13th March 2010 - Albany

Today is the actual day the Ulysses Club hold their AGM and the new committee are voted in for the next year. Alan has two friends on the new committee, the President and Secretary. We didn't go to the AGM as we decided to go riding on some gravel roads to practice for the Gibb River road later in our tour. There is a track running through the Stirling ranges 70 kms north of Albany. Some of Alan's friends had tried it in a car the day before but found it a bit rough so gave up after 5 kms.

We decided to give it a whirl anyway mainly for Colin to try out some real dirt on his sports bike. Alan's bike is designed for dirt roads. The first 5 kms were very rutted and shook the bikes about a bit but after we got used to it it was fine. Colin tried standing on the pegs which you are meant to do when the going gets rough. We successfully negotiated 70 kms of gravel road so it was a reasonable test. On the way back to Albany we stopped at Mt Barker for lunch and overheard a bunch of teeny-boppers organising their saturday night entertainment. It was very amusing and we reflected that we were probably as gormless as they were when we were that age. We got back to Albany mid-afternoon with a bush fire in progress. There was a huge pall of smoke hanging over the south-west suburbs. It seems a Ulyssian had come off the road on his Kawasaki and the bike had burst into flames. The poor sod ended up in hospital with a broken collar bone. The ash was falling all over the campsite and one of the officials toured around the site telling everybody to watch out for burning embers. Our tents were covered in ash.
The saturday night dinner was about to start in the huge tent (Hoekker) when the rain started to come down in buckets. It put the bushfire out and washed the ash off the tents. It also caused a bit of flooding inside the tent and leaks sprung from the roof causing diners to dodge about avoiding them. It was all taken in good spirit and we managed to get fed OK. Afterwards we went back to our own tents expecting them to have floated away and were surprised to find them still were we left them and dry inside!! We didn't get to sleep until after midnight as the music was still raging and the whole campsite could hear it.