Getting ready for the big push...

I think we proved to ourselves today that we can just do a big hit without too much hassle, and without thinking about it too hard. We'd had a lovely day just looking at museums and Bridget had got some drawing done, but all of a sudden it was 5 o'clock and we were still hundreds of k's from clare, which was where we'd decided to stay the night so that the next day we could go to port augusta in readiness for the longer days to come after that. So, we just did it anyway. We got in a little late but we got here and the drive was beautiful. The sun setting, huge lovely golden wheat fields waving in the breeze, countless vineyards all the way. Bridget and I have decided that we really love the adelaide hills, and we'll definitely be back sometime soon, for a little more wine tasting maybe. The clare valley is especially beautiful, I've a lovely photo there of our camp with norman and the setting sun behind.
We stopped in hahndorf this morning, very interesting museum there about the first waves of german settlers to colonise the hills around mount barker, then to birdswood to the national motor museum. I don't think Bridget was as excited as I was, but she did her best and managed to find a few cars she liked, mostly Austins of various shapes and sizes (a30, a40, a50, 7...) And morris's. Morrisi? I'm not sure on the plural. I loved the motorbike section. Amazing! And what a ride through the hills, lots of twisty roads to negotiate, but all in good condition, no worrying about potholes!
Then we managed to squeeze in a visit to the giant rocking horse before it closed. I think bridget got a couple of photos of that.
Anyway, Norman chugs along, as.per usual. I think I may have to get someone to check the chain soon, I'm pretty sure they stretch quite a lot in the first little while after they're new so I'll get the tension checked out once we've done another 1000kms or so. Anywho, a quick bonus of bridget at the pink lakes from the other day too, and what also bridget posing next to a lovely fj holden ute at the motor museum, what a sight! I think she has to work on her draped across the bonnet pose a little more.

For Mrs Nesbit

Finally washing on the line dried. And the pleasure of putting on jeans fresh out of the tumble drier!


Ps. This is a later addition, I took the photo of the washing basket this morning, then went to an art gallery at about midday and saw this painting of a washing basket! Of course now the photos are in the wrong order though.

Bridget-While We Wait for the Washing

We've finally got round to doing some laundry in our campsite's facility room. So here we are, me blogging and jeremy reading the tourist leaflets to the sound of sluishing washing machines. Tonight we're in Strathalbyn, a pleasant town about 40 km from Adelaide and in the middle of wine country. we've decided to skirt round adelaide tomorrow instead of staying in the city. We thought it would be too expensive and we are sure to visit Adelaide at some other stage in the future. Really we just want to get on to the scary stuff. The hot empty desert and long uninterrupted roads.

On the subject of scary roads, the road through Coorong National Park was uneventful. Not one crazy deer, not even a rational deer. No emus, no wallabys, no orange bellied parrots and only post collided kangaroos which we smelt more than viewed. But that's not to say today's ride was boring. We had a gorgeous day with stunning vistas and interesting wildlife including soaring pelicans, a sunning shingle backed lizard, a pair of busy Australian spotted crakes trying to hide in the reed beds and an insistent magpie who seemed to be attempting to speak English.

We saw salt lakes nestled into scrub, orange, yellow and white daisies at the sides of the road, pink lakes, yes Pink! Fields of wheat, instead of the hitherto land use of dairy farming, making the countryside look like golden waves and lots and lots of vineyards. We crossed the very end of the Murray river on a three minute ferry, shared an ice cream at Meningie and ate dinner in the Victoria Hotel here in Strathalbyn, not necessarily all in that order.

Our clothes are now out of the washing machine and into the dryer, exciting stuff. Sadly for my green jumper (stolen from jeremy) it is made of lambs wool so can't be dried by machine. Things aren't drying in the air these last few days, I may be without my warmest garment tomorrow. Ooops, should have thought of this earlier. ..

Do leave comments to say hi, even if that is all you say. Jeremy and I like hearing from you all!

Jeremy: Pennies make pounds. Apparently.

We seem to be doing very short days at the moment, a product of having numb bottoms and there being so much to see I think. We keep telling each other about how soon we're going to be having to break into the big days, no more of this 150kms business! It seems crazy, but I guess when there's just nowhere to stop and nothing to see it will be much easier, and we won't be feeling like we're passing by things we should be seeing. It's very hard to work out what's worth seeing and what's not worth the time (or money) but you can't do it all I guess! And all your short distances add up to a big trip in the end anyway.
I've been having problems with my damn sleeping bag, it seems to drop more feathers than it holds in! It is a very nice warm bag, but it is quite old now (25 years or so I think) and I think its having trouble keeping it together. Consequently every night in the tent has been an itchy-eyed, runny-nose-sneezy-blocked-face nightmare until I relented and started taking tablets. Last night's sleep was bliss, breathing through one unblocked nostril! Maybe tonight I'll get two? It seems to be starting to irritate my skin now though too, all these little feathers poking me in the night. Beware all of you the curse of the ageing old (sleeping) bag!
We met a nice bloke at the cinema in beachport last night who gave us some tips on distances and places to stop on the way up to alice springs. It seems like the bike's fuel range should be fine for pretty well all the distances between stops except one which should be very close which is glendambo to coober pedy, a distance of 254kms. As I said, this will be close, but we got 247km out of it a few days ago and part of that was up the huge hill from skene's creek to colac so we should be fine. Good old norman! I'm finding it very hard to fault our 1997 honda shadow ace at the moment, it just hauls along wiyh no complaints. I think 2 people and all our gear is pushing it's limits, but's handling the task at the moment beautifully. 110 kph? Bring it on.
Our careful money counting goes on,  and we seem to be doing very well actually! The odd treat here and there, but mostly we've been sensible. Here's quick pictire of btidget and I on the 772 meter long pier at beachport, (the longest in south australia) what a lovely town!

Bridget - First Sightings

Today we saw our first emu and kangaroos of the trip. I say we but actually it was just me, Jeremy was diligently keeping his eyes on the road and missed them entirely.

We are now in Kingston. We wanted to get further today because we thought the weather would hold out, but beyond Kingston the next stage is Coorong National Park which is about 150km long and we didn't think we'd be able to do that safely by the end of the day do we stopped here. Tomorrow we venture into it where we were warned of "crazy deer" that jump out in front of you and "thick kangaroos" that don't know where they're going and emus that would probably leave us in second place if we collided! I'm trying to make it sound more intrepid than it probably is, in reality we're going searching for the orange bellied parrot. They live in the Coorong but only 50 are left, so they are very endangered and highly unlikely to be seen, especially at 110 km per hour.

Along the way to Kingston we stopped at Robe. A lovely little town with another small town museum! Hooray! I learned today that Robe was the location that thousands of Chinese men landed during the gold rush and they had to walk 400km into Victoria to ballarat where the gold mines were. They did this because if they were to land on Victorian soil and therefore closer to the gold fields they had to pay 10 pounds each in poll tax.

History here is so close, I think because there is so little history in Australia that everything is so well remembered. In England for example there are 100s of years, indeed 1000s of years documented, but here, sadly for aboriginal history, only max 200 years of settler history is documented and every name is remembered. Mr such and such arrived here in 1846 and built this house etc etc. I find it sad from a native point of view but also fascinating from my own background point of view.

Anyway, on a lighter note to finish, Kingston is the home of the giant lobster! Photo below.

Bridget - Waiting For The Rain

Since we went to bed so early last night (in fact even earlier than we realised because South Australia is half an hour behind Victoria but we didn't figure that out until this evening) we woke quite early too, about 7.30. I sat up in my sleeping bag and reached for the tent zip, there just below a little gap in the opening was a small frog. I helped him out of the tent, then helped myself out. seeing that the sun was shinning i said to Jeremy we should hit the road since the weather was supposed to get horrid later. So we packed up and set off to see how far we could get before the rain started.

We drove about 50km to Mount Gambier, stopping off at the beautiful Blue Lake. I jumped off the bike in the car park and who do I see sitting on one of our panniers but our little frog visitor. How he stayed on I've no idea. I scooped him up and brought him over to the viewing deck of Blue Lake where he could start a new life in a new place.

We drove through a town called Millicent and the rain still stayed off so we pushed on and arrived in Beachport and set up camp. As soon as we got the tent up a drizzle of rain started, here it is we thought, but after about 30 mins it stopped. We've been waiting all day for this bad weather to begin, I mean it hasnt exactly been lovely , but the promised rain rain rain hasn't yet materialised. So maybe we'll just push onwards tomorrow.

To occupy ourselves today we ate cake and visited the great wee museum here in Beachport. I love small town museums, they're fascinating. We were also told it was film night tonight at the local cinema. The last Friday of every month they show a film or two with tea and supper afterwards. We saw The Help and got to talk to some locals. Now we're tucked up and tired, so night night!

Jeremy: Trucks to Port Macdonnell

We're all rugged up here for the night, and glad we managed to get the tent set up and the bike under a tarp before the rain started. I think i'm going to have to give the front of the bike another clean tomorrow morning, the insect guts coverage is substantial.
Getting used to the feeling of 100kph for an extended period of time isn't as easy as I thought, what with the very large logging trucks blowing you about like a paper plane (i've started arranging us on the road with a little more room which seems to help) and the constant splatter and pop of insects impacting the visor on your helmet (as well as you shins, your hands, the crooks of you arm etc...) It's an interesting place to be. It makes all the little stops you make for a break seem that much more restful and interesting. We stopped to see a huge windfarm today, very interesting! It was a lovely day today weather wise too, the stop at nelson was particularly sunny and scenic with lots of lovely birds for bridget to draw and lovely water for paddling in.
The bike seems to be handling the whole thing very well, although a little more range would be good. We very nearly ran out again today before we got to portland although i kept it to myself (it wasn't even as close as yesterday so no need to worry bridget with it). I think 2 people and all our stuff for camping seems to be taking it's toll on the fuel consumption a bit. it's good to have made it to south australia at least, it seems like a good milestone.
Port MacDonnell seems like a nice quiet wee spot, with lovely beaches.
So, tomorrow to kingstone? or all the way to adelaide? Of maybe we'll just wait here until the weather gets a little better? I think the best part of this decision is that it doesn't matter! Yay for holidays!

Bridget- A Day Of Beach and Birds

It's only 8.30 but Jeremy and I are ready for bed, we're simultaneously writing our posts for today. Who will win the blog post race?

I'm feeling right at home here at our first stop in south Australia. It's the drizzle, I'm fondly reminded of camping holidays of my childhood in the west of Ireland.

Today we left warrnambool and drove to the delightful town of Port Fairy which I found out used to be called Belfast! So again I felt quite at home. After spotting a fish eating falcon at the harbour we headed on to the industrial town of Portland, then on to a place called Nelson where there is a big estuary full of birds. I tried to sketch while I got Jeremy to identify birds from my iPhone apps. We did quite well and even figured out that the little diving bird swimming close to us was a hoary headed grebe. A new one to me, I always feel proud of finding and identifying new birds.

Just up the road from our little grebe we crossed the border into South Australia and headed for a tiny wee place called Port MacDonnell which is where we are now. I can hear the waves crashing on the beach that we walked along earlier before dinner. Tomorrow is supposed to be a bit grim weather wise. We'll see what our options are then. Maybe another night here ( I think Jeremy Is hoping to get to sample the speciality Port MacDonnell cray fish if we do stay) or make a dash for it to Mount Gambier.

As for the photos, I'm sorry they occur in such random order, it's this app I use. There is no way of arranging them. So there they are, just a jumble of images of pretty seaweed, us, a couple of drawings and the map!

Portland

Just stopped for lunch. Look at  bridget's excellent repair job on our bag with portland in thr background!

Bridget - Koala Serenade and into the Unknown

Our first night on the trip in the tent was accompanied by the call of koalas. Have you ever heard a koala? They may look cute but they sound something between an angry wild hog and a hungry lion!

After an interrupted sleep we got on the road to head for warrnambool. We drove for a length along the great ocean road, the sun was out, the sea looked gorgeous and I was learning to lean with Jeremy to help the bike get round the corners. Not that it has difficulty getting round corners, that's just something a pillion passenger has to do.

We then turned off the road at skeens creek and headed through the Otway Ranges. The temperature immediately dropped once we turned into the trees and I discovered I could sing inside my helmet, as loud as I wanted and no one would here me!

At the highest point of the road we stopped for a photo and some tea from the thermos. Jeremy was worried, he said we were running very low on petrol and the nearest petrol station was another 30km away. We couldn't run out on just our second day! Onwards with our breath held I noticed Jeremy was crouching down to be more streamlined, so I gave that a go too, anything to help Norman get to Colac, the next town. We made it and filled a 14.5 litre engine with 14.3 litres of fuel!

The road from Colac to Warrnambool was straight and fast. The landscape green and rolling and very reminiscent of Ireland, complete with dry stone walls. Jeremy lived his early childhood in this part of Victoria and he says that is why he felt so at home during the last two years living in my home country of Ireland.

So here we are now, in jeremys great aunt and uncles house in warrnambool about to set off on our third day. Warrnambool is as far as I've ever been before in this direction so off we go today, into the unknown.

Bridget - first night

Today was much nicer weather and we were much more relaxed about leaving, so with Norman packed to full capacity we pulled out of the driveway and set off. Immediately I felt the cold wind on my thighs but decided to enjoy it since when we really get on the road and find ourselves in hot desert temperatures I'd miss this cold Victorian sting!

We rode to Lorne, one of the first main towns on the great ocean road and stopped for a cup of tea in Arab. A destination cafe for many bikers and where we would meet up with our parents who were on a day trip. We got a photo of the owner of the cafe for our blog!

We rode on to Wye River where we are to spend our first night. Jeremy put up his wee tent with help from Brian, my mum's partner, and then we all went to the pub for a final meal before my mum and Brian head back to Ireland.

The campsite is full of birds, I'm in heaven! I've been drawing and taking photos. I've also decided to keep a running tally of all the bird I see on the trip but I'll not bore you with that yet.

Instead here are a few photos.
You can see more of my sketches from this trip on my art blog www.bridgetfarmer.blogspot.com