An Australian lap attempt.....anti clockwise

[OnHellas]

As the title suggests, we are attempting to ride a lap of Australia, anti-clockwise.

We are me and my old friend the F800GS now without a sidecar and my new lady friend Sarah and her much newer F800GS.

With the help of Roddy and Kathy at MotoFreight our bikes were crates and sent off in a container on a very big ship to Sydney.
We flew with the friendly people of China Airlines.

As we were coming in to land at Sydney airport we could see the very ship that had bought our bikes from home sitting in the harbour. I thought that that was cool.
The next 4 days saw us doing the tourist thing in Sydney, Sarah’s daughter has lived out here for six months so we had our own guide.....and someone to buy dinner for

Once we had paid the dock fees, customs clearance fees and quarantine clearance fees.....not cheap....we took a taxi to the warehouse where our bikes were.....This is it, the ride begins......ish!!

The staff at the Freight warehouse were super helpful, paperwork was minimal and simple.
We had our crates bikes with 15 minutes. Perfect.
The forklift driver had an electric screwdriver to open the crates. Perfect.
Our bikes were undamaged, perfect.
Our panniers contained everything that we’d put in them. Perfect.
We reconnected the battery on Sarah’s bike and put the mirrors back on. Fired up the bike and let it idle. Perfect.
We put the screen and mirrors on my bike, reconnected the battery and NOTHING.
Flat battery, not perfect. As an Aussie would say ‘Bugger’.

[OnHellas]

Out with the jump pack and the bike fired up. On disconnecting the jump pack the bike died.
With a bit of head scratching and managing not to get to flustered.....there’d been lot gone into getting to that point....we took the battery off of Sarah’s bike and put it on to mine.....why are batteries such a pain to get to on modern bikes?....and it fired up and ran perfectly.

Now, at around this time a white van man turned up and said that he had a battery at home that would fit and he would be back with it in 45 minutes.
He was, how much was the battery? Free, he even went back home for the terminal nuts and bolts as they were different from the battery that had been on the bike.
Perfect, what an absolute star! And his name? Ziggy. Star, get it?
So, thanks to Ziggy we were rolling.

Our first ride was only 5km back to our hotel. Via a petrol station to pump up tyres and fill up with fuel, I made that mistake at the beginning of my America’s trip....not this time.
We did however, break our ‘never ride in the dark’ rule straight away.

The next day was spent at Procycles getting a new battery and having the charging system checked just in case.
Thankfully there was nothing else wrong. I had an auxiliary power socket fitted while I was there as the standard one in the bike wouldn’t run our air pump.

So, on Friday the 15 of June we finally rode out of Sydney, destination Bathurst.

I wanted to go to the Mount Panorama race circuit and visit the museum there.
The ride throughout the apparently stunning Blue Mountains was a cold wet and misty one. But we found our accommodation and were happy.
The next day we had a wander around the town, visited the museum which was excellent and discovered that the race track is a public road......a couple of laps were ridden the next morning. I always feel it a privilege to ride a circuit, and one as famous as this. Wow! To ride the hill where Aussie great like the late Peter Brock and the like of Jim Richards had raced amazing cars and won classic battles.
It did it for me anyway.....even though the 60kmh limit was a tad low.....and ignored slightly in places.

Next stop Dubbo. What a great name for a town. Going to Dubbo meant passing through the town of Orange. Australia’s coldest town some say. With the on board temperature gauge reading 0.5 degrees and snow laying by the road some say correctly we reckon.

The motel in Dubbo had electric blankets on the bed.....genius!!!!!

[OnHellas]

The next few days saw us staying cold while riding the lovely fairly empty roads of New South Wales. To Gunnedah, Glen Innes and then following the fantastic Gwydir Highway down and down back to the coast and the warmth at Yamba. Nice.

A job that we hadn’t had time to do before our bike got shipped (along with testing my battery, I know) was getting the sidestand shortened on Sarah’s bike. She had opted for a shorter set of springs in the bike to help with finding the ground with her feet when stationary.
The bike stood very upright and didn’t look very stable. Whilst we were in Glen Innes for a couple of days I found the appropriately named Kent Engineering, I’m from Kent, and a nice chap kindly cut 20m out of the stand, welded the foot back on the end, painted it and got his mate to re-fit it to the bike, I was struggling with the spring.
All done within 30 minutes and for only 25 Aussie Bucks. Bargain.

We have found the People very friendly and generous so far. Another example, after getting food in a Thai restaurant in Yamba we asked the staff if they could arrange a taxi for us.
10 minutes later and we were in the waitresses car on the way back to our campsite cabin. No charge. Amazing.

We’d done about 1000 miles by that point so we did a few basic bike checks. All was good. Happy days.

From Yamba we followed the coast up to Cape Byron, the easterly most point of the mainland. Bought stickers for the panniers, yes I do do that, I’m still slightly embarrassed by it but it does seem to be a talking point and helps break the ice sometimes. I hated them at first but I quite like them now.

After Cape Byron we headed back in land and up to Tamborine Mountain. We should camp a night and see how the new untried tent works out I was told. Those of you that know me will be smiling at the prospect of me camping.

However, despite the hoards of feral kids running about, the awful shower block and over priced tasteless food, it all went well.
The deal is this:- Sarah puts the tent up, Sarah packs it away again. This helps in two areas, the tent is put up correctly and I don’t lose my temper. Perfect.

Sleeping mats and pilllows inflated, sleeping bags unpacked, and a great nights sleep thank you. I’ve never minded sleeping in a tent, as long as there’s enough room, I’m not the smallest chap in the world at a quarter of an inch over 6’2”.

Anyway, being a gent I did help pack the tent away in the morning. We’ll do the camping thing a bit more....probably.

[daveuprite]

Definitely into reading this, but a few pics would be nice if you've got any.

[OnHellas]

I’ll do some photo uploading when we’ve got decent WiFi. It’s very poor where we are currently, only good for text it appears.

I’ve got a bit more text to add to get us up to where we are now......I’ll do that tomorrow probably. It’s sleep time now.

Cheers.

[qcnr]

Nice, look forward to seeing some pics

[OnHellas]

After our good nights sleep in the tent we packed up and wandered off by about 9.30.
That days target was a small town called Esk.
Being the weekend we saw lots of bikes out for their weekend jaunt. Harley’s and custom cruiser style bikes seem very popular. Also great to see we’re the older cars. 1970’s and 80’s V8 Aussie muscle.
A V8 always sounds good, especially through a more ‘open’ exhaust system.
We passed through a few very pretty and clean small towns, like Ferncale, where people were enjoying their weekends.

Another thing that they like over here, and you guys and gals from further north than Kent will get this, is gravy on their chips.
Why o why has this culinary delight not made it to chip shops in the south of England.

Mind you, you can keep your nasty mushy peas!! Ground up Devils bogies is what that is!!

We both wanted to visit the sand island off of Hervey Bay and looked at accommodation, including camping, and the ferries that take man and machine across.
Everything we read in Fraser Island said 4x4 only. There is stuff on YouTube with people on bikes. The ferry companies advertise prices for bikes.
However, even though both of us have experience riding sand in Morocco, two loaded F800GS’s, potential deep sand and a long way to go in this journey saw us play safe. Call it lack of adventurous spirit if you like, it wasn’t for us.

So, after a night in Gayndah and then a nice ride on some narrow roads through Biggenden (sounds like a Kentish place name?) we arrived at Hervey Bay.
A ‘cabin’ on a campsite. Translate that to tin shed with shower and toilet on a mobile home park and you’ll have an idea of where we were. Still, comfortable bed, clean shower that we didn’t have to go out side to can’t be bad.

The trip to Fraser Island was definitely a 10 out of 10 day. We started of with a Leonardo Di Caprio lookalike pilot, short trousers, long white socks and slicked back hair, flying us and five Park rangers over to the Island.
We couldn’t land on the beach as the tide was to high so he took us to a small landing strip in the other side of the island.
A nice tidy Mitsubishi 4x4 was waiting for us. After a quick briefing and a look at a pre marked map we set off.

Within the first 50 yards the deep wet sand confirmed that we’d made the right choice vehicle wise, for us anyway.
We spent the day driving to the fresh water lakes through rain forest. Looking at the different bird life and along 75 mile beach we saw Dingoes. Apparently the only pure bred examples left in Australia.
75 mile beach really is 75 miles long. We drove about 50 miles of it I reckon.
There is an amazing ship wreck on the beach that was pushed on to the shore back in 1935.
The day ended with Leonardo flying us back taking off from the beach, which was cool.
We also finally got to see our first Kangaroos. Live ones anyway, there are hundreds of dead ones along the roads. Each one a reminder NOT to ride at dawn, dusk or nighttime.

We are currently at a place called Seventeen Seventy. It was the second place that Captain Cook landed.
What year do you reckon that was...?

A long time ago and things have probably changed a bit. We’ve had a few days off the bikes, walking along the amazing beach and sorting out a few more bits.
It’s time to see if the new Jet Boil works and there’s a camping shop down the road that sells footprints for tents. Although that is yet another thing to carry it’s probably worth having.

I will try to add some photos, I have some on my phone and more in the Camara. I’m a bit technology adverse so Camara and Laptop connection may not be at the top of my list. Although the Camara maybe Bluetooth I guess.....I’ll ask Sarah.

Tomorrow we move on again, a bit further north.

[OnHellas]

4D9BEA6E-C950-4C76-8105-7A849A9C8DEF.jpeg (181.03 KiB) Viewed 4497 times

49FB7218-DCC4-4676-9889-F8E5E9859C64.jpeg (96.1 KiB) Viewed 4497 times

[OnHellas]

87FED0B2-A0DE-4197-B4F3-B7EC32512767.jpeg (240.51 KiB) Viewed 4496 times

C5A372A2-B0CE-431A-8B0F-B40560DEDB63.jpeg (171.86 KiB) Viewed 4496 times

[OnHellas]

EB567D85-05C4-4AA0-9D5D-D8F155A13BDC.jpeg (87.93 KiB) Viewed 4496 times

062E63B7-3503-4DD2-ADB5-534617EC9558.jpeg (108.03 KiB) Viewed 4496 times

D5CFDB5D-6336-418E-AD62-319CFB75EDE0.jpeg (80.49 KiB) Viewed 4496 times