4 weeks and 1 day on a bike- The trip.
History
I have always had a wish to travel Australia. Ever since I was a kid, I have travelled, usually by car, firstly with my parents, and more recently, with my own family. Holidays usually took the form of a car trip somewhere. In my younger days, I travelled to places as far away as Darwin, the east Kimberleys, Adelaide, Tasmania, and extensively through Queensland. When I was old enough to have my own car, I continued to travel, both for work and pleasure. Living for virtually all my adult life in Central Queensland, travel was a necessity, with many trips south to see mum in Brisbane. I met my wife Jenny when we both worked out western Queensland at Barcaldine. We married, and moved to Rockhampton, then 10 years later to Gladstone. As our 2 girls grew, we would travel, normally by 4wd, every holiday. We visited Cape York, Karumba, Cape Melville, the Snowy Mountains, and numerous other trips either by ourselves, or with both the Gladstone and Rockhampton 4wd clubs. But, we were always constrained by the fact that we had our daughters with us. I always harboured a dream to do a lap of Oz, but always thought I would have to wait for retirement to do so. And the thought was always there that the cost of fuel in the future would make such a trip cost prohibitive. So, the wish to own a big motorbike has been simmering away for many years, as I thought that would be a cheaper way to do the big lap.
A year ago, I finally bit the bullet, and pulled the pin from my old job of 25 1/2 years, and embarked on a new career. Satisfyingly, my new job actually sees me paid to travel, and paid quite handsomely I might add. The down side is I am based away from home, for a week or so at a time. Its 300km one way from work to home, and with my intentions of doing that trip on a regular basis, and with fuel costs taken into consideration (well, that was my excuse anyway) I decided that my old Honda 250 just was not going to cut the grass. So, with my payout from my old job, a 2007 1600cc Kawasaki Vulcan Nomad was purchased. Only 6 months old at the time, it suits the long commuting duties quite well. But, even with hard panniers, carrying capacity was limited, so a trailer was in order. Purchased from Newcastle, off Ebay, the trip down from Gladstone to Newcastle saw me stop at Classic Industries at Yandina to get a towbar fitted, then continue to Newcastle to collect the trailer. This then was the basis of the bike and trailer for our trip.
Bike and trailer modifications
With my regular trips to and from work and home, some modifications were wanted, some absolutely needed, firstly to the bike, and also to the trailer. The bike scored Cruise Control, to take the strain off my right wrist (a legacy of my old job which called for extensive repetitive movements of my right wrist) a pair of HID (High Intensity Discharge) spotlights so I can see the many animals on the highway at night ( I chose HID lights because of the low current draw- 70 watts total for the equivalent of about 300 watts light output), the towbar for the trailer, a rear rack for extra luggage capacity, and sheepskin seat covers (for the comfort of our backsides). Having camped extensively, and recently selling our camper trailer, we have a large amount of camping gear to choose from. But, with weight at a premium, we had to choose carefully what gear we wanted to take. The trailer was modified by adding extra power supply from the bike to power a 15 litre Engel fridge, the rear lights were changed to LED lights for their small current draw, and LED strip lights were installed to provide interior light in the trailer and front fridge pod. Cigarette lighter plugs were also added to the trailer, to provide 12V power to various items. 3 x 12V sockets were also added to the bike, 2 behind the windscreen, and one behind a side cover. We bought a set of Cardo bluetooth headsets so we could chat when on the bike, and an added benefit was the ability to receive incoming bluetooth signals, from either phone, or PDA. This allows us to listen to music when on the move. We also run 2 GPS units on the bike, and power for these is run up to the front. I fabricated a small water tank under the front of the trailer out of 90mm PVC pipe, capacity is around 8 litres. UPDATE I have had some requests for photos of some of the modifications done to both bike and trailer. The photo of bike shows both GPS units mounted using RAM handlebar mounts, 2 12v power sockets either side of them, the individual spotlight switches above the left handgrip, and the cruise control switches below the left handgrip. The three photos of the trailer show the filler, tap, and breather hose, under the front showing the 90mm PVC pipe tank, and a general rear view showing the 90mm pole tube on the far side. The ply pod, on the drawbar was built by me to suit the 15 litre Engel fridge. I hope to get this fibreglassed sometime after the trip. I hope to have all our gear enclosed in the trailer, and bike panniers, with the exception of a 10 litre jerry can, and a 20 litre esky, and perhaps a pair of camp chairs.
Trip plans
Our trip is for a few reasons. Our 2 girls are now of an age that they can look after themselves, so Jenny and I can get to enjoy each others company. We get to enjoy 4 weeks together. Jenny has not been down to South Australia before, and its been many years since I was down there. She has a cousin in Coober Pedy we haven't seen in many years, so that makes one destination. I have always wanted to travel the Great Ocean Road, so that was another destination. The other reason is we are Geocachers. If you dont know what Geocaching is, put simply, its an international treasure hunt using GPS's and the internet. www.geocaching.com and www.geocaching.com.au will tell you all about it. We have been caching for nearly 3 years, and currently have 667 finds to our name. Our goal is to find 333 caches on this trip, so we can surpass 1000 finds. That is the reason for the 2 GPS's. One is a Garmin Nuvi 500 (waterproof, designed for bikes, has mapping, directions, ect- like a normal in car navigation unit, but with a geocaching feature included) It gets us to the general cache area. The other one is a Garmin GPS 60Csx, which is more designed as a outdoors type GPS, and we use this for the final cache searches, and as a more accurate speedo when travelling.
Itinerary
Planning our itinerary has actually not taken too long, with a basic plan easily formed. With Jenny not having too much experience as a pillion passenger, especially over long distances, I have had to factor a lot of rest stops into the trip. But searching for geocaches will take care of a lot of that. We have basically set a rough upper limit of 600km to travel per day. Of course, we are not in any real hurry, as the trip itself is the holiday. We have also discovered, from past experience, that looking at a map and saying "We want to be there tonight" is pretty much a recipe for disaster. Things go wrong, distractions happen, interesting places are found, and all these can add to travel times. Additionally, we have found it beneficial to be stopped for the day around 4pm, and have set up camp and dinner cooking by dark. We are not planning on staying at any roadside rest areas overnight, but are opting for at least caravan parks, with a powered site, to power the fridge at night, as well as recharging numerous bits of electronics. If the weather turns bad, then more substantial accommodation will be found. Our planned route goes through inland Queensland (Biloela, Taroom, Miles, Moonie, Goondiwindi), inland New South Wales (Moree, Narrabri, Gilgandra, Nyngan, Wilcannia, Broken Hill), South Australia (Peterborough, Port Augusta, Woomera, Coober Pedy, Adelaide, Mt Gambier) Victoria (Warrnambool, Great Ocean Road, Geelong, Melbourne) After that our course is open, with a number of options available. Ideally, we would travel the Alpine Way, through Thredbo up to Canberra, then up to Bathurst, across to Sydney, then up the coast to Brisbane and then home. A distance of around 7000km.
The Martian Factor
Its funny how things happen. We have had this trip being seriously planned for a few months now. Preparations have been underway for about 6 months, on and off. About 2 weeks before departure, out of the blue, a request come via the internet for placement of a travel bug, (read about them on the geocaching links above) belonging to a class of students from the USA into a cache in Australia. The year 3 class from South Butler Primary School, near Mars, Pennsylvania, USA, sent us 2 travel bugs to place in caches in Australia. One has been placed, the other- now dubbed Freddo the Frog- will travel around with us on the trip, visiting caches along the way. These travel bugs are in interesting way for the students to learn about Australias geography. They will be following this blog with interest.
Final Preparations
Now, with less than a week till departure, both Jenny and I are working our way through our last few shifts at work, before heading off on Friday, 20 March 2009. Last minute packing will happen on the day before.
The GODS HAVE SMILED!!!!!
Today is D Day minus 4- Monday. I have 2 shifts to work, finishing around 2am Thursday. With a couple of hours sleep, its time to head for home, unpack, repack, and be ready for a Friday departure. Well, that was the plan. Up until this morning, it looked like I was not going to finish work until sometime late in the day Thursday. That meant either a very late night Thursday, or a late departure Friday- already behind the 8 ball. But then, the phone rings, and due to circumstances that fall in my favour, I have scored 2 extra days off, which means first thing tomorrow morning, I am heading for home, and with Jennys last shift on Wednesday, we get to depart on Thursday, instead of Friday. But it does mean we will have to prepoll in the election, but thats a minor issue. Thanks go to Steve (he knows who he is) for making a phone call to the gods for me.
Recording the trip
We decided we would do a fair bit of recording of this trip. We havent been particularly photographic in the past, just taking happy snaps of our trips. But this time, I have sort of decided to go a bit overboard. We bought a new video camera for the birth of our first grandson, Cameron. It also takes stills, so is pretty versatile. I also, on the spur of the moment a couple of months ago, bought a camera for the bike. It records to a 2 gig memory card, and has a number of functions, single still, video, rapid triple shots, but the one I am most interested in is the ability to take a shot every 5 seconds. I have tested it previously, and can get about 2 1/2 hrs onto one card, and with one set of rechargable batteries. I have 3 cards, and 3 sets of batteries. We will download them each night, onto a 1 terrabyte external harddrive that we are also taking. We should pretty much be able to reocrd the entire trip on stills, and then later drop them to CDs, or go through them and delete what we dont want. This should also help The Kids from Mars. This camera mounts to either the handlebars of the bike, or I can mount it to the side of my helmet.
Finally, the trip commences, 19 March 2009, Gladstone Qld to Goondiwindi Qld
I havent updated this blog for a couple of days due to my laptop being packed away. Speaking of packing, We commenced packing on Wednesday afternoon, for an early Thursday departure. We then discovered we had way too much gear to take, and we still didnt have any clothes packed. We trimmed back on what we were taking, doing away with some luxuries, and some extras that we thought we would take, but now will buy enroute as needed. We then put more on the roof of the trailer than originally intended. Finally, very early on Thursday morning, we finally managed to jam the top shut, and lock it. Both panniers were also jam packed, and our hopes were that no rain would come, as our tent now resides across the rack on the back of the bike. Of course, when we woke on Thursday morning to leave, it was raining. Not hard, but enough to be a bit disheartening. We said our goodbyes to those that were staying home, and headed off. Taking it pretty easy, due to the wet roads, and the load we had on, we headed west to Biloela, where we grabbed our first cache. Then through Banana to Moura for cache #2. Turning south, through Theodore, Taroom (#3) Miles (#4&5) then down to overnight at Goondiwindi on the Qld/NSW border. We had to make quite a few stops enroute, as Jennys backside was not handling the extended time and kilometres in the saddle too well, not unexpected as the biggest distance she has previously ridden was about 200km. Today we did 720km, departing Gladstone at about 0630 hrs, and arriving Goondiwindi about 1730 hrs. Tomorrow we head into NSW, planning to do around 600km, with plenty of caches to find down the Newell Highway. As a reward for her brilliant role as passenger on day 1, I treated Jenny to a first night away in a motel. She and I both need a good nights rest, as we both havent slept well over the last 2 nights. Overexcitement, I would guess. As I type this, she snores blissfully beside me.
Day Two- 20 March 2009, Goondiwindi Qld to Gilgandra NSW
Day 2 dawned early for both of us, a byproduct of Jennys normal early work starts, and my 24 hr shifts working. Packing up, we had a chat to a NSW copper who was also up, and checked on a few road rules down south. He told us he was up north to escort a wide load south. After refuelling, we started off our day of travelling and caching at 0530 hrs. Heading into the wide open plains of central western NSW, we passed through Moree, Narrabri, Coonabarabran, to Gilgandra. Of course, we got caught behind the wide load, and travelled at around 85kph for about 3/4 hr, till we were let past. We wanted to get to Warren tonight, but Jennys inexperience again gave her problems, with a sore backside. She should be used to it after about a week. Mind you, we have put 1206km on the bike in the last 2 days. Heavy storms, with great lightning and thunder shows dogged us for the last hour or so, with the occasional bout of rain to contend with. This also helped with the decision to stop prematurely for the night. However, the issue of NSW daylight savings time raised its head, as we wandered off to find some dinner in brilliant sunshine, at 7 pm. It didnt get dark till round 8pm NSW time. We can highly recommend the meals at the local bowls club. Yummy.
Day Three- 21 March 2009, Gilgandra NSW to Broken Hill NSW
With this funny NSW time, its hard to come to terms with the fact its still dark at around 7am in the morning. We had to deliberately wait before heading off, as the risk of colliding with some wildlife was too great. Eventually, around 0730 hrs, we headed off into the wild wild west. Clear open roads, with a speed limit of 110kph saw good progress made. Warren, Nevertire, and Nyngan were quickly passed by. Unfortunately, there was also a town or 2 that didnt seem all that desirable, due to the local populice. Caching took a high priority in the morning, as we had about 500km in the afternoon with none to find. The ones at Nyngan were interesting, especially the flood memorial one. This is what caching is all about, taking you to places you would ordinarily pass straight by. Overall, a hard days ride, with over 700km done today, for a total of just under 2000km for the 3 days. Hopefully we should have some good geography pics for the Kids from Mars, of flat open plains that go on and on, of roads that are straight and pretty much level for 50 or 100 km at a time. I hope that some photos of the roadside wildlife also came out, as did some of the numerous willy willies that we saw. The number of wild goats between Cobar and Wilcannia was quite remarkable. Please check the blog photo gallery for new photos. We are overnighting in Broken Hill, last town before crossing into South Australia. We had to have a big cookup of all our fresh vegetables, as none are allowed into South Australia. We assumed it was only fruit not allowed, but on checking, its everything fresh, but cooked is allowed so we will carry some cooked in the fridge, to be reheated in a day or so. Some washing done today, as extra clothing was one of those luxuries that had to go, when we could not fit everything in.
Day Four- 22 March 2009, Broken Hill NSW to Port Augusta SA
Back on the road again this morning, after packing up. Things are starting to settle into a routine, even though we have not yet used the tent. Today was going to be a shorter day, only around 500km to travel. We found a nice restaurant for breakfast- ham and cheese crossants for Jenny, and bacon eggs sausages tomatos and toast for me. We wanted to go up to the Line of Lode lookout, but by 0930, when it still hadnt opened, we could not wait any longer. We headed off into the flat country, much the same as yesterday. Passing through Cockburn saw us enter South Australia. We were fighting a strong headwind all day today, which did have an effect on our fuel economy, and I had to set a lower speed on the cruise control to get better economy so we would make it to Yunta. Passing through the small ex railway town of Peterborough, it was a shame to see this once thriving railway town reduced to having its station fenced off and boarded up. Passing through the Flinders Ranges, we saw the ocean again, Spencer Gulf, not long before rolling into Port Augusta. Tomorrow we are off north up to Coober Pedy. The cache count today was 14, which took us past 700 finds total. The distance travelled so far in the four days is over 2500km.
Day Five- 23 March 2009, Port Augusta SA to Coober Pedy SA
I am finally managing to sleep in past about 4am. Jenny isnt so lucky, still waking an some indecent hour of the morning. After packing, we headed north into the wilds of the outback. Dead flat landscapes, and at times virtually no trees to be seen, we made quick time up the highway, till disaster struck at a cache named In The Donga. Just off the highway, in red sand and bulldust, we got the bike bogged badly. It took more than an hour to get it out, taking a fair bit of skill on our parts to get back on the road. With around 500km to travel today, this had put us behind the 8 ball. Picking up the pace, we filled up the bike at Pimba, and Glendambo, before the last leg to Coober Pedy. Sitting at around 120kph on these flat open roads, we made good time, but in the back of my mind was the loss of fuel economy such high speeds on a heavily laden bike produces. But, with advertising signs on the side of the road for our destination, and the town limits sign passed, I though we were going to make it. No such luck, we ran out of fuel within sight of the town. Fortunately, I had filled the jerry can previously, so we arrived in town around 1800 hrs. An early evening drive out to some of the local landscapes by Jennys cousin and then a great dinner at a local establishment completed an adventurous and eventful day. We are booked in at our accommodation for 3 nights at Coober pedy, so we get to play real tourists now.
Day Six- 24 March 2009, Coober Pedy SA
It seemed darker than usual this morning, this daylight savings time is a nightmare. 7am and its still dark. Finally got up, to discover the reason why, heavy cloud cover and its raining, and windy, and cold. It doesnt rain out here. They dont have watertanks because it doesnt rain enough. They drink desalinated underground water here. No grass grows here because it doesnt rain here. Tourists pay for their water from a tap in the main street, because it costs so much to make the stuff. It gets so hot out here that any water evaporates within hours or days. Massive salk lakes surround the place. We are only here for 2 days, and it RAINED, not just once but a few times. A series of thunderstorms rolled through and around town almost all day. They did put on spectacular light and sound shows, as only the outback can. Fortunately each storm blew over quickly, and the total rainfall was not that huge, and the incessant sunshine between clouds quickly dried out what had fallen. That last part is the best bit because if it ever does rain heavily out here, the dirt roads become impassable for days at a time.
We did manage to play the part of tourists here. As well as Opal mining which is the mainstay of the local economy, tourism plays a large part both domestic and international. The underground backpackers hostel is always pretty full, and a wide variety of languages is constantly heard. We had a good ride around town, and looked into some of the shops displaying rough and polished opals for sale. I love opals, I love the colours and the vibrancy of them. Unfortunately, we didnt have the spare money to invest in some. In the afternoon, we went to a working underground mine, where we saw how they mine for opal. We also had the opportunity to noodle for opal. Noodling is the term used for scratching around in the piles of dirt brought up from a mine, looking for opal missed during the mining process. Its easily found, but most is near worthless stuff. Quality gems can be found, but not too often. A stone worth more than $10000 was recently found by a tourist while noodling. As part of the grand tour being given by Jennys cousin, we went to a blokes place where we saw an incredible display of worked native to the area rocks. He turns the rough everyday stone into works of art. We also got a tour of his dugout, where he lives. After that, we were taken to look at 3 dugouts, side by side, basically a set of underground apartments. Jennys cousin is looking for a different place to live. It really is amazing to walk inside one. Hot outside yet take 2 steps inside and you feel the temperature plummet. It stays a comfortable level year round, without air conditioning.
After another excellent meal at the local resturant and a couple of drinks, the idea was formulated of heading out to do a bit of nighttime noodling. Opal glows under ultra violet light, and this is a method used in mining, the soil passes on a conveyor through a dark room and under UV lights. The opal is then simply picked up off the conveyor by hand. We went to use this method last night, going out on the bike with a shovel and portable 240V UV fluorescent, powered off a 12v-240v inverter in our trailer. Unfortunately, the bike battery did not produce enough voltage to get the light to work. Oh well. Finally, I worked on uploading some of the videos we have shot during the trip. Naturally I had problems, converting them from the hopeless format used in the camera to something uploadable. I am still working on that. Oh, did I mention I found one geocache today?
Day Seven- 25 March 2009, Coober Pedy SA
A day to have a bit of a rest and again play tourist. I worked on this blog and tried to get some videos up onto the net. Unfortunately no luck there, they just dont seem to want to upload. I think it may be because of how remote we currently are, and the internet speeds where we are. I will retry to upload when we are in Adelaide. Speeds should be a lot better there. We visited the underground hotel in town, and had a few drinks and played the pokies (slot machines) in what is proclaimed as the worlds only underground poker machine bar. We didnt win anything or what we won we lost again. We had another go at noodling, but did no good as we reckoned the area had been well worked over in the past. A preliminary pack up was done in preparation for our departure south tomorrow. Our intentions are to pull in and have a bit of a look at Woomera, then head to Port Augusta for the night.
Day Eight- 26 March 2009, Coober Pedy SA to Port Augusta SA
Today dawned bright and early, well hardly bright but early. It was around 4.30am. We started packing up slowly, knowing we couldnt get on the road till after it got light, around 7am. Finally, fuelled and packed, we departed Coober Pedy to head south, backtracking the 500 or so kilometres we had done a couple of days ago. We fought a strong headwind today, which killed our fuel economy. I reckon we used an additional 5 litres of fuel to travel the same distance- Coober Pedy to Glendambo, than what we used 3 days ago. At times, when it became a crosswind, we were physically leaning the bike against the wind. We turned off at Pimba to travel into Woomera, to have a look at the Aust/US military history in the area, only to discover our trailer had a flat tyre. Changing it on the side of the road, we had to make a decision as to chance further exploration or not, with no spare. With only an aerosol tyre repairer as a back up, we continued our travels. We had a soft slow speed fall off the bike heading in towards a cache, no damage done as it was onto soft dirt. We had lunch at Spuds roadhouse at Pimba, then continued to Port Augusta. Total cache finds for today are 4, and a landmark was set, first time we set up the tent for the trip.
Oh, did I mention its my birthday today, I am getting older by the second.
Day Nine- 27 March 2009, Port Augusta SA to Port Wakefield SA
We managed to sleep in today, not waking till after the sun had risen. That combined with having to pack up our camp meant we didnt get on the road till roughly 9am. We hit Port Augusta pretty hard geocaching wise, just about cleaning them all up. We had the trailer tyre repaired before leaving town, only to discover I had lost the screwdriver and tube spanner that was formed the wheelbrace somewhere between Woomera and Port Augusta, which meant I had to buy a replacement. We continued our travels south, grabbing caches as we went, but not taking any more chances regards dirt roads. We did travel on some, but only on well formed ones. Our total for the day was 30 finds, and about 4 DNFs, with only about 200km travelled, the shortest distance of any where we actually travelled. We passed through Port Germain, Port Perie, Redhill,, Snowtown, and ended up at Port Wakefield at the rediculous hour of 9pm. Why so late, well we had been passing through town after town, all of which had motel and caravan park accommodation redily available. So I promised Jenny another night inside if we could keep caching. She agreed and we decided to stop at Snowtown. It was now dark, around 8.15pm, and we pulled into town, only to find none available. With that disappointment, we headed off into the cooling darkness, managing to get to Port Wakefield around 9ish, and stopping at the first motel available. I managed some good pics for the Kids from Mars, and these will be uploaded soon. Its now 1235am, and hopefully, its all just about done, apart from downloading new pocket queries for the trip ahead.
Day Ten- 28 March 2009, Port Wakefield SA to Adelaide SA
Another sleep in- we must be getting into the holiday mode. Departure again around 9am, with a target to get to Adelaide today. Its only about 110km away. But goodness knows how many caches. We worked our way progressively down the highway, pulling off or driving down dirt roads as we went. We were lazy and stopped at Maccas for lunch, and then managed to ride right through the centre ot the city, before heading out to the suburb of West Beach, where we set up a reasonable camp for an extended stay. One worry is the discovery of engine coolant weeping from the motor of the bike. I had noticed the water stain a few days ago, but had put it down to some muddy roadworks we had passed through back in New South Wales (the bike is really filthy at the moment). This may delay our progress on the trip, depending on how serious it is determined to be at the service on Tuesday. If we cant continue immediately, then a hire car will be the go, and a warranty claim on the bike for the work.
Day Eleven- 29 March 2009, Adelaide SA
Again, the gods of good fortune have smiled on us. I had a good poke around this morning, looking and checking the bike to see where the coolant leak was coming from. The level in the reserve was down, but not out. This showed the leak to be very small, as a loss of around 1/4 of a litre over at least 5 days confirmed. It turns out to appear to be coming from where a coolant pipe joins the motor, up under the fuel tank. This is an easy fix, just requiring the removal of the pipe, cleaning of the connection, and retightening of the hose clamp. With such a huge choice of caches in Adelaide, the GPS screen is literally wall to wall with them at anything over 800 metres, we basically chose a direction (south east) to travel in, and headed off. With the screen set at 200 metres, we picked and chose caches at random along the main road we followed. We ended up in the hills behind Adelaide at a leafy suburb called Belaire, where we stopped for lunch, We then followed another main road in a north west direction, till it started to get dark. We then headed back to base camp, having found around 25 caches for the day. Unfortunately, being a Sunday just about every man and his dog seemed to be out and about. Glenelg, a seaside suburb just south of where we are staying, has a series of caches at local tennis courts, probably at least 20 of them. Neither Jenny or I have seem such a huge population of tennis courts in one area before. To our dismay, all were being used on this day, so we missed out on so many caches, all of which we didnt even bother getting off the bike to look for, so they didnt even score a DNF.
Day Twelve- 30 March 2009, Adelaide SA
The long days are starting to take their toll, reasonably early starts after late evenings doing cache logs, sees us dragging the chain more and more. We dont get going till mid morning at least, the daylight savings doesnt help down here. Its 0730 hrs at the moment and the sun still hasnt risen. Mind you, it doesnt get dark till around 8pm. Today we wandered into the city centre, with vague ideas of finding what we could there. Adelaide has a huge number of multi and mystery caches, courtesy of a couple of local cachers. It also has a lot of micros, secreted in little nooks and crannies in very busy shopping areas. There are also a few virtual and webcam caches in the area. We were hopeless. We tried about a dozen or so, but after only one find in about an hour and a half, we pretty much gave up. We hopped onto a tram to Glenelg (a treat I had promised us and one of the highlights of the trip so far) and did the full 14km approx run to and from Glenelg. We hoped there would be a selection of caches down there to ease our pain, there was one, which was a multi with the end point about 660 metres away. We didnt feel like walking that as a return journey, so we wandered the shops of the area (one of Jennys favorite activities) before heading back into the city to grab the bike. We had made arrangements to meet a local cacher for a bit of a night run tonight, and with our base and his place on opposite sides of the city, we had to leave the city centre early to make the date. Thanks go to Skippy for showing us around his area at night, and for helping us out with some of the mystery and multi caches we would have had no chance of completing in our time here.
Day Thirteen- 31 March 2009, Adelaide SA
We had to use the alarm clock for the first time today, as I had to have the bike at Boltons Kawasaki around 8am for its service. A couple of local Adelaide cachers, Everlasting and her sister Sevabo, had kindly offered to take us caching for the day. These two ladies are remarkable cachers, both being deaf. Yet Everlasting has over 4000 finds to her name. They showed us around Adelaide, helping us add nearly 25 finds to our collection. After collecting the bike from Boltons, we headed back to camp to begin packing. We decided to get as much packed as possible the night before, leaving only the bare essentials for the morning. We decided to have a nice meal out for our last night here, so headed to the resturant at the park. A nice bottle of red would have bad consiquences for both of us.
Day Fourteen- 1 April 2009, Adelaide SA to Millecent SA
That bottle of red from last night came back to haunt me this morning. Instead of just packing up and hitting the road, I had to spend a couple of hours doing stuff on the computer that I should have done last night, but was a tad incapable of doing. We finally got going around 8.30am and with only less than 500km to travel to Mt Gambier, we thought we would make it easily. In the end, after taking a few detours for caches, and having a few breaks, we arrived just on dark, and booked into another motel. Towns we passed through today included Murray Bridge, Tailem Bend, Kingston, and Millecent.
Day Fifteen- 2 April 2009, Millecent SA to Mt Gambier SA
A good sleep in was in order today, after staying up late doing cache logs. As we were packing up to depart, a bloke came over who was staying in the same place, and started asking us about the bike and trailer. He was very interested in how I had setup all the accessories, and how the whole lot travelled on the road. Apparently he is thinking of doing much the same thing. After chatting for about a half hour, we got on the road. We played tourists again, having a bit of a look round Mt Gambier, a very pretty city, and up to the Crater Lakes. We went underground into two sinkholes that are open to the public, with the Umpherston sinkhole a fascinating place, beautifully groomed gardens, long hanging Ivy, and an Earthcache to boot. We finally left Mt Gambier just after lunch, and headed east into Victoria. We cached along the Princes Highway, finding another 2 Earthcaches, as well as about 13 regular caches. We stopped at a roadside windfarm, where 34 turbines harness the power of the wind to generate electricity. These are fascinating things, and I could sit and watch them for hours. We spotted the Southern Ocean for the first time at a cache called The Crag, where we actually found 2 containers at the one cache, the original one, and its replacement when the first one went missing. We finally pulled into Warrnambool, on the south western coast of Victoria just on dark.
Day Sixteen- 3 April 2009, Mt Gambier SA to Princetown Vic
We are starting to love the sleep ins. Must well and truely be in holiday mode now. We didnt leave the motel at Warrnambool till around 10.30 today. The weather was bleak, windy, dark and a light drizzle. With plans of getting "somewhere" on the Great Ocean Road tonight, with a maximum distance to travel of around 400km for the total length, we were in no real hurry, but of course, thats what holidays are all about. We found a few caches in and around Warrnambool first up, then headed east. The day had fined up, and at times was quite warm. We ended up discarding our jackets to the trailer because as we walked to various scenic attractions along this spectacular coastline, and there are a lot in a comparitively short distance. The Grotto, London Arch, Loch Ard Gorge, and The Twelve Apostles were all seen, and have to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, as were we mistakenly searching for a cache at The Twelve Apostles (its actually an Earthcache) the weather started to close it. It became incredibly windy, and heavy clouds and rain could be seen out to sea, coming our way. By the time we reached the car park, we were drenched. After donning all our wet weather gear for the first time in the trip, we headed off gingerly (I hate riding in the rain, roads can be so slippery) further east, content to grab a cabin somewhere, preferably as soon as possible. The opportunity came about 5km down the road at a place called Princetown, where a nice warm cosy donga awaited. Here we slept confortably, listening to the wind howl outside, with the occasional passing rainstorm to add to the enjoyable sounds. Having not completed the requirements to successfully log the earthcache at The Twelve Apostles, and with it such a short distance away, we are going to backtrack tomorrow morning to complete the log.
Day Seventeen- 4 April 2009, Princetown Vic to Torquay Vic
For a change, we were up bright and early, too early actually, about 2 hrs before daybreak. Coffee was made to ward off the chilling wind that had howled all night. We packed in the early morning light, and headed back to The Twelve Apostles to grab photos of the earthcache. We then set sail again eastwards. We took things pretty carefully as the road was wet from overnight rain, and this sections was very windy, with lots of slow speed curves. There were also warnings about slippery roads for bikes. We took a couple of detours to grab caches. At one point, just east of Apollo Bay, we came across a number of cars parked by the side of the road, with people out and about. We slowed, then stopped when we realised they were all looking up, at about a dozen Koalas dozing in the trees above the road. It was treat for us to see them in their totally natural state, but we thought of the Kids from Mars and grabbed some photos to upload, as Koalas have been one of the animals they have asked us about. We then headed further east, and began what I call the Great Ocean Road proper. This would have to be one of Australias, if not the worlds most spectacular ocean roads. Cut literally into the sides of cliffs above the ocean, it winds its way back and forth for about 80km, giving spectacular views every way you look. Its amazing to realise this road was pretty much cut by hand in the early part of the 20th century. We ended the day at Torquay, home of the world famous Bells Beach surfing beach. Tomorrow we will head through Geelong into Melbourne.
Day Eighteen- 5 April 2009, Torquay Vic to Melbourne Vic
Today was going to be a pretty easy day, just a quick relocation from Torquay to Melbourne, only about 100km. We cached out way north, till the threatening rain caught up with us, so we made a beeline for a place to stay somewhere in North Melbourne. We set up camp in a caravan park for 2 nights, then headed out to try to grab a few more caches to boost our numbers. The total was around 11 for the day, and early evening. The light rain hampered our efforts, and made things generally cold and miserable.
Day Nineteen- 6 April 2009, Melbourne Vic
We were in 2 minds as to what to do today, cache in the suburbs around the area we are staying at, or head into the city to have a look around. Jennys preference was for the latter, and her will pervailed. We still managed to get about 8 for the day, but our feet felt it, with me getting a nasty blister on the back of a heel. Thats why I have a bike. I got told by Skye, in one of our regular internet chats that I managed to score a speeding fine in Adelaide, 72 in a 60 zone. $202 fine. Ahh well. Lets hope its the only one. But you cant say they are not efficent when it comes to raising revenue, we have only been out of Adelaide about a week, and the fine is already up home waiting for my return. We experienced the peak hour rush on the way back home from the city today, and I think I now know how a sardine feels in a can.
Day Twenty- 7 April 2009, Melbourne Vic to Wangaratta Vic
We didnt quite make our goal of reaching Albury/Wodonga today, but was a fruitful day anyhow caching wise. We seem to do much better caching on the open road instead of in the more populated towns and cities. Our one cache attempt while still in Melbourne flunked out because of muggles, yet we only had one while on the road, and that was because we couldnt find the right way in. We travelled through Kelly Country today, stopping and playing tourist at places like Glenrowan, Euroa, Seymour and finally Wangaratta. It was raining, or it may just have been a misty fog mixed with very fine drizzle as we departed Melbourne, so we were well and truely rugged up against it and the wind chill factor. We have been pretty lucky with the weather, not having suffered any real rain of sorts whilst actually travelling, just fine drizzle that is more annoying than inconvenient. One of the best places we have visited on the trip so far was a little B&B called Rusty Springs, at a town called Avenel. The rooms have been made up like a small 19th century outback town, each themed, and they all face in toward "The town square" which is a central meeting place for guests. It is really well done, and we are looking at maybe staying there next year when we plan to be back down this way on holidays again. And if it wasnt geocaching taking us off the main route to investigate these small towns that the freeways just bypass, we would not have known about it.
Day Twenty One- 8 April 2009, Wangaratta Vic to Gundagai NSW
Another slowish start to the day, hampered by the cool weather. At least it wasnt raining. We aquired a local cache before leaving town, and heading further up the Hume Highway. We made slow progress, stopping fairly regularly to find caches, sometimes having to backtrack to grab them. We found the town of Holbrook, in NSW fascinating, purely for the fact there is a full sized submarine parked in the local park. The Oberon class Cape Otway, has been moved about 500km to the local park, to be a tourist attraction. It is docked outside the local information centre. Certainly not something you expect to see about 400km from the nearest coastline. We found accommodation at Gundagai, the home of The Dog on the Tuckerbox, for the night, our ccahe find total for the day being 15, and our total having reached 917. Our target of 1000 seems in reach, but the problem arises, the more we search and find, the less distance we travel. If we travel greater distances, we miss more caches. Its a conundrum we have to come to terms with, as we would like to be home again in 6 days time. It still means an average of 14 finds per day.
Day Twenty Two- 9 April 2009, Gundagai NSW to Woolongong NSW
Today we were determined to get some Ks under out tyres. With the long, well maintained Hume Highway in front of us, we set a target of getting to Woolongong, on the east coast. Our loaded pocket queries only ran to Moss Vale, and with the search area narrowed to only 1km either side of our route, we headed off. Of course, there had to be a cache at The Dog on the Tuckerbox and there was, a virtual. We hadnt looked up the requirements for grabbing this one beforehand, only to find it needed a postcard and stamp. We grabbed a card at the nearby shop, but no one sold stamps. Not a worry, I stuck a $1 coin to the card with sticky tape, and posted it anyway. Our numbers rose steadily today as the road was good and the caches were spaced generally between 30 and 60km apart and they were at roadside rest areas. Today is Easter Thursday, and there must have been a number of vehicle events in different parts of the state. With the Hume Highway being a major arterial road, we saw hundreds of hot rods travelling- it turned out there is a meet this weekend at Goulburn, as well as a few MG's, and some Corvettes, with a very nice late 50's or early 60's blue one catching my eye. Ahhh to have money. Additionally the traffic in general was getting progressively thicker and heavier the closer we got to Sydney. Our last cache of the day was at a rest area where the State Emergency Service had set up a Driver Reviver, (thats a free tea, coffee, and biscuit (cookie) thing designed to encourage you to pull over and not get fatigued. They are set up everywhere on public holidays- explaination for my American friends) The clues for this cache said look behind the Wombat holes except there are a heap of wombat holes in the area, and finding the correct one was the issue. After the find, we headed east to the coast, and down an amazing road at Macquarie Pass, where the road on some corners does sharp U turns and on the inside of the turn, literally drops vertically for a couple of feet. A bit scary on the bike, especially when the low cloud or fog had rolled in, and it was getting dark rapidly. We eventually found a place to stay very close to the beach. Tomorrow is a shortish travel day, but should hopefully garnish quite a few finds. We will be staying with Jennys brother and his family in Sydney tonight, and as its only a hundred km or so up the road by freeway, we will be caching in a cache dense area all day, with the only issue being its a public holiday, and people will be everywhere.
Day Twenty Three- 10 April 2009, Woolongong NSW to Sydney NSW
As it turned out, the day didnt really turn out that brilliant caching wise. We headed in a generally northerly direction up the coast, looking for caches as they showed up on the radar. We scored some, we missed others. After a couple of hours winding our way up the old highway, following closely the coastline, admiring the scenery, we decided we better make some sort of beeline for our stop for tonight, in the suburb of Annandale on Sydneys southside. Unfortunately as I pulled onto the freeway, I took a wrong turn and we were headed south again. No problem I thought, I will just take the next offramp, do a U turn and head back north. Yeah right, it was about 20km before we got to the next exit, to Woolongong. We were virtually back to where we started. We did that U turn and headed north. Thank god for the Nuvi, it led us all the way through the suburbs to our base for the next day or so. A grand total of 10 finds for today, but we will be in town all day tomorrow, so hopefully the count will increase decently then.
Day Twenty Four- 11 April 2009, Sydney NSW
Jenny and I actually went our seperate ways today, she to some markets, I went caching. I have to say that the roads are a nightmare around here, even the Nuvi got easily confused. There are roads above roads above roads. They go this way, and that way, and even more confusing is the roads that head north when you want to go south, and you have to go north before you can go south. Confuses the heck out of a poor country bloke. My navigation skills in the city are turning out to be pretty poor, we seem to find more out on the open road, where there can be 20,30 or 50 k's between caches than where they are thick on the ground. But the count does slowly increase, edging closer and closer to that magic mark of 1000. An enjoyable evening was had last night with Jennys reletives, downing a wine or two, or maybe three or four, or was that more. I cant quite remember, and Jenny certainly cant. She did remember something in the morning, but what it was, we are not sure.
Day Twenty Five- 12 April 2009, Sydney NSW to Port Macquarie NSW
It had rained overnight, so packing up was a bit of a pain, as things were still wet. We said our goodbyes and made a special trip for the Kids from Mars. With Freddo perched on the handlebars of the bike for the first time, we did a special trip across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and had the camera running in video mode, and hopefully when we get home and can sort the videos out, we will post it on the net for the kids to see. We headed north along the Pacific Highway, giving caching away temporarily just to get some miles up. Its also a bit hard to stop on the freeway between Sydney and Newcastle, as its both dangerous and illegal. Once we get past Newcastle, we did manage to find a few, between rain showers. Unfortunately for us, the wet weather got progressively worse the further north we travelled. The region we were heading into has had a lot of rain in the last few weeks, with floods hitting some areas twice in a matter of weeks. The rain was getting more and more worse as the afternoon wore on, and actually getting pretty dangerous for us on the bike. One concern I have is the wear on the rear tyre on the bike. The extra weight towing the trailer and with Jenny on the back has accelerated the tyre wear to about double what its normally is. With over 6000km on it, it has just about reached the end of its life. Its only about 5 weeks old. I am concious of the fact that this isnt as safe as a new tyre, and have been taking extra care in the wet. The only positive of the wet weather is that the wet roads reduce the wear rate on the tyre. With the last few days being easter, replacement hasnt been possible. With all these things on my mind, and the extra concentration required to ride the bike safely, and adding fatigue through constantly being wet, we looked for a place to stay for the night, and it turned out to be a motel in Port Macquarie.
Day Twenty Six- 13 April 2009, Port Macquarie NSW to Ballina NSW
We didnt manage to get much dry overnight, so from the start we were behind the eight ball today. My jacket weighed a ton, even though it is supposed to be suitable for wet weather. Putting wet clothes on to begin riding for the day, and heading off toward dark forbodeing skys wasnt making the day look terribly exciting. We experienced probably the heaviest rain today, and at times we, and most of the other motorists on the road today were travelling as slow as 60-70kph. Traffic was very heavy, being the last day of holidays for some. Caching was a bit of a pain too, because as soon as you opened a container, the contents started to get wet, and signing logs became pretty difficult. One scored a green ink blot as a signature, simply because the log was wet, and getting wetter by the second the longer I had it out. We also grabbed a travel bug, seconds after it had been placed in a cache. The cachers placing it were leaving GZ as we approached. I reckon the bug had been in residence for about 30 seconds. Toward the end of the day, the rain became that heavy that it was becoming impossible to ride safely, and after becoming stuck in traffic at an accident, we pulled the pin at Ballina, about 300km short of where we wanted to be. We grabbed a cabin at a caravan park, and have spent the last few hours trying to dry gear out. Probably a fruitless exercise, as the forecast for tomorrow isnt much better than today. In fact, flood warnings are in place from a hundred or so km north of where we are, all the way up home.
Day Twenty Seven- 14 April 2009, Ballina NSW to Bribie Island Qld
We woke up today and it wasnt raining but we didnt hold out too much hope for a dry day, as the cloud cover was still heavy and foreboding. Our assumptions were correct, as it started raining again before we had finished packing. Fortunately there was a car cover outside our door, so we were undercover whilst packing up. Putting on wet shoes again was a really enjoyable thing to do. We rugged up, and got on the road again. We only had a shortish hop today, up to Jennys parents place at Bribie Island, just north of Brisbane. Evidence of recent flooding in the northern rivers area of NSW was everywhere, and our arrival in Queensland was no different. There have been floods, and actually they continue to happen at the present time. At least, almost as soon as we crossed the border into Queensland, the sun started to shine. I almost stopped and kissed the ground, ahhh it was good to be home. We only found 5 caches today, as the rain had really put a dampner on things. We did call in on my mum, who lives on the Gold Coast, to say hello. Mum lives in a nursing home, a place that I hate, but it is the best, a nice place where she gets the care she needs, but it pains me to see her now compared to how active she used to be. Getting old is such a bitch. With increasingly heavy traffic, we gave the caching away, to concentrate on getting through Brisbane and to a warm dry bed. We did have to wade through some floodwaters, only about 4 or 5 inches deep, on the Bribie Island road. This means we will spend tomorrow in Brisbane, where I will do a special caching run to grab about 25 caches to get to 1000. Jenny is spending a day off the bike, relaxing.
Day Twenty Eight- 15 April 2009, Bribie Island Qld
So this was it, day 28, supposed to be our last day, and it could have been, but it wasnt. I had convinced Jenny of the value of having a day off at her parents place, which would allow me to head back into Brisbane to find the 24 caches needed to break 1000. But it seemed that all I was doing was checking caches for owners after the recent rain and flooding. Most had survived, but some are now probably floating in the Pacific Ocean. There has been some significant water through some of the creeks around here. And of course, this is where a lot of caches are placed. Some I didnt even get off for, as the likelyhood of them surviving was pretty low. The bike felt funny to ride for a while today. I realised that is was because I had bugger all weight on the back, no trailer and no Jenny. I spent the day working my way back into the northern suburbs of Brisbane, and ended up getting the 24th cache around dark, at about 1730 hrs. And then I grabbed one final one in the dark on the way back to Bribie Island, one I had not been able to access in the morning because access was blocked due to flood cleanup.
Day Twenty Nine- 16 April 2009, Bribie Island Qld to Home- Gladstone Qld
Well disappointingly, Jenny decided to pull the pin on the adventure on the last day. Her parents were heading up to our place to attend a party at our place on Saturday. So Jenny decided to travel on the last day in comfort, in the back seat of their car. This again changed the dynamics of the bike as I still had the trailer on the back, but without Jenny on the pillion seat the rear end seemed a bit unsettled. Bumps and potholes in the road made the whole thing shake and swerve unnervingly. I did have the opportunity to unload some gear into the car, or remove the trailer completely and have it towed home by their car, but I decided to tow it home to complete the journey. This was because we had recieved a lot of attention during our trip. We were approached a number of times by people who wanted to take pictures of the bike and trailer, or asked us questions about our travels. We were asked by other bikers about the performance of the Vulcan, especially with trailer in tow, fuel economy, ect. We also recieved many compliments as well on how good it all looked. Especially satisfying for me was the envious looks we got from people in cars, who just stared and you could see by their expressions, just wanted to be us. We recieved a few offers to swap places, all of them from people stuck in cars at traffic lights, most of who were in work vehicles.
The wrapup.
The whole trip went well. With the 8782km on the GPS, that was the total distance travelled by us in the 29 days. The only problems that occured were minor and nothing that we could not fix ourselves. We destroyed an airhorn which hung low under the bike when returning down a rough track from a cache. The coolant leak turned out to be a worn O ring which was fixed during the service in Adelaide, the front ply fridge pod on the trailer split open at the seams- a result of some of the rough roads we travelled and the fact I had relied more on adhesives that screws in its construction. I plan to learn how to fibreglass and use the ply pod as a buck and fibreglass the whole thing for extra strength. We had one flat tyre on the trailer at Woomera, a result of a thorn. We wore out the rear tyre on the bike. It lasted about 5 weeks, and had only 600km extra on it apart from the trip. Thats not bad considering I normally only get around 15000km from a rear tyre and given all the extra weight the rear tyre was carrying. It turned out we didnt carry anything we didnt use, except for some of the food. We brought some well travelled tins of food back to Gladstone. We also didnt camp as much as we had planned which wasnt such a bad thing. One thing that was glaringly obvious was our unpreparedness for continuous wet weather. The final few days travelling up through coastal New South Wales turned miserable, as we could not get our riding gear dry. Because we were limited in the amount of gear we could carry overall, we had been forced to cut the amount of clothing we carried. This came back to haunt us in the end. The realisation that you anly have wet gear to put on for the day is something to be savoured.
I also realise that not enough was done by myself in regard to getting pictures uploaded onto the net for people to enjoy, especially for the Kids from Mars, who were following our travels. I found that time seemed to disappear at night, and logging our cache finds seemed to take forever. I have a heap of photos to go through, and will be uploading random photos to this site. I also realise that that this blog became more about the caching side of the trip, instead of the trip itself. For this, I apologise to those that have been following this blog and have no interest in geocaching. The continued frustration at not being able to upload videos upsets me. While I dont have a lot, and those that I do have are in parts pretty bad due to my poor cinemagraphic skills, some use will come out of them, and I plan to load them to DVD, and post a copy or two to some people.