Still no bike

I'll keep it brief, since a motorbike trip without a motorbike ain't really much of a trip in my book. The aforementioned bike was last seen on 13 January at the quayside in Brisbane, and is due to arrive (fingers and toes crossed) in Singapore on 6 February. I've been combatting the separation anxiety by chilling out in Bali, running on the beach in a vain attempt to get fit, playing football with the locals, and taking advantage of $5 massages and $1 Bintangs. I've also done a bit of research the next month or so of the journey through Malaysia and Thailand.

Slumming it in Bali

On the whole, Bali has been a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a cross between an Islamic police state and the Walkabout in Shepherd's Bush, but in fact everyone seems very laid back (turns out Bali is a Hindu island) and there are very few Australians to be found. Unfortunately, in the hotspots like Kuta, this means that the hawkers outnumber the tourists about 10-to-1, although a curt "piss off, I'm English" usually stops their "aussie aussie aussie" sales pitch mid-sentence.

Bali filling station

Bali has also provided some gentle acclimatisation for what's to come. A couple of days on a rented scooter helped me to get the hang of traffic conventions Asia-style - seems like the key is never to come to a complete standstill, but instead to merge (even if this means temporarily using the wrong side of the road). When in Rome...

Who says scooters can't be bad-ass?

After a few days by the beach in Kuta and a few days in the hills at Ubud, I decided to venture into the hinterland and made my way to Kintamani to do some trekking. I discovered that you don't have to stay far from the tourist trail before you start sharing your room with the local wildlife (and on one occassion, a rather large maggot waving cheerfully from my fried chicken).

It's currently the rainy season which is not the best time for climbing mountains, but I picked a good day, set off at 3am, and by sunrise had a great view of active volcanoes rising from long-dead calderas, steam coming out of cracks in the ground, a patchwork of paddies and lava fields.

View from the top - Mount Agung from Mount Batur

After a few days in Bali, it seemed like half the people I met (men and women) were called Wayan. Turns out there are only four names in Bali, Wayan (#1), Made (#2), Nyoman (#3) and Ketut (#4). Kids are always named in order, and if you make it to #5, you just go back to Wayan again.

With my mountain guide, Nyoman (#3)

Overall, Bali has been great - a very comfortable, cheap place to while away a couple of weeks until the bike arrives in Singapore. Hopefully by the next blog entry, I will be reunited with the Transalp and One Man Caravan will be on the road again.

Going international - the Caravan hits Singapore

I ended up staying in Brisbane for 5 nights - it's not a bad city to mooch around in, I'd found great accommodation at Bunk Backpackers, and made some new friends. It was good to have a day off from riding, but I got over that fairly quickly and I'm now experiencing separation anxiety from the trusty Transalp. With hindsight, I should have put the bike on a plane in Brisbane and saved myself 3.5 weeks of backpacking, but I had to make a snap decision if I was going to make the 13 January cut off for the Brisbane-Singapore container ship. The situation was not helped by some particularly clueless freight forwarders - Qantas referred me to Dangerous Goods Management, who referred me to Schenkers, who then took a week to provide me with a completely unintelligible quote for airfreight to Singapore (problem 1 - no total and no way of adding it up, problem 2 - the bike had been on the ship for 4 days by the time the quote came through). I've since discovered that bikes have been airfreighted with Qantas and DGM with relatively little fuss - I think the lesson here (since I'm no longer a consultant I won't call it a key takeaway) is that with an unusual situation like this, if you ask 3 different people at the same company, you get 3 different answers (and hopefully one of them is the answer you want).

New friends in Brisbane - Emma, Onnie, Erik and Nagore

A day at the movies - Brisbane style (yes, that's Alvin and the Chipmunks)

On 18 January, the One Man Caravan went international (the rider at least - the bike's still stuck at the port) and I arrived in Singapore. My old friend Shri and his lovely wife Deepa very kindly offered to host me - hopefully his parents were consulted, since Shri still lives with them (temporarily, he tells me...). Anyway, the Jayakumar family were wonderful hosts, and they have a fabulous house in a great part of town. I was really enjoying a life of luxury, but I needed to find a couple of weeks to kick back and plan the next part of the trip while waiting for the bike. I eventually opted for Bali because it seems like there's a lot to do there, and I can always hop over to Lombok if I get bored. Plus 3 days in Singapore were starting to hurt the bank balance (even with free accommodation), and it appears there's more trouble on the horizon there...

Shri and Deepa - fantastic hosts

Now in most countries I'll be travelling through, a visa plus a carnet for the bike should be enough to get by. Insurance is either optional or can be blagged. But in Singapore, before I can clear the bike through customs, I need to show an ICP ($10) and an autopass card ($10), and before I can get either, I need 3rd party insurance. It seems like the only organisation that will insure me is the AA, and they want $150... which is a bit steep for about 15km of riding in Singapore. Even Horizons Unlimited, the font of all adventure motorcycling knowledge, has failed to come up with an alternative. Now $150 would buy me five nights of luxury accommodation in Bali, so it really grates, but as they say, Singapore is a fine city... Looks like I'll end up sucking it up - I can't wait to get back in the saddle again.

One Man Caravan - back on track

After a day to ponder options in Charleville (and 24 hours in Charleville is a long time...), I decided that I didn't much fancy another 5,000 outback kilometres to get to Darwin via Port Augusta. Nor did I want to hang out in the bush to find out when they might get the highway from Mount Isa fixed (information flows much less abundantly than floodwater in these parts). So I called ATS, a shipping company in Brisbane. The MD was good enough to answer his phone on a Sunday, and he told me that if I got the bike to his warehouse by Tuesday 3pm, it would be on a ship to Singapore by the weekend. This should get me on the road in SE Asia by the end of January. Slight challenge - it's Sunday afternoon, I'm 800km from Brisbane, and I need to get the bike crated...

Buy your next motorbike from Pro Honda Rocklea!

I put in a quick 600km on Sunday, camped in Dalby, and the next morning I started phoning bike shops in Brisbane to see if anyone could help me with a crate. The guys at Pro Honda in Rocklea came up trumps, and very kindly found me an old crate from a VFR. I even had time on Monday afternoon to fit a couple of new Continental Escape tyres in their back yard - good practice for that puncture in the North West Frontier...

Farewell old friend

A massive thanks to Matt and Dan for all their help in making it happen, and especially to Trevor for helping me with the tyres and the crate. Transport to the Port of Brisbane courtesy of Garry's Motorcycle Movers and a very natty 6-wheel ute, and fingers crossed the bike will arrive in Singapore in a few weeks.

Bike transport - Aussie style

I decided to ship the camping gear with the bike and try the backpackers hostels in Brisbane - sleeping under canvas has been a lot of fun, and saves a lot of cash in Oz, but carrying a tent, sleeping bag, airbed and cooking gear on your back in 35+ degrees is not much fun. I think I'll send the camping gear back to the UK from Singapore, because I don't think I'll need it in Asia, and it will lighten the bike a lot.

I checked into Bunk Backpackers in Brisbane, which is a pretty snazzy hostel in the CBD with a lively bar, where I met Onnie, Emma and Najore who are travelling around Australia. Thought I might be a bit old for the backpacking scene, but I'm pleased to report I can still cut it with the younguns (although I had to draw the line at a dorm, and checked into a single room).

Vegas, baby... Brizvegas!

I have spent a couple of days amusing myself in Brisbane, which has been a lot of fun - Gallery of Modern Art is really good and I spent 5 hours yesterday overdosing on Arkanoid, Outrun and Tron at a video game exhibition (which I can do since I'm officially on holiday).

Next step is to jump on a plane to Singapore where my old mate Shri has kindly offered to put me up for a few days, and then head somewhere that I won't be able to visit with the bike - Sumatra is looking promising.

So it will shortly be farewell to Australia, but I'm sure not for ever. Riding in the outback has been a lot of fun, but the distances are huge and the towns are very similar to each other! One thing I won't miss is the experience of passing a Road Train at a combined speed of over 200kph on a narrow road - something like being hit with a cricket bat.

Bike vs. Road Train

Thanks, but I think I'll look for alternative accommodation

On a final note, I have received quite a few emails from bikers as far afield as India, Italy, Denmark and Germany who have offered to provide accommodation, show me some great local rides, or introduce me to local guides. These are very much appreciated, so keep them coming!

Kink in the road

Just settling down at a very mellow campground in Charleville - I've concluded that camping is far preferable to the traditional outback hotel. Last night was spent in a hotel in Longreach - I don't mind tatty, but I woke up in the night with that unmistakeable itching/burning feeling - bedbugs! To avoid libel, I won't mention the name of the hotel - but I doubt the proprieters of the Lyceum will ever see this blog...

Total independence!

On to the kink in the road... It turns out that Queensland is experiencing its biggest floods in 25 years, which have swept away one of only two sealed roads that lead to Darwin from the East. Here's a link... Having covered over 4,000km already and got to within 2,000km, it looks like I may have to make a 2,500km detour via Adelaide, which will certainly mean missing the 16 Jan ship to Singapore.

Now the first rule of outback travel is to always check the road conditions ahead. But I had been tipped off at the start of the week that there was some fairly major flooding in Queensland, so I stopped in at every Tourist Misinformation office over the past few days to ask if the road from Mount Isa to Darwin was open, and every time I was told "She'll be right. Check in at the next town". Eventually I saw a 3 day old newspaper headline announcing that the road has been completely washed away. What's frustrating is that I'm sure that most people in Melbourne and Sydney are aware of this - but news travels slow in the outback...

To add insult to injury, the old boy in the Tourist Misinformation office in Emerald spent 15 minutes telling me a story that was clearly not true about how as a lad he had crashed his mate's BSA into a chicken coop at 100mph. After paying for the damage - here's the punchline - he had to compensate the farmer because the chickens stopped laying! Boom boom. Nice one old fellow, but the Thunderbird was actually a Triumph, I very much doubt you would have walked away from a spill like that, and I'm sure you stole the plot from a Norman Wisdom film... Now, about that bloody highway...

The smug policewoman in Longreach told me the highway would be closed for 3 weeks, so I have started making my way back to Adelaide. But I heard today it may only be a week, so the best course of action may be to stay put and amuse myself for a day or two in Charleville (pop. 3,000) to find out what's really going on.

Greetings from Banana Shire

Firstly a few administrative announcements. I've got rid of the interactive map - although I thought it was cool to show a map of my route, it was causing a few computer issues to download a file showing every movement I have made at 30 second intervals... So there should now be a link on the side if you want to take a look at the map. Secondly, I've discovered how to email out my blog, so if you'd like to receive updates by email, let me know and I'll add you to the distribution list.

I'm currently in a town called Beloela in Banana Shire (yes, really), and I've got over 3,000km under my belt (but still less than 1/2 way to Darwin). After slogging my way up the coast as far as Noosa on the Pacific Highway, I got tired of endless dual carriageways and holiday towns packed with smug English tourists. A week of lounging by the beach in Byron Bay may be fun, but walking round in full riding gear (or spending 20 mins taking it off and securing it just to get a coffee) is not, and camping on the beach in Noosa was fun, but 100% humidity - no thanks.

So I left the coast and headed into the interior, ignoring all the warnings about deadly snakes, deadly spiders, paralysing ticks... at least the psychotic killers are well signposted.

The first road that I picked quickly turned to dirt, but thanks to Stookie's off road training, I was able to maintain a steady 80-90kph (OK - it was the smoothest gravel road I've ever experienced). Slowed down a bit when I saw the fresh skid marks on the road and a very broken looking car...

I camped for the night in Beloela - it's much easier and cheaper to find camp sites inland, plus you can get a counter dinner at the local RSL. No point getting the petrol stove out where it's not necessary - I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunity for that later.

Plan is to push ahead for Emerald, Longreach, Mount Isa and Darwin. First I need to find out which roads are open - I've not been getting any news recently, so I was not aware that Queensland has had it's biggest rains in 5 years, which has led to some of the big highways being closed. I had assumed that the flooding would be worse further north (rivers flow towards the sea, right?), but it turns out that there's a big dry lake in South Australia that all these rivers flow into, so I may yet need to head further north before cutting inland.

Going solo

Finally left Manly on the afternoon of 3 Jan after the hangover subsided and the admin was completed. Arrived at Tea Gardens just before dusk and made camp. I am getting remarkably efficient at pitching my tent and have now figured out how to utilise the bike to make a natty awning. Didn't quite manage to leave the campground before the man came around for the money, but he was so impressed with my itinerary that he didn't charge me.

Sunday was my first 500km day, and I finished up 100km short of Byron Bay at Yamba, which is a really nice spot at the mouth of the Clarence River.

Managed to stop at the National Motorcycle Museum in Nabiac (not to be confused with the Australian Motorcycle Museum or other imposters). Very impressive private collection with over 800 bikes. And I got my first sticker for the panniers! The locals showed me all the best biking roads, but none of them led in the right direction, so I politely explained to them that my destination is already far enough away.

Bando was very upset this afternoon when he found out I was paying 40 dollars to pitch my tent in Yamba, but it's the least bogan site yet. I am taking a break from camp food with a Chinese takeaway, and finishing the last of my birthday pinot from a sports drink bottle. There's even some live entertainment from the local prog rock band. They're actually very good, but they're starting to wake the kids up in the campsite. Fortunately for their sake (and mine), they're on the other side of the river...

Sent from my BlackBerry® from Optus

Made it to Sydney!

I arrived triumphantly into Sydney after 1,300km on some beautiful coastal roads.  Victoria may be better than NSW for most things, but have to say that the road from the state border up to Sydney is absolutely fantastic - great scenery, good surface, lots of ups and downs and corners.  And with the Transalp having the aerodynamics of a housebrick, I'm unlikely to be getting any more points on my battered Aussie licence (famous last words...).

Unfortunately all the roads around the opera house were closed for the New Years Eve festivities, so I may have to sneak back tomorrow for the 'iconic' photo.  And since the harbour bridge is effectively a 6-lane highway, I didn't fancy stopping there either.

So far, everything is going remarkably smoothly.  The faulty GPS cable was fixed with a bit of insulating tape.  I've kept it on all the time so that it logs the route, and as you can see I've found a neat application online that allows my to plot the route on a map and put it on the blog.

The bike felt a little heavy on the back end when I set off, so I have developed an innovative new approach to motorcycle luggage - the reverse topbox, which shifts the weight forward about 6 inches to improve the bike balance (and means you can access the contents on the move if you're brave enough).  Revolutionary!

As you'd expect, lots of firsts have been achieved over the past few days.  First rain - next time I'll stop to put the waterproofs on before my arse gets soggy.  First near miss with fuel - aforementioned aerodynamics aren't helping petrol consumption.  First flat battery - who'd have thought that charging a mobile phone from the bike battery would use up all the juice - followed by first bump-start from a stranger.  First dropped bike - fortunately not with me on it - trying to get it off the centre stand in a campsite (don't worry Pete - I didn't scratch the crash bars).

I've spent the last couple of days in Manly - first day to recover from a vicious hangover (thanks to Bando and Gazza for a large New Year's Eve in Sydney), and a second day taking care of admin (mum - I've finally sorted the medical insurance, courtesy of the very helpful folks at navigatortravel.co.uk).  Tomorrow I'll be setting off again, this time solo - it was great having Bando driving the support vehicle from Melbourne to Sydney and showing me the best campsites, but unlike Ewan and Charley, there's no entourage from now on.  

Next stop will be Port Stephens where I'm hoping to catch up with Calvin and Liz, and then on into Northern NSW and Queensland...  Finally a massive thanks to Bando for being a fantastic traveling companion, and for being extremely patient as I get to grips with all the new gear (not to mention hosting me at his apartment in Sydney) - it's made for a great start to the trip.