twowheeler
two wheels are best
For all the more deserving journeys of early Australian explorers, Burke & Wills’ journey from the south to the north of the continent is fascinating for its courage & willpower, its arrogance & incompetence, its tragic & desolate ending.
Wikipedia does a reasonable summary if you’re not familiar with the story - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Wills_expedition
This trip is to the Dig Tree, on Cooper Creek in the far south-west corner of Queensland, central to the Burke & Wills saga –
I’d wanted to do this trip for a long time, but not on my own for this one given the isolation and my inexperience at outback travel. Good call as it turned out ........
The word went out to a couple of MTB mates & austourers, then mates of mates, soon 8 of us were signed up, me on the TR650, inmate DeLewis (Viktor) on a TR650, Mick on a third TR650, Brent on a KLR650, Geoff on an 1190 Adventure, John on a Super Tenere sounding awesome with a full Arrow system, Matt on an R1200GSA & Casey on an R1150GSA (“Barry”).
As a sidenote, Casey bought Barry new in London in 2002 and has done 185,000kms on him since, including London – Cape Town – London on his Pat Malone. Barry is treated in a gentle BMW-approved Starbucks manner (not), as demonstrated in this short clip taken of Casey & Barry recently –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWh2zJZupNs
The plan was to take 9 days, unscientifically worked out by taking my usual road-touring daily mileage and halving it. Hindsight shows it was still too ambitious due to the road conditions up north, the truism that a group travels slower than any individual (but doubles the fun), and the events of the 2nd day.
We set ourselves up for bush camping throughout – so enough freeze-dried meals to last the entire time - and to cover the longest no-fuel stretch of 460km.
I setup the Husky with the soft panniers astride the pillion seat rather than the fuel pods. They were just too wide out there and I still had plenty of room to move -
DAY 1.
After a broken sleep due to excitement, we all met at the Calder Service Centre at 9am on Saturday, fuelled up then headed NW.
Short stop to pull on wets, freezing our arses off near Kyneton -
Straight furrows near Wycheproof –
Chatted with this cheery Sea Lake gentleman for a while. A life-long Harley rider until recently when Motor Neuron (or MS or some other rotten thing) struck him down –
Knowledge sharing of a different kind, at Ouyen to stock up on fuel & beer for the night –
Getting toward roo o’clock, so turned east to the Murray River near Colignan –
Not a bad spot for a campsite eh ? -
Found my missing camping hammer. As if I wasn’t carrying enough weight –
Lots of firewood to encourage plenty of stories which were all true and unexaggerated -
More to come .......
Wikipedia does a reasonable summary if you’re not familiar with the story - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Wills_expedition
This trip is to the Dig Tree, on Cooper Creek in the far south-west corner of Queensland, central to the Burke & Wills saga –
I’d wanted to do this trip for a long time, but not on my own for this one given the isolation and my inexperience at outback travel. Good call as it turned out ........
The word went out to a couple of MTB mates & austourers, then mates of mates, soon 8 of us were signed up, me on the TR650, inmate DeLewis (Viktor) on a TR650, Mick on a third TR650, Brent on a KLR650, Geoff on an 1190 Adventure, John on a Super Tenere sounding awesome with a full Arrow system, Matt on an R1200GSA & Casey on an R1150GSA (“Barry”).
As a sidenote, Casey bought Barry new in London in 2002 and has done 185,000kms on him since, including London – Cape Town – London on his Pat Malone. Barry is treated in a gentle BMW-approved Starbucks manner (not), as demonstrated in this short clip taken of Casey & Barry recently –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWh2zJZupNs
The plan was to take 9 days, unscientifically worked out by taking my usual road-touring daily mileage and halving it. Hindsight shows it was still too ambitious due to the road conditions up north, the truism that a group travels slower than any individual (but doubles the fun), and the events of the 2nd day.
We set ourselves up for bush camping throughout – so enough freeze-dried meals to last the entire time - and to cover the longest no-fuel stretch of 460km.
I setup the Husky with the soft panniers astride the pillion seat rather than the fuel pods. They were just too wide out there and I still had plenty of room to move -
DAY 1.
After a broken sleep due to excitement, we all met at the Calder Service Centre at 9am on Saturday, fuelled up then headed NW.
Short stop to pull on wets, freezing our arses off near Kyneton -
Straight furrows near Wycheproof –
Chatted with this cheery Sea Lake gentleman for a while. A life-long Harley rider until recently when Motor Neuron (or MS or some other rotten thing) struck him down –
Knowledge sharing of a different kind, at Ouyen to stock up on fuel & beer for the night –
Getting toward roo o’clock, so turned east to the Murray River near Colignan –
Not a bad spot for a campsite eh ? -
Found my missing camping hammer. As if I wasn’t carrying enough weight –
Lots of firewood to encourage plenty of stories which were all true and unexaggerated -
More to come .......
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