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!