Advertisement
Published: September 21st 2018
Edit Blog Post
After 8+ hours on the bike yesterday and knowing that I would have 50+ more miles today than yesterday I was hoping there wouldn't be as many construction delays today.
Started out at 6:45 – The temperature was down today but a trade off with some heavy winds. I was thankful that I decided to ship my bike and that the Crane Worldwide gang were able to come through for me. Those winds on a smaller R1200 GS motorcycle would have forced me to slow down considerably. Between heat and wind -I’ll take the heat every time. Any of you who’ve driven in South Dakota on I-90 West or East bound know what kind of winds there were today at times.
I now have an idea why they call this continent OZ. Over the last two days I felt like I was in the Land of the Lost or Mysterious Island. During the roughly 850 miles I covered in the last 33 hours:
I saw conifer forests (pine trees) just like we’d have in the North Woods in Wisconsin or in US mountain areas albeit the ones here were thicker and smaller trees.
I saw cattle grazing land that reminded me of mid Northern Florida -sandy soil scattered larger trees but no conifers and no Spanish moss.
I saw huge swaths of sugar cane farms. The farms were so big that they have their own mini train system to carry the harvest around. (Sugar is Australia's 15th agricultural export and 80% is exported as raw sugar mostly to Korea).
I saw open flat farm land that easily could have been anywhere in the Midwest.
I’d look to the right and every now and then and there was the Ocean or an inland estuary.
To the left and ahead small mt’s and hills would crop up.
Further on Palm tree’s – not a lot of them but it was bizarre to think I’d see pine forests and palm trees in the same ride.
I saw herds of cattle that would could easily be in Texas, Florida, Kansas, etc…
I saw my first Kangaroo (live)- the road kill count is way over 20, fortunately the roo decided to jump back into the brush instead of on to the road. I noticed that road maintenance department has done a great job of either cutting the straw grass back at least 20 feet from the road or more commonly they’d clear burn out the area but save the larger trees. This is done to clear the under growth and prevent accidental fires that can’t be controlled (see the picture). I thought maybe it was also a way to give visibility to the Kangaroo’s and other critters. But people I asked said as soon as it rans grass grows right along the road and the Kangaroo’s go right for it. I also had a small baby EMU walk across the road in front of me. I almost twisted my neck off when I saw a fleet or herd of 5 camels (Dromedary), obviously someone’s private stock but I wasn’t expecting to see them.
I went through at least 5 Koala Bear watch zones but didn’t see one.
Almost the entire way up had warnings about roads that could be closed due to floods. If I had done this ride in the rainy season it is likely, I wouldn’t have been able to do the entire 1,400+ miles from Sydney to Townsville. Some of the dry river beds had banks running up 20 feet or more if the roads were going to flood those banks would have to overflow- Yikes!
At times I actually felt like I was going back in time as I looked at the changing surroundings. This will be furthest point North and East (on the bike) in Australia. Tomorrow I start heading into the bush as they say here. I'm picturing dry desert with tumbleweeds flowing by.
Oh by the way the answer to the coin question is: Left to right big one is 50 cent next 20 cent 1 dollar 10 cent 2 dollar and last 5 cent. Can you believe that little one is 2 dollars.
Thanks - I'm going to bed its 8:30 Friday night here and I'm exhausted. Thank the Lord I only have 300 ish miles tomorrow.
Jim
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0436s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb