eee Pc that while some would consider was an unneeded luxury, I would class as essential due to the amount of photos I was taking....and already losing some due to dropping a camera into a pool.

Big meal of Steak ( rare ) and chips and ready for the start.

Outback safety
 

Hi BaldBaBoon, just letting you know I'm following your thread.


When going off road in the outback (desert areas) don't forget to check in with the local authorities or police station before you leave to let them know of your plans and when you expect to be in the next town. Then check in when you get to the next town to let them know you've arrived ok. Don't need someone to start a search and rescue effort when you're just out drinking a few beers. doh

It is something that every responsible adult travelling alone should do, simply because if you breakdown and you're alone more than a couple of days (that's what 15L of water should get you b4 running dry) in the desert and you are in serious danger of dying of dehydration.

Safe riding.

As TurboCharger stated,carrying enough water is a main concern for the route ahead....especially as I was driving off-season when what little traffic there was would be even less.

At Port Augusta I chose my route that I would be heading to Alice Springs on, this was going to be going through the Flinders Ranges National Park on gravel roads to start with.Going through farmland starting at Quorn to up to a little place called Hawker...a good discipline to get into here is to top up with fuel at every single chance and get some water down your throat at every single stop.You really cannot rely on there being fuel at the next stop....so dont plan for it.Made some good time on this route, could get a bit of speed up and just mellow out a little, the plan was to get to Hawker and then follow the Blinman trail to Blinman.

Got delayed on the trail for 2 hours when I came up to a mini-bus that was pulled over on the side of the road, facing back the way I had just been. I never did catch their names, but there was 3 couples in the bus and I am pretty much positive that they were Korean.


The hood was up, so it was obvious they needed assistance and after much mime and some broken English I found out that the vehicle was completely dead would not start.....long story short, it was the vehicles main fuse that was blown and once I replaced it( with spare in holder ) the bus started immediately.

The bad part of the story was they had been sat there for nearly 6 hours with only a 2 litre bottle of pepsi between them. Normally I would never give away my own supplies unless I could put a safe bet on replenishing them, in this case though they were really starting to suffer so I topped up their 2 litre pepsi bottle with water and made them all have a good swig from my own spare supply before pushing on. This decided on the nights destination which would be Wilpena Pound Resort as I was losing light fast and having my water supply eaten into.

This is the amount of water I was carrying in the desert.

Wilpena Pound
 

This was one of those adventure like resorts very much like a safari lodge, you could base yourself there and go off and do the 4x4 trips around the national park or an aeroplane trip, I decided to just stay an extra day and managed to get a backpackers room at dirt cheap price ( being the only one there ) and do the traditional thing of exploring on an unladen bike.

Lots of little dirt tracks that when followed ended in various aboriginal sites or caves, dry waterfalls....unless you made the effort and looked for them, you would just pass them by.Spent the fall day exploring and back in time for a few well earned Guiness and steak and chips....food of the Gods.

Photos ?
 

you may have to bear with for a moment....I am just trying to load some photos up on a link.

If it works....this is the min amount of water I carried in the Red centre of the trip......those containers are 5 litres apiece and stored one in each pannier, 3 litre camelback and another out of shot for the front of the bike.....a a life straw filter ( light blue tube )

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...49911800308050

Pictures on links.
 

Here are some more photos on link.

Wash Day on Kangaroo Island...not naked.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...50198826757858

Here is the ' coffin ' the tent that I grew to detest due to its size.....just resting on the pannier is Sasha the anti-spider shovel.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...50001971963698

Sights around Wilpena pound if you look for them.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...50087285349682

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...50122354264978

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...50153172122034

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...50182269080802

Hi BaldBaBoon, Nice work on saving those Koreans. They did everything wrong, they are the perfect example of what NOT to do when going bush. They are extremely lucky you came along. :nono:

Btw you can insert the linked picture into your thread. It's explained here. Basically you just need to click on the insert image link during edit or new post and add the picasa link from the right of the picasa album:

1. Choose "Link to this album"
2. Then copy the link shown "Paste HTML to embed in website"
3. Past into the image link textbox on the forum.

Hope this helps beer

Keep your eyes open for crazy Koreans!

Thanks for the help TurboCharger.

Trying to post the photos up, but it just comes up as a broken photo link...I must be doing something wrong, I will try and sort it out.

Until then, here is some more photo links.

Broken min-bus full of dehydrating Koreans's in the distance.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Posing.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...93373872456338

Lots of this ahead...notice the state of the clouds.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...94024664119090

Uh oh

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...94149461684338

Time for a Devon Cream tea just before the heavens opened up

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...94274470678370

Just call me the rain medicine man.
 

At this point of the trip I had finally managed to get to Blinman using those absolute grin inducing dirt tracks you have hopefully seen in the previous photo links......apart from the crispy Koreans, there was not another vehivle to be seen until Blinman itself. Tiny little place with a few people living there and a little artists shop/cafe that did some Devon Cream Teas....we might be in the Boondocks on the edge of a desert wasteland..but there is no need to be uncivilised.

Around this area I took the Geologists trail, a route that took you through many gorges and rock strewn gulleys and washout's.....this is one of those routes that once you are in it, you are commited to it as there is no way out of the gulleys.The deep bruised purple clouds that had been gathering all day finally produced their threatened downpour....and what a hell of a downpour that was, the rain was falling in sheets and you could not see more than 15 feet ahead due to the pure fury of the rain.

Of far more pressing concern was the washout's, from being bone dry to being 1 foot deep took only 15 minutes and you could actually watch the water rapidly rising....trapped in a 15 km or more gorge with rising rainwater is not a good thing.I upped the pace and headed for a plateau rising ahead of me, and effectively was now cutoff..the next washout was now at least 2 feet of fast flowing water, and turning back was not an option.

Got onto high ground and pitched the tent and hoochie shelters...and there I sat for 2 days to wait for the rain to finally stop and then the roads to appear from underneath the river that they had turned into.....just me and my bottle of medicinal mead.

Omen
 

I assume that at some time in the past I have offended a diety or two unknowingly because from this point on, I was the epicentre of a travelling maelstrom of hideous weather. Places that had not seen rainfall for 15 years were seeing the site of a motorcycle being chased across the centre of Australia by rainfall and storms that had to be seen to be believed.

I kid you not.

Several times in the next few days I had to just abandon any idea of travelling up the trail due to the ferocious weather physically removing the roads by washing them away, submerging dozens of km's of land or turning the road into a replica of trench warfare by drenching it and then scorching it dry.

The start of the little puddles

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...03715465131522

Roads washed away on a regular basis

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...03659585304082

Trying to ride this hard crusted stinking deep mud for hundreds of KM's is not good for the sense of humour.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...03224133376098

A long way.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1086875...03676880810146

Awesome story mate!

Monsoon in a desert.
 

It is a very worrying experience being in a flat,hard baked desert when its hit by torrential rains and storms....the rain comes down, but the desert just gives up after a short while even attempting to absord the water...I assume the soil just cannot take it after being parched for so long.

From that point onwards any further rain does not soak in but rather just sits on the surface and you have what appears to be an inland sea grow out of solid sand.....this then sluices down the undulations in the land creating very fast moving rivers of unknown depth.....all the while you are trying to ride in 8 inches plus of sticky mud, looking desperately for some high ground in a flat desert.

The next week became a constant and repetitive battle to try and make some distance or find some high ground and try to wait out the weather. If I was lucky enough, I managed to get to a little ville or townlet and use their facilities and try to get some word of what is happening up ahead on the route or back down the trail.

Everytime I did managed to get some info.....all bad news, the roads were washed out completely or the route ahead was closed for 3 days etc etc.

Another disconcerting aspect was being the only vehicle travelling on the road, up to this point I had not seen another sould for a week, the only tracks I had seen were a single set of 4x4 tracks from a search vehicle that had been a day ahead of me.

Damn, that last photo looks scary. And wet!

Big storm.
 

Have a look at that storm in the previous post.

On the near horizon I saw what appeared to be a purple,black dust devil starting to form of substantial size, it was an impressive site to behold I must admit. While this was forming there were another two being created to the left of me and to the rear....none nearer than 5 km's maybe....hard to put a scale on a pretty much featureless landscape. Interestingly enough they seemed to be creating their own weather patterns, they were all moving in different directions....quite a stunning sight to behold.

I dismounted and broke out the camera and got a few shots of the dust devil growing massively in size and ferocity by the second....this was starting to look damn ugly to be sure.

At this point, the loose maps on my bikes tank were blown across the ground by a massive gust of wind, as I turned around I was confronted by a wall of sand being blown around in a funnel that was hundreds of metres across at least bearing down on position at great speed......what the hell?

Funnily enough I did not feel a pressing need to take any more photographs.

A losing Battle

I jumped on the bike and gunned the engine to scoot off to breakneck speed.....now, this being a little DR650 that was travelling off-road in mud and carrying a fat bloke and all his gear...that actually meant I was doing a top speed of about 70kph...not good enough.

In fact it now reminds me off those films when the little spaceship is trying to pull away from the blackhole and not making it......we have'nt got the power captain!.....even a little enthusiastic shout of " Mummy " from me would not provide any more speed.

There was nothing but a wall of sand in my rearview mirros like that bloody T-rex chasing after the jeep in that film.

To give me one more thing to panic about, the original storm I was watching was now moving across my proposed road of travel ahead...Now I know some of you seasoned travellers will possibly state that it was nothing but a big dust devil, but I was getting a tad concerned at this point.

Where can you go ?

There was no way in hell I could outrun this thing, and if I did I was going to run into one of its mates...so I made a choice. I had seen by the side of the road an irregular placement of what might have been old telegraph poles, and a headed towards it.

I slid to a halt and laid the bike down against it, almost flat and crawled underneath the bike and hugged the telegraph pole,when the storm/dust devil/armeggedon hit it was an experience I would not like to repeat again.
Pitch black and ferocious winds pummeling you and getting covered by choking sand, Its hard to say in hindsight if it was life threatening..but it felt like that to me.

After it passed, brushed off the half-sand dune off me and the bike, to be met by the site of another storm building behind again......at this point I made a series of girly shrieking noises and sped off up the trail.

Photos...

Bike stood in the mud taunting me....just the mud holding it up, 400 kms of this.

scary storm before it chased me.

William creek, stopover for 3 days to let the route ahead open.

Bad Things ahead.
 

My last stop to get fuel and water before I headed to follow the Oodnadatta north rather than cutting across and heading for Coober Pedy, and filled up another spare can of fuel especially for the part of the trip.......the servo ( fuel station ) owner says the entire track has been cut and is impassable to vehicles, not sure if a motorbike could get through or not though.

After all that I have battled through over the past two weeks, I cannot see it getting much worse than it is now, So made the choice to push on up the track and see how it goes.... the extra fuel gives me more than twice the tank range needed, and I have found that the water I am using is much less than calcualted.....possibly because that for most the trip so far have been driving in pouring rain.

It did get much worse, the rain howled down and soaked everything that could get soaked, the camera died, the Gps died.....it even soaked my drinking water...... and I got no more than 80km up the trail and it simply disappeared....the track was washed out into a sizeable gulley with eroding sides and there simply was not an alternative way road.

It happens.

Back down the trail and started heading to Coober Pedy, torrential rain, slimy mud, 2 foot deep washouts and everywhere about half foot deep in water and its getting dark.

I spent a surprisingly good night sleeping in the seated position on my bike on the concrete plinth of some old courtyard, under my hoochie shelter.

I cannot see anything, my ears are ringing and I cannot move.

My eyes are streaming from a mixture of petrol,sweat and rancid mud that has forced its way past my shattered goggles......

Yeah, you all seen that on the first page.....and I have no idea to this day how I got like that. 1 minute I was scooting along and the next I am waking up under the bike in a ditch.

After getting all rowdy and forcing myself out from under the bike, I felt and heard an almighty clunk from my right shoulder that surprisingly did not cause anymore pain than I was already in.

I checked myself over and as far as I can tell...I had no injuries except for the right shoulder that would not allow me to move my right arm above waist height...all the blood was from my nose where I had headbutted the ground.

Problem.

At least 100km off-road from Coober Pedy ( town ) with one non-working arm and a heavily laden bike.

Cargo straps have many uses ( webbing and quick release buckles ) and this I put to use by strapping my upper arm to my chest and after getting the bike upright simply sat on the bike and rested my hand on the throttle.....I could move my fingers and have sensation so that was an immediate worry out the way.

At this point, I best point out that Mobile phones do not work outside the towns in Australia, a Sat phone is $2000 to buy and several hundred dolars a month to run....and I did not have an EPIRB, I didnt even know what one was to be honest...but hindsight is wonderful.

Those storms look hectic!
Love the empty dirt roads in your picasa album :mchappy:

I've enjoyed reading your tales so far, its made a boring Friday at work a lot more enjoyable!

Map reading.
 

On the off-road part of this trip so far.....I must put the point across again that map reading is essential.

I had up to date and detailed as possibly maps that I took bearings and distances from that I counted down on both the bikes odometer and the GPS readings, If an expected turn didnt appear when planned.....I immediately stopped and checked by hading/compass what location was rather than assuming I was in the right place.

The distance between fuel stops would use no more than 50% of fuel capacity....and well, water was not really a problem at the moment.

Thanks for the Feedback.

Hope you are enjoying it, Its just quite daunting writing up the whole trip after the fact.....bloody lazy on my part, I should have put this up as I did the trip.

I can sympathise with ya there!

Just to be a total bastard, this is the weather I had along the Oodnadatta track:

http://www.arseaboutface.com/journal...oodnadatta.jpg

Compare and contrast:

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...tralia-up3.jpg

Sunglasses all the way :)

Looking forward to the next 'chunk' when you get around to it.

I have been reading through your ride report Sly-Fox.

Nicely set out out trip you have got there, looks like you did the research and timed it right for the road..rather than turn up at random like me :)

Those EPIRBS, are they still an essential piece of equipment or have they been replaced by something better yet?

Coober Pedy
 

Safe to say that I did finally get to Coober Pedy and spent a 5 day layover checking the bike and more importantly me!

I did a few checks myself on the shoulder to see what the damage was and see what articulation I had from the joint. No obvious breaks, no bruising whatsoever or lacerations and although very sluggish to use and a massive loss of upper body strength on that side....I could not find a major problem, hopefully it was just a bad knock.

I did get checked out by the local hospital and to cut to the chase, they believed that I most likely ripped my shoulder out of the socket and then partially pushed it back in again....and fully back in when I heard a load clunk. No breaks or fractures that they could find, immobilised the limb in a rather fetching sling and that was that.

I quite enjoyed the enforced rest as I really got on with Coober Pedy, I liked some of the characters I met in the bar's ( medicinal brandy ) and I liked the idea of living underground that was used to such great effect by the locals and the backpackers I was staying in.....I fully used the days to do the old tourist thing and prep the bike and get to know a few of the backpackers....but as usual, for reason of diplomacy I concentrated on a nice lady from Austria.

During this time, whenever I could I started to use my arm and to exercise it as best I could....I have learnt from previous injuries gained when in remote areas, that I did not want the arm to start healing while immobilised.

Its medically correct to immobilise in an controlled environment, but when in some remote area or travelling its best to get the limb working as normal as possible as soon as possible......the same reason why I do not take painkillers, they will hide the bodies natural warning that you are doing more damage ( its called pain )

Five days later, cut the sling off and set my sights for heading north...taking the Stuart Highway this time, part due to my injuries and part due to the tracks off-road being totally washed out.

Crocodile Harry.
 

Crocodile Harry

Was the legendary figure that used to reside in Coober Pedy and is a point of pride for the town, he was a larger than life character who's stories were so crazy that they were most probally true and seems to actually deserve the legend status.

Accepted by almost all that this was the true inspiration at the least for Crocodile Dundee, The Locals are trying to get a proper statue of him made up.

Harry was possibly a genuine Baron from Germany who initially moved to the Northen Territory and made his living by hunting big Crocs and spent a large amount of time living with the aboriginals where he picked up at least 3 of their languages.He moved onto the Opal mining at Coober Pedy when Croc hunting was outlawed in the late 1970's, as well as his own opal mine he cut a sizeable home from the rock using just hand tools and explosives.

His home was used for the Mad Max films and during filming he pursued an impressive attempt of wooing tina turner ( Harry was at least 60 odd at this stage ) so impressed with his gusto, she gifted him her chainmail bra used in the film...which started a trend with thousands of visitors leaving him underwear and message's in his cave.

Harry found out he was dying from cancer in his mid 70s.....so he swore the Doctor to secrecy and got all smarted up and went to the bank and took a huge loan out .....which he spent on a 3 week party for the town, before he died.

You need to see his place or read up on him if you are near here.....far too many stories to even skim the surface.

Stuart Highway From Coober Pedy to Alice Springs.
 

Coober Pedy to Alice Springs via a ' diversion ' to Ayers Rock.

1350 km of Tarmac hell, a single lane highway that stretched to the far horizon and never ended, it was like trying to get the pot of gold at the bottom of the rainbow....mile after endless mile sat on a poxy,slow little trail bike that had upturned nails for a seat.

The heat was bearable, the traffic was no more than a single vehicle every couple of hours, but the boredom.

That offended diety played a blinder yet again, my trusty MP3 player was on the blink after trekking through the swamp that was laughably called a desert and would only played 3 out of the hundreds of possible songs on an endless loop.

I'm a Barbie girl...............by Aqua.

Gay Bar.........................Electirc Six

I,m goingly slightly mad....Queen ( rather fitting )

YouTube - Gay Bar Song - The Armstrong and Miller Show - S2 Ep4 Preview - BBC One

Anyhow, at the least the route had changed from being horizon to horizon dirt track to being......horizon to horizon tarmac, except for every dip in the road turned into a washout,mud river that was a little exciting to cross to say the least.

EPIRBS meant for land use are called PLBs. The difference being that their battery is smaller and they don't have to be able to float antenna up, meaning they can be smaller and cheaper.
PLBs and EPRIBS are very much alive, but you need a 406mhz these days, and not a 123mhz (or whatever it was). 406 is the standard you want, and if you're smart, you get one with inbuilt GPS so it can send your position along with the emergency code.

Uh, I cringed when I read about the clunk of your shoulders. Nasty damage.

While crossing the Simpson desert you see many wrecked bike frames. If you have little sand riding experience dont attempt desert crossings. also most of Australias inland roads are dirt/clay it rarely rains but if it does...There's a saying in Aus "See you when the mud dries." Obey "road closed" signs, the fines are $2000 per wheel.

Great read
 

What a great trip you had! I rode from Sydney to Melbourne and did part of the ocean road and back round the coast to Brisbane back in 2009 and reliving the experience. Fantastic country and a rider's heaven. Look forward to reading more.

I just reread the entire thread. I'm ready for more :clap:

The horrendous weather appeared to have been foiled by my cunning plan to disguise myself as a tree using my camo hoochie and the storm skulked off to the North ahead of me to play havoc on some other unsuspecting soul for a change.

Getting to the next Servo ( fuel station ) I had abundant evidence that the storm had passed, there were trees blown down and the site was flooded.....also no power to the pumps, so that made no fuel avaliable.

A bit of haggling with the owner and they agreed to top up my main tank from a spare jerry can, a paltry 10 litres was all that was needed and I made a break for the next Servo up the highway that was at the turn off for Ayers Rock.

Overland Expedition Trucks.

These trucks range from a bus with chunky tyres to a full blown off-road survival behemoth that travel up and down the trails with various numbers of tourists looking for the outback experience. I met the girl who was driving one of these trucks at the Ayers Rock/Stuart Highway servo and had a good chat for a while with her, while her human cargo were stretching their legs.

She had been following me about a half day or so behind when leading her outback expedition and was greatly bemused about having her...... " most isolated spot on earth, real danger of death and only the best survivalist's come here tour talk"...... being ruined by having a motorcycle obviously travelling solo..always ahead of her.

Especially as every once in a while the bike tracks would degenerate into a wobble and it looked like I had just stopped and made mud angels with my body on the ground ( obviously fallen off at irregular basis and thrashed around a bit ) Agreed to meet up with her for a meal in the next week at Alice Springs and mounted my noble steed and set off again.

The next several hundred kilometres were spent riding leaning to the left at a 45 degree angle ( no exageration ) fighting against the winds, and fording 2 feet deep floods....and having buses overtaking, or passing and tourists staring at me as if I was insane.......at this point I had probally sung " I'm a barbie Girl " to myself several hundred times, so insanity was quite possibly an option .

Ayers Rock, Uluru and Kings Canyon.
 

A mystical place is Uluru, thats what the travel blurb said.

What I found was to all intents and purposes an Aussie version of Disney world....maybe thats a little harsh, but the place is a blatant commerical resort.

Even the cheapest backpackers shared room was 5 times the price of any I had yet stayed in, you could not cook you own food, you could not rough camp..and the price of the offical camp site was almost the same price as a room.

Hotel rooms costing hundred's of dollars, an airfield so you can fly in and do ' the rock ' without the bother of travel, pubs and karaoke and to top it all a bus load of brits turned up who took a wrong turn from a 18 to 30 holiday....thats not me being snobbish, I am English by birth.....but I bloody hate Brits abroad.

Its also has great sacred value to the aboriginies who will not let you walk on it or take close up photos....unless you pay for a permit, in which case you can.

Kings canyon

If you make the effort to travel a little further to this place you may well get the experience you are looking for, unspoilt and no one around....a very beautiful place to just walk and mellow out....worth the travel to get here without a doubt.

My shame and soul eating guilt.
 

Whoever you are and where ever you are now, you have my honest apology.

Some of tarmaced routes in this area were quite awesome to ride on, swoopy corners and very enjoyable dips through deep streams and an absolute hoot to get a little throttle used splashing through the overflow/creeks that cross the road.

Just came over the brow of a hill and heading into the creek lower down, when I noticed that the approaching Toyota Landcruiser isnt actually approaching....but is parked up smack bang in the middle of the creek.It cannot be drowned thinks I, as the creek looks about one foot deep at most, Just to be sure I gun the engine and sit back to get the weight off the front wheel in case the ford is a little deeper than expected.

Only as I screamed past the Toyota did I notice that it wasnt abandoned, But had stopped with all its windows wound down to allow the occupants to look at the pretty fish in the creek. A lovely family of 4 young children and mum and dad all enjoying the day....all leaning out of their Toyota with their happy beaming faces..........the smiling dad looks up as I shoot past......followed by a 6 feet tall bow-wave of muddy water.

In the slow motion that only genuine horror allows, I see from the corner of my eye and my mirrors the lovely family and their car being swamped by the muddy tsunami of shame.

Karma

I did actually laugh so hard about this, that I fell off my bike later....so karma gets you in the end.

Alice Springs for Christmas.
 

After my rather unfocused meanderings over the past 2 months it was a bit of a shock to realise that christmas was just around the corner.

I made what is called a command decision and decided to lay up in Alice springs for the next few weeks over the holidays and for far more practical reasons as well.

1) Bike needed new tyres and service within the next few weeks.

2) My shoulder was getting worse.

3) Alice springs in xmas is party central......actually it was either have xmas here or with a camel out in the desert, no inbetween.

Booked myself into the backpackers that Stacie the overland truck driver suggested and settled down, quite a decent place. Pools,Tv rooms, Kitchens, Laundry and a short walk from Alice Springs town centre. Toddy's Backpackers was the place if I remember right.....and a BAR with a resturant.

Dumped all my gear off and took a little ride to Alice Springs hospital to get my arm the once over, it was starting to grind and click and I was losing a lot of strength and articulation from it in the last few days....pushing my bike through flooded water crossings possibly did not help in the slightest.

Damage to shoulder.

Got seen by a couple of nurse's and had a checkover and it sort of continued by a having a bite to eat and a good chat in the canteen as one of the nurse's was going to get a bike soon and the other nurse had a boyfriend who was a top notch off-road rider.

Nothing wrong with my skeleton or joint, the muscles appeared to be intact, in fact the nurse mentioned that because I am so stocky that most likely prevented a worse injury.......by stocky I assume she meant muscular and manly rather than being fat.( I wish )

However, from what the symptons showed and partly because the nurse with the biker boyfriend had seen these injuries before, she guessed ( and correctly as it turned out ) that it was a glenoid labrum injury.

This is where the Labrum which is sheath of tendon and muscle that surrounds the shoulder joint and provides it with stabilty and effectively holds your arm in the socket......this was either torn or detached from the bone.

Either open surgery, and in a sling for 6 months and ' maybe ' repair it, surgically remove the part torn injury and live with it or take it easy and try to strengthen up the surrounding muscle's to compensate....this is what I had instinctively been doing by using and exercising my arm.

Snoring
 

I met some good people and made some friends here and as I was staying for a longer time, arranged to rent a small shared flat across the road that Toddy's runs for the' long termers ', people either working in Alice Springs for a few months or where the overland tourist truck drivers have rooms.

This actually worked out only slightly more costly than having a bed in one of the large mixed dorms that was the cheapest option at the backpackers, that I was using at the moment.

People who snore

While on the whole I can get along with people quite well, I do have a few little tics that get triggered and they tend to wind me up.

1) I do not suffer fools.

2) cannot tolerate Lack of Hygiene in either a personal basis or living area.

3) Snorers.

I am an incredibly light sleeper and having to share a room with a snorer pretty much ensures that blood is going to be spilled before long....it is a failing of mine to be honest, but I just lie in my bed wishing that the snorer would have the good grace to just choke in their sleep or something.

The night that decided for me to move out was when some strange fella was sleeping in the top bunk across from and actually held a conversation with himself while sleeping and snored enough to wake everyone up, not just me.....I spent the rest of the night sleeping with my crash helmet on and the visor shut....which scared the hell out of the girl sleeping across from me, when she woke in the early morning.

Good times.
 

I enrolled at the local gym and used it in the morning and afternoon and attended quite a few of the free lessons during the day like circut training....and discovered that boxing training like I used to do was actually quite good for my shoulder for some weird reason.

Apparently Aussie men do not go to the gym as I was the only bloke there in a class shared with 30 or more Aussie girls/ladies.I reckoned I was subliminally impressing them with my nonchalant style of gym clothing which consisted of a motocross shirt/beach shorts and combat desert boots.

Doing this greatly increased the strength in my shoulder and had a good laugh too and also got me away from biking for a few weeks which can get a bit much if it is day in, day out for weeks on end.

Every night was beer night as well...Bojangles was the watering hole of choice.

Beer,party then wake up somewhere new was the common thing....this is not what adventure biking is all about, but hey..someone has got to push the boundaries.

New Years and new start.
 

I remember bits and pieces of the New Year holidays, but not a great deal....so that to my mind, means I must have had a cracking time.

I do recall having Christmas and New years at Brian's home..... he was one of the tour guides that I made friends with, where a group of us orphans of the road got together and brought booze and food and had a Bar-b-que and pool party on both days....must have been about 35 degrees in the shade.

Spent another 3 days hiking and sleeping out in the bush with the same group of boys and girls and then it was time to really start preparing ahead for the next stage of the journey.

Also the problem of the shoulder injury sorted itself out. After climbing out of the pool to get some more refreshments I happened to slip on a wet tile and instinctively shot my arms out to steady myself.....a very audible tearing pop sounded and I sort of fell to one knee.Took me a good couple of minutes to gather myself, and the shoulder felt 100% better ( since coming back I found out that it was the badly torn ligament finally snapping in half and completely severing)....a bit like the surgical procedure suggested by the hopsital but with more beer, pools and nice ladies in bikinis that what the hospital could supply.

Aboriginal eye opener.
 

I have left any mention of aboriginals out of this story on purpose up until this point.


While travelling I had many, many people who had an opinion on aboriginals and especially a lot of Aussies when told where I was headed to...effectively warned me about dealing with them and even totally avoiding some areas/ not stopping for them etc, and having travelled a fair bit, I am aware you cannot tar everyone with the same brush as some areas attract the worst of people. Now call this what you want, but I tend to reserve judgement for myself.

I am struggling to word this in an appropiate manner while trying to describe what I experienced accurately.....If offence is caused, it is not intentional....just maybe sloppy wordsmithing on my part.

First encounter

If travelling the same way that I came, a traveller or tourist would most likely first meet an aboriginal at Coober Pedy, Expecting to see a proud example of one of the oldest tribes in the world is not what you get. Like all towns along the Stuart Highway a lot of aboriginals gather because it is either a traditional meeting place like Alice Springs or...for other reasons.

Alchoholism is rife amongst the aboriginals here and there are theories as to why normal alchohol is almost like rocket fuel for them...one theory is that their bodies just cannot process it due to there being no alchohol until the western immigration began.( 200 years ago )

The reasons why are not important but the results are that they get totally out of their skulls drunk as often as they can and all the problems that brings, when I turned up at Coober Pedy....the first thing I saw was two aboriginal's having sex in the middle of the road. Another group was throwing rocks at the cars until a police meat wagon turned up....not a good start.

I honestly had a good dozen people tell me quite forcefully that if I hit one on the road while riding my bike, just do not stop and carry on to somewhere safe then report it.......I never had that before!

Hospital

The hospital at Alice Springs looked like something from Vitez, back in Bosnia at the height of the war there. There had been a big gathering that degenerated into a free for all involving braining each other with rocks and multiple stabbings,in the middle of the day I got there.

Real aboriginals?

Two of the tour guides that I got on well with and were aboriginals themselves explained the problem after they actually stopped me going to help a women getting beaten by two others when we were all walking down town.

They said that the root problem to all this was an Australian Government guilt complex, so keen to been seen to be making amends that they would absolutely not interfere with " culturally sensitive issues ", one of the guides said this was bollocks... the culturally sensitive issues of child abuse and rape, spouse abuse etc....were not cutural problems, they are simply child/rape like evreywhere else.

There is a government fund from cradle to grave that supports every aboriginal that amounts to free housing and education including university....and effectively a free pension their whole lives that does nothing but encourage them to not work and drink their lives away.

If that came from two white fella's there would be uproar about racism....but what do you call it when the two lads saying it are aboriginals themselves?

Northward bound.
 

A couple of days before I left Alice Springs, one of my new Aussie friends turned up.....he had gone back home for christmas and had now returned and due to the work drying up in the area, Dan had decided to relocate to Darwin for the ' suicide season '. This suicide season is the next few months from January onwards when the rain season starts up in the tropical north of Australia and the humidity rises and so do the associated problems of people unable to cope and they start to crack up.

Dan and I arranged to set off together in a few days, him in his Holden off-road truck carrying my fuel and water....and me wobbling about behind.
Dan had a start date on his new job in Darwin in 10 days, so he was in no rush to get there really so we took a steady run north and stopped off at the few sights along the way.

A couple of nights we stopped at the servo's and camped by the side of the station, I was using my tent and Dan was trying to impress me with the all-singing and all dancing Australian ' Swag '.

A swag is like a tent.....but crapper.

It is made from heavy duty canvas like an old field army tent, for that is exactly what it is...a all in one tent that contains the matress and blankets already inside and when stored is rolled up into a giant sausage roll weighing about 20kg for a ' lightweight version '.

Any way, he got bitten to death by mossies...I was fine in my cheap one man tent.

Shoddy work


Just before Tennents Creek I had the first blowout of the trip, a nice little rear tyre blowout at the maxium speed for the DR650....about 160kph.Pulled over and stripped the tyre off and looked in dismay at what the damage was.

In Alice Springs I had a another set of rimlocks fitted at a main dealer due to some minor damage on the old set when I had the new tyres and inner tubes fitted, God knows who they let loose on my bike...but they must have never fitted rimlocks before and managed to fit them and actually cut slivers of metal off the inside of the wheel rim and not even grip the wheel at all.

Result was I had shards of metal inside the wheel that had cut slices out of the tyre itself, and the non-gripped tyre had spun on the rim and ripping out the entire valve....one very expensive inner tube written off.

Bodge repair on tyre/wheel and tube replaced and off we go again. 50kms along the road the tyre is flat again, this time another shard of metal hidden on the inside of tyre cuts a 3 inch long slice out of the tube.....bugger.

This time I had to used my spare ( and last ) front tube to put into the rear to try and crawl up to the next town of Tennents Creek. This I managed and pulled into the only tyre fitters there and the tyre fitter having assured me that they had heavy duty inner tubes for my bike..so payed him to remove my spare front and replace with a proper rear tube while me and Dan went for brew.

150kms north and an almighty bang....the rear has gone yet again.

Stripped the tyre yet again and was treated to the sight of the inner tube that had been fitted......it might have actually been a childs flotation ring for a pool for all the use it was, It was no thicker than 1 mm!

This was as far As I could go practically go on my avaliable resources, so just coasted to the next Servo and told Dan I would meet him soonish to go on ahead.

Henry the Truck Driver
 

The servo I was at happened to be one of the main stops for the massive land trains that transport the bulk of the goods to various areas of Australia. These machines are allowed to tow 5 trailers in the Northen Territories and up to 7 trailers if on the mine roads.

As luck would have it, I asked one of the drivers who pulled up if he would give me a lift/recovery to Darwin, and offered to pay.

Henry the driver said no problems and do not bother about the money, just get him a couple of drinks at the night stop and to work as a truck crewman on the route....guiding into reversing spots, helping restrain loads...being a truck driver myself, that seemed a very good deal to me.

The next 4 days were spent in the luxury of being driven along the Stuart Highway and diverting off and dropping stores and talking to Henry, who was happy to natter on this regular 6000km round trip that he did. He gave some very good pointers about the road trains.

1) They cannot emergency stop, with a full load they can take up to 1,000 metres or more to come to a halt.

2) They will not stop for anything smaller than the truck itself.

3) They drive in all conditions, including visabilty so bad that you can just about see the nose of the truck.

4) they do not have ' Roo bars ' like most vehicles, but have ' Roo cutters '....designed to destroy any animal they hit.

5) do not follow close behind one, as they will smash through anything and not slow down.


A great 4 days spent working and even having a laugh like at the town of Katherine where Henry took me to see the famous hot springs when we got there at night.......However we ended up sprinting away as we came face to face with croc in the dark after the area had flooded.

Got dropped off at Darwin Honda, who went out of their way to help me get the bike up and running again.

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.

" Arrrgghh " screamed an unknown voice in the dark.

" Fugging 'ell " shouted another.

" Crocs " someone screeched.

Then an entire chorus of voices erupted in several different languages..........and this was the rather non-poetic start for this nights bedlam.

Prelude

The Victoria highway was gone....and gone in a biblical sense at that.I stood in the middle of the road and looked out over the bridge...or where I guessed the bridge would roughly be under the raging torrent.

Arranged in a ragged convoy along the road behind me was a rag-tag collection of trucks, campers and cars with their occupants also decamped and surveying the same scene. Across the way we could see the road house/service station and a similar gaggle of vehicles on the other side looking at us....inbetween us was a decidely angry and massive flood swollen river and from best guestimates a submerged bridge about 3 metres below the surface.

As my name was not Captain Nemo...this is where the journey ends for a couple of days as there was simply no way to proceed.

Within a couple of hours everyone on our side of the river came to same conclusion and just congregated on a little rise in the land off the side of the road.Campers were parked and tents setup, truck drivers shut their wagons down and disappeared into their sleep boxes and a little community sprung up for the anticipated wait for the river to recede.

Having experienced special forces spiders leaping off trees at me recently and being present during a voodoo initiated zombie toad incident I was starting to get a little wary of the Australian wildlife...so put my well practiced plan of where to put my tent into action. In case of dodgy wildlife, I find it best to put your tent, smack in the middle of everyone....that way if the wildlife fancies a midnight snack they have all the surrounding tents to sample before mine.

Leaving trails of food outside the other tents or throwing " Loomie sticks " next to someones tent ( glow in dark emergency lights ) is rather unsporting, So I will say that I definately did not do that.

A couple from one of the campers had their tent set up on the edge of our site and the wife was woken up by a noise outside their tent about midnight...after much poking in the ribs, the husband stuck his head outside the tent and turned on his torch....to apparently come almost face to face with a sizeable croc!

Bedlam.

After an hour of people running around at random and much turning on of vehicle lights, the area was declared croc-free and we all got back to trying to get some rest.....with the exception that everyone was either sleeping inside their vehicles now, or like me actually camped on top of one of the trucks.

I gave the situation at the impassable bridge crossing 5 days ( slowly getting bored of eating nothing but baked beans and almost exhausting my mead supply ) and then faced the fact that the water was not showing the slightest sign of getting lower and more storms were in fact on the horizon.

Choice made, fuel the bike up and head back the way I had come towards the town of Katherin and head south if possible and see what is what.The only possible route that might be travelled was to head a good distance south until I got to near to Tennents Creek and see if the roads to Mount Isa would be open.

Effectively the Eastern side of Australia was now closed to me on my bike....the next rout to Perth would involve travelling past Alice Springs and then simply heading east across the desert tracks and looking at about 700km before refueling stops....that is far beyond was is sensible and safe for any motorcyclist without support.

The last route would be to go as far south as I could ( nearly to Adeliade ) and follow the coast round...this would be several thousand plus Kms on soul destroying tarmac in high temperatures...I could do it, but it would be an utter pain and quite simply no fun.

The road to Mount Isa was damaged and under water but It was possible to travel it with care and a bit of skill on a bike or other rough terrain vehicles, the road itself was almost universally to a depth of 1 foot for dozens of kilometers with small patches of dry land, before submerging yet again.

Hundreds of metres of road had been washed away in sections with concrete culverts weighing a dozen tonne or more just swept away down stream.

The whole country had been hammered by these floods and every main road was either effected or closed....whole communities further north were and had been cut off for weeks at this point.

No point in bombarding you with dozens of shots of flooded vistas....but thats all I had for hundreds of kms....apart from having to be very careful at water crossings in case those logs floating about have teeth!

Bare footed ladies and headless kamikazee birds.
 

With the increasing greenery in the terrain, I was noticing a swelling in the wildlife numbers as well....especially in the numbers of birds and other flying thingies.

For whatever reason the DR650 was a magnet for these flying pest's and either the bright suzuki blue was offensive in some avian aspect or other, but the little sods felt compelled to dive bomb me....sometimes they didnt quite make the move and thudded into the bike.

One big fat git of a bird decided to commit suicide by flying straight into my front fairing where it literally exploded and showered me with bird bits and blood and other tasty treats that ended up in my beard and on the inside of my helmet. I pulled over and basically scraped off all the gunk and checked myself for any chicken feet stuck in my beard or anything and carried on.

Every service station on these long routes needs to be a rest stop to top up the fuel to be on the safe side and also to get some water down your neck. Pulled up at this servo, and walked into the semi-busy resturant to grab an ice-cream and did my usual routine of stripping off my motocross shirt and getting my body armour off to allow the heat out of my body.As I drop my gear on the floor I spot something out of the corner of my eye, roll away across the floor towards the people behind me.

I hear a girlish scream .....and even though I am an ugly bloke, I do not normally get this kind of reaction, so I looked round... to find a young aussie girl standing on one bare footed leg while screaming and kicking her other bare footed leg in the air?

She manages to dislodge whatever is stuck to her foot and it shoots across the floor until it rolls along and gives a friendly nudge to the foot of another lady ( made of sterner stuff ) who stamps down and squashes the thing with a resounding wet crack.


That explains where the head of the exploding bird had got to from up the road.....lodged into a crevice on my armour until I dislodged it unknowingly in the cafe.

Really enjoyed reading your ride report! I wish I had your writing skills, you're a funny guy.:D

Thank you Titbird.

Most of the influence stems from that lovely drink I discovered out there called Mead....its medicinal as well.

Plus a technique called " Retrospective Inspiration ", I'm sat in front of my computer wearing my Arai Tour-X with the temperature turned up to 40 degrees and having the roomate run in every two minutes to throw some sand into my face and occasionally throw a dead pidgeon at me .....it just brings it all back.

Mount Isa
 

Finally broke through the flooded landscape and emerged into this area of Australia where the unending bush starts to give way to hills and rocky terrain.

Mount Isa is one of the main mining area's in this district and something industrial on this scale is right in your face as soon as you come into town. Camping is not really an option near population centers like this, so a bit of boo-rah started in trying to find a place to stay. Its a working town which means a lot of the casual lodgings are taken up and as its not really a pretty place....so the backpacker places are few and far between.

The only place I could find was a lodging not far from the centre of town and it had one of those ' feelings ' about it that put you a little on edge. A bit of a dingy collection of communal buildings with a semi-permement population of residents living there on their welfare payments.

Needs Must.

Booked in and parked for the night and for the first time, completely stripped the bike of anything remotely ' shiny ' that an idle hand would be tempted to take. Also for the first time, I locked the bike with the padlock and chain that I had been lugging about unused since I had landed in Australia. I got a few sidelong glances from some of the residents....as apparently they simply did not get travellers here.

I may have mentioned that I am a very, very light sleeper, Coupled with the fact that I happily get by on four to five hours sleep a night and can be instantly alert and awake in a split second......something that has proven useful on occasion!

I was asleep until I heard the rooms door slowly creak open and a dull spilling of light enter the room from the distant corridor light and a muffled shuffling of feet. I was not the only one staying in that room, but I was the only one who was sleeping in that corner of the room....so when I heard a soft clinking as a bit of equipment was moved from my stored panniers, that pretty much ruled out an innocent room mate.

# Cheap little alarm system....empty food can with some round pebbles inside and leant against of inside your gear makes a very good alarm#

If you are just going to lay there and pretend to be asleep and hope its an innocent party/not pinch anything important...then carry on. If you are going to confront them, do it in an impressive manner and hopefully put the fear of God into them.

I might be a great deal fatter since I left the forces, but 105kg is still 105 kg when it leaps across the room at you and knocks you to the floor.....the flattened interlopers were a young man and a young women who apart from being in shock were also obviously drunk. Not to go into detail, but after a little bit of a discussion they decided that they had made a very bad mistake and it was time to leave before they made an even worse mistake.

That incident was one of those little things that is natures way of telling you to move on.

Townsville
 

Next day I set off in the hope of heading to Townsville, heading back into the tropical climate from the broken bush/hilly terrain and then farmland of this area.

The road was closed after Cloncurry, it was totally impassable and from the advice given from the servo staff and returning or stuck travellers....the entire road to Townsville was effectively hit and miss......the road to Cairns was just gone. It was a case of long stretches of water with the towns being isolated islands ( if they were lucky ) and an unknown timeframe for this natural disaster.

Some of the towns north of this point were isolated for 16 weeks ( as I later found out ) and had to rely on water and food being helicoptered into them. Assuming you could actually get to Townsville, you would then be stuck.

Another one of those " Plan B's " came into being at this point, and a plan that even the A-team would have been proud of.

After talking to some truckers and some farmhands, we got a plan in motion that was a follow my leader type of affair....following the farmhands who worked this area and intended to push through by utilising the backroads and the more elevated off-road routes to perform a kind of zig-zag effect to get to an undamaged road.

The plan worked, and after a bit of effort and a lot of luck we managed to bypass the flooded roads and ended up on the other side and on the main route heading to Rockhampton. Effectively heading due east.

Rockhampton or bust.
 

You will have to forgive me here as the next few days were a bit of a blur and either my memory is crap or I lost a few days getting drunk when caught at a few towns that were cutoff.....In fact I believe the getting drunk accounts for quite a lot of it.

I do recall just getting out of one town as the waters started to lap over the road and riding hell for leather....

And the next thing I can recall in a concrete manner is a giant set of Sheeps testicals about 10 foot in height.....as that is a bit of a random memory for anyone, I checked through my photos and confirmed that....Yes I did indeed see a set of 10 foot tall sheeps Testicals or Rams testicals,( I dont really know the correct term as I had never thought of a sheeps genitalia until that point ) ......but that was actually a month later on in the trip.

Why I have this random memory of Giant concrete sheeps nuts and Rockhampton....I have no idea!

Yes, I believe I went off at a slight tangent in the story telling then.


Back to the story.

The terrain was changing again, to add a nice take on the scene and as is also traditional when approaching the main population centers like cities....car drivers road skills started to get atrocious as per normal everywhere in the world.

A particular flavour I noticed in Australia though was the complete lack of concept in braking distance.....bloody cars would always be sat about a cars length behind you all the time....tailgating is one of my pet hates, and I have developed ( patent pending ) a whole series of internationally recognised hand signals to convey my displeasure at this.

Big town is Rockhampton and was also blessed with a main bike dealership on its edges, the bike was booked in due course for a complete service and yet another set of tyres....a off-road biased set again ( Kenda ) and I set off into town to waste a few hours while the boys and girls at the bike shop did their stuff.

Went and watched a film at the cinema, what film was it?.....no idea as I had met a very nice Aussie lady ( Amie ) in the queue and we spent the whole film talking and giggling. Amie, worked in town in one of the banks and proved to be a great person to spend time with..she had travelled extensively when younger when working in Europe and had the same wunderlust that we all share..all in all a very good person who I really liked.

I have a problem when getting close with people in that I have always expected others to hold themselves to the same standards I hold myself. I simply do do not and cannot " give second chances ".I even know when this started, I was fighting in Bosnia and the German girl I was engaged to marry when I finished the tour started sleeping with a colleague back home....I was absolutely gutted and could never forgive that.

I stayed with Amie for a full 2 week's, she took a week off work and we just had a fun time....and I don't mean that in a flippant/smutty way...but we really did have a laugh together.In two weeks time I was going to attempt to ride to Cairns....until then, we just had a good laugh.