Australia it is then....!6th November 2008

BaldBaBoon

BaldBaBoon

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Just to let you all know, im off to Australia this Sunday coming.( 17th )

Resigned from work......sold off all my spare stuff that i no longer need, consolidated all my savings into one main fighting fund and moved anything i still own into my parents spare room for the future.

My rather spiffing turquoise and white BMWR 100Gs Paris Dakar is being dropped off with Ernie down at Overland-Solutions the day before i leave for an entire rebuild to be ready for my return in May next year...where it will be used to tour Old Europe and then Eastern Europe on into Russia and then wherever the mood takes me.

Arranged to hire a Suzuki DR 600 in Melbourne that has been fitted out with all the gubbins including maps/panniers/spares etc cheaper than i can actually fly out my own bike to Australia and back.....so it makes sense, money wise and also being covered if the bike ever fails.

The plan is......THERE IS NO PLAN. Its a case of turning up with my bike gear and a few trusted essentials and quite simply start every day by looking at the map and making the choice wether to move on and explore or park on a beach and sunbathe for a day/week.Got no timetables to meet.....just that i want to explore Aus/New Zealand and Japan and have got till May next year to do it.

If there is any interest and i can get to an intenet cafe on a regular basis, ill send back some photos of what is going on and keep an update of things and people to meet and do and what areas are great for bikes.


Good luck to you all and seeya around.
 
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congratulations ...you'll be over here for the summer months.

If you're lucky it'll only reach about 44 in the outback - maybe high 30 near the coast.

head for NZ - its always cool there - otherwise hire a trailer for the water you're going to need.

come back here in March as its cooling off a bit

Look forward to the ride report :thumb :)
 
Lucky bugger

If you do start posting a report on here please ensure the pictures are a bit blurry / out of focus and the text should make every effort to decrease the fun / interest factor by a least 50% so we don't feel quite so bad when we read it whilst stuck at work. Theres a good chap .


Have a great trip Andy :thumb
 
Try the Great Ocean Road

Hi Andy,
While you are here in oz, travel the Great ocean road, it's in the South of Victoria, possibly the only cool place you'll find. We're at Apollo Bay and you should call in. The Apollo Bay Hotel does great meals. Cheers and have fun.
 
Hi Andy,

Welcome to my world !! :D Did pretty much the same things 3 years ago. I'm just about to start looking for a job again now. :blast :D

I rode pretty well the perimeter of Australia and New Zealand earlier this year. The Great Ocean ride is definatley one of the better rides in Australia(although NZ is far far the better of the two), however there is a great ride on dust & tarmac from Wilsons Promontory to Lakes Entrance through the Snowy Mountains (and around that area) which is beautiful.

There are two maps you can buy in OZ & NZ published by a company called HEMA, and they each have a 100 best rides for Motorcycles for each Country :thumb2 - these guides include rides on & off road. We used them and they were very helpful and gave us some rides we never would have found otherwise. I highly recommend them if I haven't made that clear. :rolleyes: :D

Regards,

Mike
 
I'm green with envy, I went out in 91 and spent 8 months "travelling around" on a XL600. I went to try a s/h DR600 but they wanted too much for it (the only time I've ridden a DR). Your going to have a great time:thumb

Keep us posted :thumb2
 
Considering it supposed to be nearly summer out here....its damm cold. Brisbane is the middle of a disaster TV appeal after being flattened by storms and the entire Great Ocean Road from Torquay to Warrnambool is has been hammered by 70kph+ winds and icy rain.

Headed for and arrived at Halls Gap today in the Grampian National Park....awesome weather as soon as i left the coast and once i got the bulk of the journeys distance out of the way, the roads turned into tight swooping corners up and down the ridges and then into rather nice straight bits past huge lakes.

Kept a beady eye on the wildlife, so far just two porcupine things ran in front of me.

In Victoria state its just as cheap to stay in the backpackers lodges as it is to go to a campsite ( not allowed to rough camp ) so thats how its been for the past 8 days...dorms full of mostly dutch and german girls on their " around the outback " trips ( shared dorms.....the places are packed ) so safe to say the bar is being hit every night and increasingly tall stories told. THERE IS A GOD.

Seeya in a few days.
 
Stayed at a stonking little hostel called TIMS PLACE in Halls Gap where Tim the owner turned out to be a motorcyclist as well, he couldnt have been more helpful or welcoming.Stored the panniers and all the gear in his own garage so i could spend the next days going out on the mountain paths on an unladen bike and seeing all the stunning scenic stuff.

Both nights entailed a fire out back of the hostel with various attempts at bush Bar-B-Q ( supermarket steaks burnt ) and watching the Roo's which come within feet of the hostel at night.

Headed out to Adelaide by going back down the same route onto the ocean road rather than cutting across country and getting terminal arse-ache on the thin as hell DR's seat.
 
After a draining long distance ride into a 80kph headwind and featurless terrain until the coast ( no bloody fairings to hide behind on these DR's ) arrived at a YHA in a little coastal town called Robe.Clean and friendly and right next to some pubs and food, also met a nice german girl and plan to meet up later.

Early start for Adelaide, another long distance one but the roads are at least well thought out to enable even a baboon at map reading like me to navigate.Cricket this weekend, so everywhere booked except some flea pit where i stayed one night just because they were having a wet T-shirt competition.
 
Kangaroo Island


Off the south coast of Australia this is an isolated and quite sizeable island.The tour packages that people do, say its a 2-3 day adventure....but if you ever go here, you would be a fool to take less than 5 days to fully ride and more importantly explore the island well.

Only the main compass point highways are sealed tarmac with the rest being various grades of gravel road in a rather fetching dark red colour that sticks to the bike and gives it the " Paris Dakar " look.Dotted all around the coast are untold little bays and coves,wrecks and beaches all of which are amazing in their own right.

I took to just taking roads at random just to see where i ended up,just make sure you have a good fuel range.Two areas really stick out....EMU BAY, no Emu's but a huge white sand beach that stretches for about 8 k in a crescent shape, that you are allowed to ride up and down.

Stokes Cove i think is the other one, you have to crawl on hands and knees through a tunnel in the rocks to reach it and its pretty much out of the way.So i decided as i was the only one there, i may as well do my washing....stripped off to my special combat y-fronts ( extra tight ) and rinsed out my socks and trousers etc....only to turn around and see an entire bus worth of mostly german tourists crawling onto the beach to be confronted by a nearly naked white man ( except for motorcross boots )getting sunburnt.
 
attempting a pic upload now of washday

bugger....ill try with a faster computer later in week
 
Hopefully get some pictures up for you lot in the next few days,as ive now got some time.

Laying up at a town called Coober Pedy for a few days, Big off-road section to get here..about 600km off-road where i only saw 3 other vehicles.Biggest storms to hit the area in over 15 drought filled years,been forced to seek refuge at a few towns on the way as all the creeks flooded and all the plains roads turned into a 2 foot deep floor of slime...horizon to horizon.

Took a big tumble last night heading into Coober where i hit some rock hard wheel tracks submerged under some shallow slime....took all the impact on my right shoulder had to strap it up and do the last 50km at crawl speed.Feels like a bastard this morning and cant move my arm above stomach height,nothing seriously wrong i think...just banged up and strained.

Side note after yesterday...i have to buy a gps emergency locator or a sat phone....this is a seriously deserted area, and if i had fallen further away from town, my arm would probally have locked up before i could get here.With over 200km between fuel stops that could have proved somewhat worrying.

Andy
 
New Zealand

I shall look out for your posting when you reach NZ. We are always looking for excuses to do trips on the bikes.
 
Ill give you a shout near that time Kiwigser

What program do i need to use to resize my photos....all are hi-resolution shots and fail to upload i assume because of their file size....yes i admit im am computer crap.
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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