15th March 2010 - Margaret River to Fremantle

Distance travelled: 300 kms
Cumulative distance: 5851 kms

Woke up to a cloudy morning so Alan decided to keep the waterproof liners in his riding gear. Just before we were about to cross the road to have breakfast the heavens opened. Luckily the weather cleared up and we set off with the sun breaking through. This is the wine country of south-west Australia so it is mandatory to visit the wineries. The sun was not yet over the yard-arm as it was only 10am but we still decided to do our duty. The first winery we visited was Vasse Felix. Jacki and Alan had visited it for lunch five years ago and Alan remembered it as being pretty flash. We tasted a couple of wines but had to limit our intake because we were riding. Colin bought some Sauvignon Blanc which was very nice. The next winery we visited was called Fermoy and was founded by an irishman from Fermoy near Cork. The shiraz was very good so Colin bought some. Alan kept his hand in his pocket as the wine is cheaper in Sydney.
Two wineries was our limit for the day so we headed for Cape Naturaliste lighthouse which was just up the road. We went on a short tour around the grounds but didn't bother to climb up the lighthouse. We had lunch at Busselton which has the longest pier in Australia at 1841 metres.
The ride from Busselton to Fremantle was on new freeways that Mabel didn't know about. She kept giving instructions to turn around to get back on the old road. Need to get the GPS maps updated. We arrived at Davy Mussen's place at 4.30pm. Davy was still at work so Colin bought a six-pack of beer and we sat in an old couch in his driveway and "chilled out". When Davy arrived we stored the bikes in his garage and removed all the gear we were taking back to Sydney and Melbourne. With that done we headed to the local Thai restaurant for a good feed with Davy's friend Barbara before taking a taxi to the airport and the red-eye flight to Sydney and Melbourne.

We are due back in Fremantle on 17th May (after the wet season has finished up north) to resume our trip.

14th March 2010 - Albany to Margaret River

Daily Mileage 418 kms
To Date 5551 kms

We woke this morning with wet tents outside, but dry inside. Packing up commenced as soon as we had finished our abloutions. Colin was finished about 20 mins before Alan as usual, so he said his farewells to our fellow campers, including Archie the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. He was very confused by the packing up process and would jump in fright at imaginary threats.

We set off before 8 am to have breakfast at Denmark about 70kms down the road. When we rode into town suitable cafes seemed thin on the ground at this time on a Sunday morning, but down a side street we found a couple doing a roaring trade. We had a nice brekky served by the by now compulsory nice sorts. We finished off with an apple just to balance the bacon and eggs.

At this stage the weather changed from light drizzle to steady rain and it stayed this way for the next 3 hours. We rode through forests that gradually changed into tall Karri old growth areas. We passed an anti-logging camp at the side of the road. The trees were magnificent as you can see in the photo.
We were heading to Cape Leeuwin which is the most SW point in Australia and the site where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. Alan saw the lighthouse on Cape Leeuwin in 1987 while sailing from Mauritius to Fremantle on the Bounty for the Bicentennial celebrations. We had lunch in Augusta the nearest town and found several highly decorated cows on the main street.

These are part of CowParade Margaret River 2010, where over 100 talented artists have transformed 80 life sized cows into works of art. We have seen them in the most unlikely positions, including pulling a pint at a local pub. A similar event was held in Brussels and Catherine was given a book with all the painted cows in it.

The light house at Cape Leeuwin is the tallest on the Australian mainland at 39 m. It was built in 1895 by the WA Government because of the great number of shipwrecks at the Cape. It is made of limestone blocks and still uses the original Fresnel lens though with an electric light. There used to be four lighthouse keepers, but now it is unmanned. We took a guided tour up the tower: all 176 steps and had a great view from the top.


One of the amazing things at Cape Leeuwin is the meeting of the Indian and Southern Oceans. We could see the waves in the Southern Ocean coming in from the SE (because of strong local winds) meeting the inexorable deep sea swell coming from the west in the Indian Ocean. Alan and Colin are pictured posing at the sign.

We are staying tonight in a cabin in a Caravan Park in Margaret River. Very luxurious compared to the last four days. Hopefully we will have a sound night's sleep unaffected by either the music or the early morning risers at Albany. We are both suffering fatigue from lack of sound sleep and by early afternoon are fading badly. Today I accidentally rode off the bitumen onto the gravel at the side of the road near Cape Leeuwin due to tiredness. I thought that I would crash, but in the end it was quite easy to get the bike safely back onto the bitumen. We will have to be careful on the rest of the trip.

I called Davy Mussen tonight to check that he is ready to store our bikes. Everything is ready for us and we expect to arrive at his unit at 4:30 tomorrow. Tomorrow morning we will do a brief tour of the local wineries as Margaret River is one of the premium wine areas in Australia.

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.

12th March 2010 - Albany

Distance Travelled Today 2km (to brekky and back)

Having a rest day in Albany. Alan had a commitment at NatCom (the supreme body of the Ulysses Club) at lunch time. It was pretty hot today up to 37 degrees C this afternoon, so lethargy was the order of the day.

After we came back from brekky in town - served by two nice sorts, Alan went to do some washing and Colin booked a couple of dealer demo rides later in the day. Colin was aiming to get a ride on a Triumph Rocket III roadster a humungous 2.3 litre 3 cylinder cruiser. He had a ride on one 3 years ago in Coffs Harbour and was impressed with its acceleration. Since then the power and torque have increased by 15% due to changes in the silencers. He also picked up a ride on a Harley XR1200X sportster, a new model.

The Harley was first and it was quite a good bike, light, handled well and had plenty of poke, but it vibrated and had a very loud intake roar when the throttle opened - living up to Harley's reputation of not having a throttle but a volume control. The Triumph was a bit of a disappointment, possibly because Colin already knew what to expect from the engine so he was more aware of what a big boat the bike was to ride. It would be handy blasting past Road Trains and would probably knock them sideways with its air bow wave!

Colin met a lady( about 60'ish) near our tent who's Harley had shed 4th gear and was being repaired in Albany. She had been round Australia several times and used to race a Honda VFR400R given to her by her daughter. She had also ridden around the USA: made our trip seem pedestrian.

Colin decided he needed to get a big "Old Man" patch for the back of his jerkin before it was banned, so he bought one from the merchandise tent and had it sewn on at the same time. While looking through the trade stalls he came across a travel company that offered motorcycle trips from London to Magadan in the tyre tracks of Ewan and Charlie. One of the owners of the company did the trip years before E&C and wrote a book about it called "The Worse Decision I ever Made"! I got a brochure for Alan - a mere $25,000 with your own bike - that's enough to buy a new BMW.

Alan assembled in a tin shed for a stifling Nat Comm meeting. They heard presentations on all sorts of ideas including the radical one of getting rid of our Old Man logo - not a popular idea. The meeting went on for hours and the participants were cooked and desperately looking for a drink by the time it was finished. Colin had found the only airconditioned building on site - the local footy club rooms and the bar was open. He had already downed two stubbies when Alan came in and drank two more.

This was too much for both of us and we went back to the tents to find a bit of shade an take a Nana Nap. We both slept for an hour. This will probably be a feature of the rest of our trip as we will get tired and need naps to recharge our batteries. It was good to see 37 degrees and a noisy campsite didn't stop us from ZZZing off. I think there were many others doing the same.

Colin decided that the dynamic duo have to get some dirt road riding experience so we are going up to the Stirling Ranges tomorrow for a 50 km ride on the dirt. One of Alan's friends tried the same road in a hire car and gave up after 2kms due to corrugations and slippery surface. So it sounds like a good test of man and machine. We also need some more action on this Blog!

We will be posting photos of us either on our arses or triumphant in tomorrows Blog.

11th Albany 2010 - Sightseeing in Albany

Distance travelled: Negligible

Today was a rest day. We got up at seven o'clock, had breakfast at one of the food outlets on site. At 9am we went on an orgainised ride to all the local sights. It was quite slow compared to our riding pace of the previous week; so much so that we nearly fell asleep at the wheel. We visited a war memorial lookout that overlooked the main Albany harbour and out to the Southern Ocean. How do you like Colin in his cammo draggin jeans. Doesn't he look a right egit!!!

Next we visited a wind farm which was set in a gap in the hills made of sand created by a blowout from the ocean a long time ago.

After that we visited a blow hole in the ocean which was quietly being eroded by the ocean. This picture is of the rock bridge near the blow hole where one of the Ulyssians is seen running across to have a leak behind the big rock on the right. We all jumped on the ground to see if we could get the bridge to collapse but to no avail. The highlight of the ride was the visit to the last whaling station in Australia closed in 1978. It is now set up as a museum run by the Jaycees to preserve the whaling heritage of the region and explain how the industry operated between 1953 and 1978. It was set up very well with active demonstrations and audio visual effects to bring it all to life. There was one of the original whaling ships on the hard which we could explore. After a lunch of mussels and squid we cruised back to Albany. In the evening we decided to eat at one of the food outlets on the camp site. We chose a pizza van that was run by an italian and frenchman that was selling pizzas without anchovies or olives. Figure that out. Colin is going to bring these ingredients tomorrow and they will include them in our pizzas.

10th March 2010 - Esperance to Albany

Distance travelled: 588 kms
Cumulative distance: 4843 kms

Got away relatively early at 7.30am so we could do some sightseeing round Esperance before heading to Albany. Headed for Cape Le Grand National Park which is southeast of Esperance. There was a beautiful white sandy beach located under the imposing headland of Cape Le Grand. We took a walk following a path up the headland hoping it would lead to the ocean side of the bay but it didn't so we returned to walk along the beach. The scenery was quite spectacular with sea bright blue contrasting with the white sand. We could only stay for an hour as we had to leave enough time to get to Albany before 6pm when Ulyssess AGM registrations finished for the day. If we had missed the deadline we would have had to look for alternate accommodation to the campsite we had booked. The ride from Esperance to Albany was fairly straight forward except the wind was still blowing hard making it that bit more difficult. We stopped to help a couple of riders having puncture trouble. One of them had repaired a puncture in Hay NSW about three thousand kms ago and it was just starting to leak air. They had tried several times to fix it but to no avail. Alan had a special puncture repair outfit with mushroom shaped plugs that could solve their problems so he lent it to them just to get them to Albany. In the end they didn't need it as they managed to make Albany without any more problems.
Albany is a pretty little town on the southwestern corner of Australia. It used to be a whaling town but is now mainly a tourist centre. There is some quite spectacular scenery in the area which we hope to sample in the next few days. The weather promises to warm up so it should be quite pleasant.

9th March 2010 - Kalgoorlie to Esperance

Distance travelled: 385 kms
Cumulative distance: 4255kms


We had a leisurely breakfast at the York Hotel at 7:30. The only other guests we met were from Holland and we had a convivial chat over our Weeties. We had booked a Super Pit Tour leaving at 9:30 so we had some time to kill. We wandered down the street to the huge pile of the City Hall built in local pink limestone. Our aboriginal friend from the day before was sitting in front of it abusing the world in general. Colin bought a postcard an sent it to Morag.

We got on the bus with about 16 others and were given the Mine Induction quiz as we drove to the pit. The rules were very similar to Hanson. The mine is one of the largest gold mines in the world and had dug a pit 3.5 km long, 1.5km wide and 0.5 km deep. They only get 3 grams of gold per tonne of rock and 7 out of 8 trucks are carrying

waste not gold bearing rock. These trucks are huge and carry 230 tonnes of rock and can be see moving up and down the pit haul roads in the picture.

The driver took us first to the workshops where the huge machines were maintained. We got quite close to them in bits and pieces. The tyres alone cost $35,000 each.

Then we went to a couple of viewing platforms that over looked he pit. The picture above shows some of the old underground tunnels that the pit has intersected. They dig up large amounts of timber and metal from these tunnels. The tunnels were following quartz leads for the gold and actually go 3 times deeper than the pit.

We had our lunch when we got back and then took off for Esperance about 400 kms to the south. This took us back over the route we followed the day before to Norseman and then further south to the coast. The countryside was lightly treed all the way with wheat fields as we nearer Esperance. Colin's backside was particularly sore on this leg and he'll have to do something about it if he's to manage the big mileages we need to do on the 2nd leg. For some reason the fuel consumption reduced significantly compared to the trip across the Nullarbor. Fuel consumption is very important as we will have to ride for almost 400 kms between petrol stations on the Gibb River Road. I took a snap of the Norseman Workers Club that we had enjoyed a couple of nights before.

We found our caravan park in Esperance and they didn't have our booking, but had a cabin available anyway. It is a very low rent cabin which suits us fine. We went into town to find a place to have dinner and chose a place beside the harbour. By chance we found a couple John and Margaret from Colin's branch of Ulysses (Melbourne). We shared our table and J & M regaled us with stories of their motorcycle tour of India which seemed to be one near death experience after another.

Tomorrow we actually arrive in Albany and start the festivities. The weather is fining up which is good as we will be spending 4 nights under canvas.