Melbourne - Perth - Melbourne
 

Hi,

As part of a much bigger project, decision has been made to perform rehearsal trip from Melbourne to Perth and back.

Route is: Melbourne - Ceduna - Perth - Ceduna - Melbourne (around 7000kms).

Trip is scheduled for Friday 6th of Feb and will last approx 4 days.

If anybody wishes to join, send me an email to snikolic@alphalink.com.au

Thanks
Stjepan
Australia to Europe by Motorcycle

4 days?????

You'll spend at least a day being stopped by the coppers at the speeds you'll need to do.

You'll be lucky to find anyone to do that. Just had a quick look at your website...I'm guessing you are trying to do some sort of land speed record or something?? 40-60 days to get from Oz to Europe! I took 4 months and thought that was way too fast.

"It will be decided between participants which attractions will be visited.
There are too many of them for such a short period of time"

How about none!!


Re your routes, you want to check out the viability of riding your bike though China or Myanmar, you'll probably come unstuck there. Most common is to fly from B'kok to Kathmandu or ship to India. China is very expensive to bring a bike in, if they even let you in with it at all and you can't enter the land borders of Myanmar, most backpackers fly in and out. My visa for Iran took a while to get, others got messed about and wasted several weeks trying to get theirs.

If you can only get 2 months off work or don't want to quit your job etc, why not make better use of your time and see a place properly, maybe go to SE Asia or India etc. Fuel is one of your main costs and its expensive to keep moving every day. Don't forget you need to have several days off in a place to recover too and constant riding will just wear you out... you want to be alert riding in India etc. And yes you can probably do it on a road bike but given the condition of a lot of the roads you'd encounter, you'll be wishing you were on a dual purpose bike.

You'll find all the answers you need on this site though.

Hi Stjepan
 

Just like to say how much i enjoyed your Vic Alps photos from your website, great pics, haven't been down this area of the Snowy, yet but the photos have inspired me no end.
Not sure about your Euro trip, as pointed out by MikeS, there may be a major hurdle with Burma/Myanmar as from reading this site it appears there is no access through, even Charlie and Russ couldn't get through on By Any Means, but you could be a trend setter. There also seems to be some dramas through China but best of luck.
If your doinng your trip to Perth and back you might as well sign up for the Iron Butt certificate and you must have a tougher hide than me, but sounds like you'll have fun trying.

Cheers
Scoop

Ok, 7,000km and 96 hours (4 days). Let's assume you can average 100km/h (which means breaking speed limits because you will pass through towns and need to refuel), then you have 26 hours left over for sleeping/eating.

On paper it sounds doable but the reality is that if you are riding at night then you have wildlife to contend with - Melbourne to Adelaide is reasonably safe but once you leave Port Augusta you are in kangaroo central. When I rode through there I was dropping down to 40kmh due to the amount of wildlife beside the road once the sun set. I also can't recall what time the servos shut - something to consider unless you plan on carrying reserve supplies.

Best of luck mate but I prefer suicide by less painful means.

Garry from Oz.

P.S. If this is a rehearsal for your x-Asia trip I can assure you that no matter how bad the wildlife in oz may be, the vehicular (and other) traffic throughout Asia is going to slow you down even further. Its doable, if you're lucky, but frankly why would you bother?

Hi!

Do you called Perkins allready?

With your tight plan i'am pretty sure you're surprised how long it will take to ship the bike Darwin-Singapor. Darwin-Dilli (EastTimor) takes around 10 days.....from deliver the bike and get it back.

Good luck !!1

Werner+Claudia

Hi We have just done melbourne to Perth and took 3 weeks to do it on DR650's

Read the first part of the feature in next months TBM - Trail Bike montlhy.

Don't rush take your time and met people and see things

As others have said, you need to allow yourself more time.

I did Sydney to Perth (via Melbourne, Great Ocean Road, Adelaide and Eyre Peninsula) in 10 days. Spent an exra night in Kalgoorlie as I waited for new tyres to be shipped up from Perth.

On my return I took 7 days (using a more direct route through Broken Hill).

Riding across Australia is easy, even though it's a long way and you'll sleep soundly each night after a full day's riding. I suspect riding through Asia would be far more demanding and fraught with difficulties.

http://home.exetel.com.au/snikolic/m...b/img_3598.jpg


http://home.exetel.com.au/snikolic/m...b/img_3726.jpg

Will post more details in a couple of days.

Cheers

So how long did it take, and what did you achieve? :)

Garry from Oz.

According the exif data in the JPEG files the first image was taken on the 06/02/09 at 3:20am

the second shot was taken on the 11/02/09 at 4:52am

Which is 5 days... even assuming the date / time is incorrect in the camera, it's safe to assume they're both consistently wrong!

Yes, I know, Sad :-( It's the end of a long day.

m

Hi all,

Here is brief report on my trip.

Melbourne-Perth-Melbourne in 5 days by motorcycle

Hope you enjoy as I did.

Cheers
Stjepan

Wow! What a trip... I'm totally astounded by the distance and hours you rode - more akin to an iron butt competition than a pleasure trip!

Wow.... it always amazes me that there are as many different types of bike tourers as there are bikers... I just can't see the pleasure in riding that kind of distance in that kind of time, but I can understand why you'd want to achieve it - must have been a hell of a buzz when you got back..

To give you an idea of my riding style... I plan on doing this trip in May

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3394/...f1e4ea.jpg?v=0

Which according to Google is 4229km - I plan on taking 9 days to do this - works out at 469km a day - a nice gentle run with loads of time to pull off and explore - having said that of course I'm trying to avoid the main roads and that always means a much slower pace than the main high-ways.

Still... wow.... nice one and congratulations on having done it.

m

Hi Matt,

Your trip looks very interesting. I've never been in NSW-outback (apart from Mungo National Park and Hume Hwy) but many places there are on my things to see list. Not sure if the dots on map represents your daily trips, but I would suggest to visit Kangaroo Island (if time permits) and Mallacoota on NSW/VIC border.

Not all of my rides are the same too. Sometimes I enjoy short rides doing over long period of time, sometimes long rides over short period of time. If my bike is capable of doing rough off-road I would be doing that as well. I am also aware of my limitations too.

In my opinion each ride is different and each ride can be ridden differently and it is up to rider to decide what (and how) to do it.

In any case I always enjoy regardless of ride type.

I wish you good luck and safe return to home.
Take care fellow rider!
Stjepan

Good on you for making it Bosi, I still have to ask, however, why bother?

Garry from Oz.

I´ve never really understood that "Ironbutt"-philosophy myself, but also dont have any problem with it, if someone else gets their kicks from it.

We did Europe-Australia with my girlfriend one year ago, stayed 6 months on the road, and I wished we´d had at least 2 or maybe 3 more. We had time for some sightseeing, but we felt we would have liked to stay in some places a little longer.

40-60 days sounds a bit tough, I´m not convinced, that it´d be do-able at all. Riding in Australia, for one thing, will not prepare you for riding in Asia. India, for example, is about as different as it can get from Oz. Some 1200 million people living in an area, thats about half of Australia. Pushing it too hard in that traffic, even in the daytime, to meet some imaginary time limits, is highly likely to end in a very unpleasant way.

I would estimate, that from a riders point of view, 300kms per day on the highway in India, felt just about the same as 800kms on the highway in Australia. The roads, and especially the traffic, are so far apart.

You can draw a large cross over Burma on your route map, because you wont get there with your own bike. And you may be able to do China, but do not expect it to be easy, and budget somewhere between 5-10 thousand US just for the extra costs related to the arrangements that are needed. Those arrangements also need to get underway several months before you plan to cross. (The distances on your route map, especially Singapore to Kunming, felt a little bit short, but I may also be wrong about that EDIT: Almaty->Belgrade 5600kms? that also sounds way too short, if we´re talking road distance here).

Riding very tired in Asia is simply a bad idea, and unless you´re very familiar with the local ways and such, so is riding in the dark. These two alone would be enough for me to not even think doing what you plan to do in such a short time. But sure its your life, and you can do whatever you choose with it. Good luck on you anyway!

>We did Europe-Australia with my girlfriend one year ago, stayed 6
>months on the road, and I wished we´d had at least 2 or maybe 3 more.
>We had time for some sightseeing, but we felt we would have liked to
>stay in some places a little longer.

Believe me I have the same feeling every time when I go on holidays either locally either overseas. From personal experience no one can learn/understand everything about foreign culture even in he/she spends a couple of years in such foreign country.

40-60 days is only a ballpark figure. I don't expect to ride more than 600kms/day even in Turkey/Thailand on good highways. These were only estimates, but close enough to give rough picture about the trip.

Most people link trips to the mileage as I believe trips should be linked rather to the times. From what I've learned, riding 13-16 hours a day is the maximum I would recommend. That gives 6-8 hours for sleep and body/mind to recover. Not every day has to be like that one.

My most recent trip of course can not be fully compared to Asia trip, but it is still better than sitting at home, or worse, pretending that I can get experience by riding from home to work and back. I would really like to hear what kind of preparations (trip/packing/...) did you undertake before going to Australia.

>The distances on your route map, especially Singapore to Kunming,
>felt a little bit short, but I may also be wrong about that EDIT:
>Almaty->Belgrade >5600kms? that also sounds way too short, if we´re
>talking road distance here).

As stated on the web site, the source was Web browser and Live Maps are incompatible. I also expect these to increase by not more than 10%.

Thank you for your response.
Stjepan

Regards the trip, you might want to check out our "blog" (well, sort of.. I had some work I needed to do on my laptop while underway, and it ate up my spare time, so it was never finished - but I will actually convert it into English now, when I´ve got more time, and it will one day include our whole trip!!)

It is at:
MOTO-Ykkönen - Matkalla
(at the moment, it is only partly in English, but will be updated).

About the distances, I still think those marked on the maps are too short.

The beginning of our trip, from Lubeck (north Germany) to Slovenia-Greece-Turkey-Iran-Pakistan-India (with no detours in Europe, only some in Turkey, and very few in Iran or Pakistan, but including Dharamsala, Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Alleppey, Trichy & Chennai in India) was almost exactly 16.000 kms on the road. There are maps on our "blog", so you might want to put that same route into your route program, and see what kind of figure it´ll give you.

Me, I wouldnt ride 13-16 hours a day anywhere in the tropics, because it´d mean also riding in the dark. Over there, daylight will be ~12 hours, and darkness comes very suddenly.

Well done Pekka on your trip and thanks for sharing your experience with us.

I am sure some people on forums would object on your bike setup (too overloaded, etc...), but I believe you have consulted Suzuki User Manual before the trip with regards to weight capacity limits.

By the way Honda CB900 User Manual declare max weight of 174kg including rider. Weight on my recent trip was 17kg + 106kg rider (with boots, jacket, pants, helmet). Anyting else (e.g. aerodynamics, manouverability,...) is not much relevant, however I am not saying it's not important.

Regarding preparation I believe that you haven't had >>exact<< trip plan before you left Finland. The figures that I put on my website (as stated several times) were estimate ballpark only.

I believe your ride was done according to environment/circumstances, which is the same I will be doing.

Once again well done and congratulations on your achievement ! I look forward to check your web site again once it's completed in English.

Thank you
Stjepan

WA Marathon
 

Hi Stjepan,
Like a few folk on this site i've been waiting to see how you went on your quick trip, must say congrats on making it there and back and although outside your original time frame still a bloody good effort. Your a tougher guy than me with that 1800km day to finish off. Sorry you got so many negative coments even if some may have been concerned with your well being.
Again really enjoyed the pics and provided a good insight to this area, originally planned trip from east to west coast last April with a mate but due to time did the Tassie trip instead, only 4500ks.
As with this trip, look for the positives for your bigger trip and get as much good info as possible to make the ride easier for yourself. If this one is anything to go on you shouldn't have too much of a problem,
cheers


Scoop :mchappy:

Good on you for having a go :thumbup1:

You can only learn by doing.

Hey Davo. Good to see ya here too mate. :welcome:

Really enjoyed your photos Bosi, as they brought back lots of happy memories of my own trip.

However I still think you're nuts. That sort of endurance test is not for me. Glad you're still alive to tell the tale.