Long days on a bike

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I think I should rename the blog ‘Fifth Gear, Four Thousand Revs’ because thats pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last three weeks. Finally I’ve made it to Perth, a lots happened and I’ve been over a lot of Tarmac and a bit of dirt since Adelaide...

Looking on the map as I sat in Adelaide I saw that Broken Hill was a mere 511 KM from me, now while that is actually quite far its the closest I’ll ever be to it. Broken Hill is famous for two reasons, Do you remember the flying doctors programme on the tele in the nineties? That was based in Broken Hill and the real flying doctors actually started there. It’s also famous for the silver mining industry, they also mine for zinc and lead. So I rode over there. The ride in itself was worth it, it’s the start of the outback. You travel for huge distances without seeing anyone or turning a corner, the ground starts to get redder and redder, sign appear at the roadhouses telling you how far it is til the next petrol station. At one point I was looking to either side and other than the train track running next to the road there is nothing for miles either side, its amazing. Broken hill itself is an interesting city, it has shrunk from 30000 to 20000 in population as the mining industry there declines. Despite being in middle of the outback its a big town, city is a bit ambitious, with plenty of amenities you can almost forget that this place is so remote they have to pipe their the whole of their water supply from lakes 120KM away.

25K’s out of Broken Hill is Silverton a ‘ghost town’. An Abandoned old mining town from the late 1800’s. I don’t know about you but my definition of a ghost town is a place where no-one lives, a place full of old building inhabited by no-one anymore, right? Yeah so Silverton a ghost town so successful a few people have moved back in round there to get the tourist buck, making it in my eyes no longer a ghost town, hell if you’re in Broken Hill go its only a bit down the road and some of the buildings are interesting but ghost town its isn’t, anymore! 5 K’s further up the road however is definately worth going to, all it is is a plateau looking out over the mundi mundi plains. As you come over the crest of a hill you are faced with plains that go on as far as the eye can see all in beautiful reds and greens and so vast that I swear you can see the curvature of the earth. There are photos here of it but like always with landscape pictures they give you no idea of the beauty, it truly is something you can only appreciate when you see it with your own eyes. So back out of Broken Hill the way I came, on the same lonely road but this time heading off towards Peterborough, not the same one but still as uninspiring, and on towards the flinders range a group of mountains. Halfway there at a roadhouse called Yunta I met some Charlie and Ewan fans on a big GS and a F650, they were heading to the same place, me on the black stuff them on the dirt.

Just outside of Wilpena I stopped for a tea to freshen up and met yet another biker, Rob from Luton now living just outside Geelong, who was camping in the Flinders so I decided to follow suit and finally get the tent out again. Rob is a lovely bloke I camped next to him that night and he took me for a few beers at the local because of my very meagre budget, there we meet the Beemers who had taken an age to get there over the dirt tracks, I made the boring but right choice the recent rains had made a lot of the roads impassable and the others had been churned up by the big 4WD driving over them while wet. I did manage to do some dirt track riding the next day but it only confirmed what I thought, my suspension really isn’t up to the job, I’d need to a the very least drop a new one in there and in all honestly if I want to do any hard dirt riding I’d need to drop an ohlins in, which at about $2000 just to buy is beyond my budget. I think I’d also need to put at least some intermediate tyres on and I might see if I can put some Metzelers on when I need to change the tyres, which should be by the time I reach Broome as the back is now looking worn and is slowly working its way down to the minimum. I have some pics of the tracks here the flinders range is very beautiful and well worth a visit. So from Wilpena I had to travel down to Port Augusta to travel up to Coober Pedy the famous underground town in the middle of nowhere, yet another 1000km round trip out of my way! Port Augusta is known as the crossroads of Australia from here you can go up, down, left or right but thats about all it has going for it.

In Coober Pedy you can camp underground, this is apparently the only place in the world you can do it, so I did. The underground campsite is run by a couple, one of which looks and acts like Dick Van Dykes evil twin, who came there to mine opals and after they had some success they built the campsite next to the mine and so you can pay a bit extra and go on a tour of the mine. It was interesting to see how they mine and answer questions as to why the whole area looks like such a shithole and I also got to try out some divining rods which actually do work. So what they do is dig metre wide holes into the ground down to a depth of up to thirty metres to see if they think anything is there, if they do then they start to blow it up, or gouge at the walls using machines, horizontally and slowly dig through looking for Opals all the time sending the ground up rock above ground and dump it in a pile. After they’re done the holes and the earth is just left where it is, its too dangerous to fill up the holes as the earth would always be soft and liable to give as you walked on it, so the whole place is covered in very dangerous long drops and big mountains of churned up rock. To give you an idea they estimate that there are at least 3 and a half million holes around Coober Pedy. The whole city, every place in Australia is called a city even if it only has a few thousand living there, is crazy it feels like a gold rush town must feel, it’s full of hopefuls trying to make there fortune, drunk Aborigines and tourists. You get the feeling that things could get interesting here late at night.

While camping there a couple turned up on bikes, he was on a nice KTM 650 she was on an old Honda CD250 they had been traveling round for 15 months and had done 20000KM so far. Don’t buy a KTM, she had had very few problems with her old, crap Honda whereas the KTM had already had to have an engine rebuild and when I saw him it was acting up again. From what I’ve heard the KTM’s are so highly tuned they virtually need the engine rebuilding after every big trip. The original idea was to ride both bikes back to France but after the trouble he had had he just wanted to sell it for a half decent price and forget he ever owned it. And again another trip covering old ground back to Port Augusta for one night in preparation for traveling to Ceduna to start the trip over the dreaded Nullarbor.

Ceduna is a bit shit really, everything is expensive because they know your heading out on the Nullarbor, which is latin for no trees ‘null’ ‘arbor’. So I had to stay there, I had to do it cheap and so ended up in some craphole campsite in which as I slept, or tried to, someone puked over the guys camper van next to me and a bit later there was almost a fight for no good reason, not that I care I just wished they could have done it quietly. So if you can avoid Ceduna like the plague.

I’ll be honest the nullarbor ain’t all that, maybe because I wasn’t there in summer in all the heat it didn’t seem as bad as it can be or maybe because I’d psyched myself up for it I don’t know. Heres the Nullarbor in a few sentences. I had to pay $1.70 per litre for fuel, its nornally about $1.25 depending when it is in the week as over here the price of petrol rises the closer it is to the weekend. I saw absolutely no live animals, no camels (luckily I seen wild and alive emus, camels and shit loads of Roos in the flinders), no emus not even a roo everything was dead by the side of the road. The actual stretch of no trees isn’t that long, infact the nularbor in total isn’t that long its only about 1200 km. It does however have the longest Australian stretch of straight road, have a look at the video to learn more about that. I camped halfway across in a roadside rest area. It was me, a chap on his way back over west with his new car and two old girls traveling on their pensions who both reminded me of old Mo from Eastenders. We had a camp fire in the morning, I can now see why Forest fires are so destructive over here, if you burn eucalypt leaves they go up like nothing I have ever seen, its like a blow torch.

I am however finally starting to realise what I have put myself up for the long days on the bike can be difficult, sometimes its OK the hours fly by the riding feels easy and you can’t wait to get back on the bike the next day but other times it can be difficult emotionally. If you let yourself get down about anything or pissed off its really hard to lift yourself again, I guess this is another of those reasons it’s good to travel with other people, I could have done with someone to bounce off at some points, someone to help get me out of the ruts. But it wasn’t all like that for the most part it was just a case of trying to stay focused as I churned through another 500 odd kilometres a day.

So back to normality and cheap fuel prices, or a least cheaper fuel prices. I stayed in Norseman after finishing the nullarbor, I had infact been fantasising about getting there because after 8 days camping I was finally going to stay in a Hostel again. Let me tell you most of those nights were absolutely freezing cold, I had my jeans and t-shirt on then a sleeping bag cotton liner then my sleeping bag and even then I’d wake up because of the cold and have to pull my bike jacket over myself to try and keep warm. The only warm camping nights were the underground ones where I didn’t even have to put up the tent just roll out the sleeping mat and sleeping bag, underground the temperature stays a nice even 25 degrees no matter if it 50 or 5 degrees outside.

I decided to again go out of my way and go north up to Kalgoorlie-Boulder another mining town but this time for Gold! The way they now mine for gold is on a huge scale, they blast 4 times a week then sift through the rocks. You’ll have seen the kind of equipment they use for this as it is so extreme, the dumper trucks tyres stand taller than a man, everything to do with this is huge. When you see the pit you see why, everything looks tiny in there, even those huge machines and it isn’t even close to how big it will be when they are finished. When all is said and done the ‘Superpit’ will measure 500 metres deep, by 3.5 kilometres long by 1.5 kilometres wide. Theres not much else to Kalgoorlie but the pit, although they have brothel tours here, brothels and mining go pretty much hand in hand, hard working blokes with a lot of spending cash in there back pockets and not much to spend it on.

Esperance sits on the coast south of norseman and with very little around it, despite the very ugly port it has which sits on the right of the town beach is absolutely beautiful to the west of the town are some of the most beautiful beaches and some truly magnificent coastline. It doesn’t have a lot there but it is definately a place you should go if you are ever in Perth. In fact the whole of the south west coast is amazing, it was a 400 or 500 km trip to Albany the next big town where I stayed for five days again the coastline around there is astounding. And it’s not just the coastline further up in and around Pemberton is the valley of the giants, huge trees that can grow up to 80 Metres in height and almost 30 Metres in girth. In Pemberton is the famous gloucester tree which has had iron bars knocked into it so you can climb up to the top to a viewing platform 61 Metres above ground to have a look round at the beautiful view, if its not raining like when I climbed that is. You would never have anything like this in England its just wouldn’t be allowed the iron rods that stick out are slippy in the wet and steep as a ladder and there is nothing much to stop you from falling a long way down if you were to slip. It’s a shame that we try to take all of the risk out of life we need it, a little bit danger keeps us on our toes.

Margaret river is the famous area in the southwest, it is surrounded by beautiful beaches, hundreds of wineries, fantastic caves and plenty of other things to see and do. I would say that if you come to Australia and you have a bit of cash to spend you should definately visit all of the coast between Margaret river and Esperance it is truly worth it. I didn’t stay for long but my money was running out and also in this weather, it’s been raining quite a bit down here, you don’t want to go to the beaches or out sight seeing and I can’t tour the wineries and not drink as I’d have to ride the bike out to them. I would come back here if I was every in the area again I’d love to really experience the best of this area there seems to be so much to it.

So 7500 or so kilometers and one oil change after leaving Melbourne I have finally arrived in Perth, tired from the riding and in desperate need of a job and some cash. I also need to have a look at the bike as its been struggling with the cold mornings a little too much so I think I’ll open her up and have a look inside check how everything is in there see if I can’t work out what the problem is. I’ll catch you all soon hope you’re enjoying the English summer.

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Photos

Broken Hill
Nice to know its there, hope to never need it.

Mundi Mundi Plain
Could never be done justice in a picture

Yunta
A long way to go for petrol

Yunta
Road to nowhere...from nowhere

Coober Pedy
One of the Underground churches

Coober Pedy
The only water supply

Coober Pedy
Undergound camping. nice and toasty all year round

Coober Pedy
A nice old drive in movie theatre

Nullarbor
Nowt but animals...in fact just nowt.

Nullarbor
A long way from anywhere it seems

Nullarbor
motorbike and handy towel rack

Nullarbor
Outback camping, more hardcore than bear grrrrrrrrylls.

Nullarbor
Long, Straight road

Nullarbor
What actually happens if you get ants in your pants.

Kalgoorlie
The 'SUPERPIT'

Kalgoorlie
Don't they look small