Headed to Darwin

Well we've done it. We picked up our four wheel drive diesel guzzling home on wheels and we set the compass bearing for West. On a beautiful Thursday afternoon in Cairns the two of us packed up our twelve bags of assorted sizes, wedged our partially disassembled bikes into the back of the Land Cruiser, and said our goodbyes to the East coast of Oz.

Good lord how is all that going to fit in there?!


E. bravely took the first driving shift navigating us through the busy city center to collect our things from the hotel. we couldn't have picked a more winding route to reach the Tablelands and E. showed great poise and composure while navigating the constant twists and turns and even weathered the moderate rains without the slightest trouble. Pretty good for a rookie left-side drivers first day out! We treated ourselves to a nights stay at the Innot Hot Springs (or thermal pools as they're called here). It took us just a few moments to get set up for the night and we rediscovered that cooking is a breeze when you don't have to saute veggies at ground level! A nice dip in the pools and a hot shower loosened the old bodies and we settled in for a tough night of reading in bed. Z. took the next days first driving shift from Innot to Prairie - 627 kilometers away, or about 9 days of bicycling! The road was a schizophrenic patchwork of potholed single land sometimes paved sometimes dirt, with huge compact gravel "passing" shoulders strung together with sections of hasty washout repairs that, when driven over at 80km per hour, would threaten to rattle the teeth right out of your head. Each time we were faced with an oncoming vehicle, the inevitable game of chicken ensued. The last minute swerve halfway off the pavement and onto the dusty shoulder would have Z. slowing down considerably and white knuckling the wheel while the other driver would casually lift a hand and give a little wave and zip on by without lifting their foot from the accelerator.

When we hit Prairie that evening we pulled up to the hotel/ van park/ bar and accepted the very reasonable price for a powered camp site out behind the bar. We were met by the curious stares on one very cranky alpaca and an incredibly sweet and very rotund water buffalo. We cleaned ourselves up and headed to the bar at the invite of the owner who enticed us with the promise of a good Aussie football game. We met the characters who were there to lay their bets on the entire seasons match-ups and to alternately harass each other when trys were scored or refs called questionable penalties during the game. The bar itself was quite a scene with it's collection of akubras, or cowboy hats, nailed to the ceiling, it's taxidermied collection of native wildlife, and it's worn and weathered wood floors used mostly as a tricycle raceway for the clutch of toddlers that entertained us while the footy was in half-time.

The nights have gotten cooler out here which is a pleasant change and has made sleeping that much easier. We were up early the following morning feeling refreshed and as a result we got back to the asphalt by 8:30am. E. was behind the wheel for a very jarring morning of driving along routes rutted by the many and giant road trains and softened by the intense afternoon heats. We watched as the landscape changed again and again from Eucalyptus stands that became sparse groups of scrubby trees, then morphing into intermittent groups of low brush which finally fizzled out leaving us to look on long expanses of incredibly flat grassland.

Where have all the trees gone?

Road Train!

We glimpsed a group of Emus along the roadside but missed the photo opportunity because of the ever increasing speed limit (now up to 110km p/h!). We made a few pit stops in the little towns along the way mostly just to break the monotony of sitting for hours on end. We got a chance to call our friend Eli from Mt. Isa to wish him an early happy birthday (22nd is the actual day for any of you that know and want to harass him, we're pretty sure he's turning a miserly 28!). We decided to push a long day so we could buy ourselves some extra time at the Mataranka Hot Springs the following day and that's how we ended up literally driving into the sunset. It was beautiful, but not a pleasant experience from the drivers point of view!

Against the warning sticker displayed in our vehicle which reads "Night driving in Outback areas is not advised" we did just that. We didn't see (or hit) any kangaroos but we did have a bit of trouble with the flocks of birds that were camped out on the road, busily snacking on the grasshoppers that were plentiful and either dead or stunned from the days traffic. Z. resorted to sounding the horn in short bursts every few seconds to try and warn them away, which may have helped some but didn't prevent him from a few collisions with the startled diners. As a result, we decided to pull off at a remote rest stop and wait for morning to get going again. From our vantage point in the camper we could watch the road trains pass by on the highway, lit up like some sort of twisted Aussie version of St. Nicks sleigh and sounding like a herd of elephants stampeding through the night.

Welcome to the Northern Territory!

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Pictures and Ponderings

We are due to embark on a long haul road trip across Australia to Darwin in the Northern Territory. Many cyclists have made the 3000 km trek across but we've opted for the luxury of a 4x4 Bushcamper.

I visited Cairns 8 years ago on my first trip to Australia and sharing the experience with Zach was always a highlight I looked forward to. We've taken a few great tours here. First out to the outer Great Barrier Reef for a day of snorkeling

Zach in the stinger suit, our friend the sea turtle, and the submerged reef below:

and second a trip on a scenic railway and a gondola sky ride to the Kuranda National Park.

View from the train and gondola of Cairns far below:

Us at the falls along the train route:

In Kuranda we visited a bat rescue center and learned how amazing the flying fox bats are:

Our April 9th departure to Vietnam marks a new and uncertain leg of this journey for us. We are both apprehensive and excited for our upcoming time in SE Asia. Its been years for the both of us not to have set schedules. Besides our departure from Australia and our eventual goal to end our trip in India, the road ahead is unmarked (and mostly unpaved). In addition we have been talking about how to greater incorporate our life goals and ambitions into this trip. This has led us to look greater into international organizations to volunteer with and to continue our experiences through WWOOF. Our conversations are often filled with the continual growth and evolution of this journey. Including what the journey means for us as a couple and as individuals. Just some ponderings.

Keep warm back in Seattle, summer is near. Our family and friends are continually in our thoughts. We wish you well.

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Cairns marks the end of a great cycling adventure through Australia

Townsville was great. We met up with E's friend Alicia and her wife Lynda who were excellent, witty, and full of great stories. They picked us up just a few hours after we checked into our hostel and took us out on the town for an excellent dinner and drinks at a great local restaurant situated right on the Esplanade with a view of Magnetic Island and the waterfront. Z. was treated to his first dose of Kangaroo... which is a very lean meat and surprising has great flavor as well! We chatted until we were the last folks in the joint, hearing all about Lyndas copper stories (not copper like the metal - police officer) and Alicias Army stories.

They both suggested that we spend a couple days out on Magnetic Island, or as the locals call it "Maggie", which is where they had their wedding just a few months prior. We took them up on the offer, although we stuck around town for a few days before heading out, mainly because we found our awesome hostel and A/C room too comforting to leave right away. While we were in town we participated in one of our favorite off-the-bike activities, visiting the local cinema! We saw "The Wrestler" after catching some of the Oscar's and being convinced by it's nomination there that it might be worth seeing, a notion that was in direct opposition to our original feeling about the movie after seeing the previews. We were both nonplussed... but I'm not sure if the intense smell of industrial cleaner with undertones of mildew that prevailed in the theater might have had and effect on our experience of the movie? I feel for the business owners here in that it must be so difficult to suppress the moisture and ensuing mold in their shops because with as much rain as they get there in the wet season (average rainfall: 1143mm over just 90 days) there just can't be any avoiding it short of hermetically sealing the entire building... All in all Townsville CBD was a pretty quiet place with a lot of empty storefronts, a plethora of "For Lease" signs, and not much foot traffic in the pedestrian malls. The CBD is however situated just at the base of Castle Hill which juts out of the relatively flat landscape like one of the rock formations found around Sedona, AZ. With a hot and uncharacteristically arid afternoon, and the marked change in landscape on our arrival we almost felt like we were riding into Phoenix! After a few days of putzing around we loaded up the bikes and hopped a ferry over to Magnetic Island which is, as Lynda put it, a one beer ride across or about 1/2 hour. We arrived and having decided on Horseshoe Bay for our stay we took the only road out that direction. What anyone, including our new friends who recommended the trip, had failed to mention to us was the fantastic hill we would encounter on our way out there.

Needless to say we were unprepared when we hit the 1.2 km stretch of 12% grade with our fully loaded single speeds after having cycled the last 2 weeks on some of the longest flattest stretches we've encountered to date. We both walked some of the really steep and winding sections which were made that much harder by the intense afternoon sun/heat. We almost called it quits and headed back but decided to venture around one more steep curve to see if we were nearing the top. We were indeed just a few hundred meters from the top and a nice shady vantage point. After a rest we whizzed down the other side and found ourselves at the backpackers resort just a few hundred meters from an all but deserted stretch of beach in Horseshoe Bay. We camped two nights there enjoying the troupe of brush tailed possums who visited the camp kitchen nightly and even gave E. a light nibble on the foot when we wouldn't produce any scraps for them. We also got a shot at Coconut Bowling where E. scored 100pts and a free beer and Z. barely knocked down 2 pins for an exciting 60pts! We took a great hike around the Island, venturing out with snorkel gear in hand to check out the islands fringing reef. We donned the sexy stinger suits at all 3 beaches but found the visibility too low to see much and resolved just to enjoy the change of pace that hiking was providing. We had a lovely afternoon even after losing the trail for a bit and having to forge our own trail as well as a small estuarine stream to get back to our beach.

We enjoyed Popsicles on the beach as a reward for our hard work and watched the other beach goers enjoying a dip inside the stinger proof swimming enclosure which effectively turns a bit of the shore into a saltwater kiddie pool. After our second night we prepared ourselves for the trip back over the mountain to the ferry with the promise of a pickup for ourselves and our gear at the ferry on the Townsville side. We learned as we were heading out from our Maggie resort that a category 3 cyclone was whipping itself up off the coast of Cairns - our next destination just 300km north of Townsville. We spent the next two nights with Alicia and Lynda watching the storms progress as it grew to a category 5 and then passed right by Townsville and dipped south winding itself out after giving everyone quite a lot of rain and a bit of a scare in the Airlie Beach area! We said our goodbyes after a wonderful time (and a visit from the ladies in blue and their squad car!)

and set out for Cairns with blue skies and a favorable wind.

On our way North to Cairns we found some of the best swimming holes of our trip so far and spent 3 afternoons blundering our way down little rocky rapids, bathing ourselves in cool fresh streams, and chasing fish with the goggles we've been toting around since Byron Bay. Our first night at Rollingstone we hopped in the creek and managed to free camp at the great council run park situated right on the river.

The second day we hit up Five Mile Creek outside Ingham. When we got there the place was 2km down a dirt road and the place was deserted after the only other couple who were clearing out when we arrived had gone. We took the opportunity to jump in with just our skivvies on.
The water was deep and clear and we splashed around for a while before we noticed 3 guys standing around and rolling cigarettes on the stairs leading to the creek. We hopped out feeling refreshed and quickly wrapped our towels around ourselves and headed up the stairs. At the top we were met by the friendly stares of about 35 OZ Experience travelers with their music playing and the BBQ's fired up and packed into all the picnic tables except the one we'd chosen to lean our bikes up against. OZ Experience seems like a summer camp type experience for twenty-somethings where you tour around the country in a small bus with a group of other twenty-somethings and form cliques and alliances while you enjoy farm stays, learn-to-surf packages, and happy hour at all the popular backpacking destinations. Could be a fun way to travel but looks like torture to us. We donned our bikey outfits again and set off with The Killers singing us a farewell song from the OZ Experience bus. The next day we hit the pass between Ingham and Cardwell, which we'd been warned about but we found to be much more pleasant than the trek over the hills on Magnetic Island.

The gaurdrail at the top of the pass here is littered with signatures from foreigners who've stopped by the scenic lookout and we even managed to find one cycle tourist in among the crowd! The rest of the days ride was marked by flat stretches that undulated between eucalyptus stands and cane fields. In Cardwell we camped behind the great historic hotel Noorla that had done an amazing conversion on a shipping container,

creating two en suite rooms separated by a laundry facility in order to accommodate more guests. We were both intrigued and impressed and will definitely look into container living as an option in the future. E. took a bunch of photos of the simple foundation, great porch, and the great fitting done inside. In addition to the cool container conversion the place was incredibly stately with great antique furniture, a great bar with a library adjoining all done in dark woods and all very well maintained.

The following day we turned off the Bruce Highway for the last time in order to see Mission Beach. We unknowingly entered Cassowary country and were met by sign after sign warning drivers to slow down and be aware of the giant flightless birds that forage in the tropical forests and often cross the road
.
We also got a good dose of afternoon rain as we got closer to town and rolled in with shoes sloshing and bikes dirty and dripping wet. We opted for a hostel room so we could dry ourselves and our stuff out. We also got a glimpse of about 12 skydivers floating down from the clouds and landing on the beach right in front of the hostel! Still doesn't make Z. want to jump out of a plane but it was fun to watch. Turns out drying out was futile as we pushed out in the morning in a pretty good downpour that quickly escalated into torrential rain as we headed to Babinda. We rode over our first bridge that was under water and saw quickly how the area could easily become flooded and the roads cut. We also ran into two cycle tourists heading south from Cairns to Perth! And I thought we'd come a long way! In Babinda we camped at the Babinda Boulders and had yet another great swim! The water was pretty high from the recent rain and the current was running pretty fast. Z. was able to swim in place against the current! We took advantage of the trails around the area and got some great views of the boulders the place is named for. Possibly the quietest night of camping we've had yet as we were the only people up at the campground. We let ourselves sleep late knowing we only had 60km to cycle into Cairns the next day.

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We've arrived! ...almost!

We've arrived! ...almost!

It's true! As I whittle away at this post, typing with great care on
the iPhones tiny keyboard, we're just fifty some odd kilometers south
of Townsville. We said that we would cycle from Sydney to Townsville
whilst in Australia and now that we've almost finished the 3000+ km
ride it's time to pause for some reflection. (actually we plan to
cycle on to cairns so this is a bit premature but we're still assesing
the weather and a good downpour could cut the road and so on and so
forth). E. says that the closer we get to our destination the less it
feels like it's about getting to our destination, it's more about the
journey inbetween. It's hard to start from somewhere on a bike and say
"okay we're going to start here and end some obscurely long distance
away.". It's been essential for us to break the trip down into daily
portions which figure in about 90km distances with pit stops, pee
breaks, and usually a fail safe camp spot in case we're not feeling up
to par that day. Sometimes we exceed our own daily goals and sometimes
we decide it's just too hot to make it the whole way but either way we
end up somewhere interesting.
Z says that he's found that every place is interesting and that his
attitude has everything to do with how hard or easy, fun or torturous,
bearable or unbearable each days riding and each nights camping is.
Some places have been beautiful with great bathrooms, free showers,
entertaining campers, and favorable cross breezes through the tent -
while others have had dank cave like bathrooms, barren post-
apocolyptic feeling landscapes, and smells of the nearby chicken farm
wafting on the breeze. The quality of each ride and each campsite is
completely up to me to decide. I choose how I interpret each situation
and in doing so I determine my own satisfaction, or lack there of.
We joke and poke fun a lot in our posts here but overall we're both
incredibly struck by this beautiful place and we feel a great sense of
gratitude that we've led lives that have afforded us the opportunity
to see the world the way we are, and I don't just mean in a monetary
sense. We've had great support from and lifted insights off of well
traveled friends and family as well as being mentally and spiritually
inspired by people we look up to and love. Long hours are provided to
us daily for reflection and thought and we have many wonderful
conversations from our lives to recall for fuel during those times.

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Seasick Bike Sailors

Its official we're not invincible. After 2 nights at sea sailing through the Whitsunday Islands we came down with a stomach bug. After managing not to loose our stomachs during the rough seas we are surprised to be sick on land. We've been held up for 3 nights in Airlie Beach in a holiday apartment with A/C, watching copious amounts of TV on our 5! channels, taking long hard naps, and becoming very acquainted with our toilet. Tomorrow we continue the slow push North towards Townsville where we will spend a some nights with friends.

On the boat:

Our ride to Airlie Beach through the dreaded Marlborough Straits - according to most drivers and truckies the most boring stretch of road in whole Queensland. Our experience was much different by bicycle we found it long yes, but lined with beautiful lush green mountain ranges and plenty of Roadhouses (the Aussie authentic truck stops) to keep us entertained. We did find ourselves at times frantically avoiding approaching storms.

Marlborough Straits:

Approaching storm into St Lawrence:

Leaving Yeppoon we visited the Capricorn Caves. Our tour guide took us into the caves with two other adventurous souls. Thousands of bats flew around your head while walking through - darting just centimeters away from our eyes - a bit maddening, but overall it was refreshing to have someone else doing the tour guiding for us. Sometimes it just feels nice to be a tourist.

From Yeppoon to Mackay we camped at various locations along the road. From behind a pub, a rest stop, to probably our most interesting a cattle pen. Heading into the small town of St Lawrence with a small general store meagerly stocked with basics we watched the black storm clouds tumble in behind us. Taking refuge in the towns free camping at their Fairgrounds we set up our tent under the tin roof cattle stalls. We knew we were in for a big storm because St Lawrence was inundated with 9 inches of rain water the night before. In one night - 9 inches! Seattle doesn't even get 9 inches of snow in one year! Just after dark it rained extremely hard for an hour. It was raining so hard that 10 minutes into the storm we knew the water would wash down in rivers toward the tent. Although we picked the stall with highest ground we knew the rain channel couldn't hold this downpour. To add to this saga the thunder and lightening was deafening. Crawling out of the tent covered in mozzie repellent, shirts tied around our heads to keep the mosquitos off, and our only digging tools - our cutlery and a scavenged piece of hard plastic. Outside the tent the rain was just starting to wash down the channels. We frantically began cutting deeper channels and clearing out pools where the water threatened to flood over toward the tent. At this point we both start to realize, as the lightening is cracking, the rain floods in around us, and we're both on our knees scraping compacted cow dung channels into the earth in our undies, just how insane we must look. Looking toward each other with our bug collecting headlamps we break out in laughter. This remains one of our most trying and ridiculous nights of the entire tour. The moral of the story is if you find yourself sleeping in a cow pen during a severe tropical storm remember to cut deeper dung channels. Obviously we survived the night, even managing to stay dry, although we did smell a bit funny.

The day after:

The remaining trip to Airlie Beach was anticlimatic compared to our night in St Lawrence. We met many kind hearted and warm individuals at the roadhouses along the way. Heading into Airlie Beach we stopped at a bakery in Proserpine. Halfway into our sweets another cycle tourists rides by the window. Bounding out the door Elise runs after the cyclists yelling like a banshee. The cyclist is a young Japanese man touring from Cairns heading South, unfortunately not the direction we are heading. Our brief encounter was refreshing. To know your not alone out there on the long lone roads. Freeing the other cyclists from our barrage of questions we headed into Airlie with the wind and sun at our backs.

Elise and her new sunnies in Mackay:

Sunset for our beach camp in Carmila Beach:

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Yeppoon: Wwoofing, Llama Love, and Alpaca Kicks

After a soggy short day of riding we made it to our farm stay outside of Yeppoon. Bumping along a dirt road leading to the llama and alpaca farm we arrived at the long drive way marked by a mailbox with a sticker saying "Life's too short to own ugly animals. Get an Alpaca.". At the gate we were met by a gaggle of barking Labradors and one barking small pink pig. All bark and no bite the labradores offered nothing but sweet love once we'd gotten inside the gate.



Soon we were met by the whole family arriving back from Yeppoon in their 8 seater LandCruiser. Leah and David run the farm with the help of their 4 children Anne, Charlotte, Davey, and Jonathon - all teenagers now. We were shown where we'd be staying; a private room in a mother-in-law type house behind the main house. Great windows, a chest of drawers, a small coat rack... oh and a real BED! We unpacked and settled in quickly so we could get a tour of the farm. We were introduced again and by name to all the dogs: Tilly, Mingus, Sheila, Rufus, Lucy, and Maggie. Then the cats: Buddy, Jublyt, Pellon, Ron, Nuke, Brick, and Shwankey. The Alpacas and Llamas are too numerous to name but we'll give you the highlights: there's Bon Jovi, Matador, J.J. and the list goes on... There are 6 camels, a few big cows, and 5 horses. There are three baby cows; Maisy, Daisy, and Crazy, that get bottle fed every day (twice a day!), a whole host of goats, a small flock of chickens (including turkey chickens and silky chickens) and a rescued wild parrot. I think that about covers it for animals... oh let's not forget Rosie pig! The animals are all great and you can tell that they are treated with great respect and an immense amount of love, which makes them all pretty good cuddlers! We have more than gotten our fix of dog pats and have found that we both really enjoy giving the camels a scratch at the end of the day too. (Leah's facebook will give you all a good idea of who everybody is here.)

Two of the boy camels plus Zach:

Rosie: Pig or Dog?

There's plenty to do around the farm but the required work load for the four of us is very reasonable leaving us at least a couple hours each day to read, nap, and enjoy tea (the kind you drink). Each morning the WWOOFers let the alpacas and llamas out to their respective grazing paddocks - which are gender segregated so no fights or babies result from intermixing. Next we feed the dogs, calling them by yelling "Jonathan! Feed the Dogs!" which brings them running to the feed shed where they offer us sits and hand shakes while they wait for their kibble. After that we mix up bins of feed for the pregnant alpacas and the one baby cow that won't take a bottle because she was weaned too early. The two baby cows that will bottle feed get a bucket of sweet smelling milk powder mixed up with water in a bucket. They suck this down through black rubber nipples attached to lengths of hose that sit in the bucket, and they can get quite pushy if you're not ready for them in time mooing and butting each other out of the way as they vie for position at the first available nipple. At this juncture the milk dispenser person has to be wary of the pig because she'll jump in and tip the bucket over at the first opportunity. If she's foiled and doesn't at least get her face well into the bucket she protests loudly squealing and screeching until she either scores a dish of milk off one of us or returns dejectedly to her pig pellet breakfast... mind you most of the time she's already enjoyed the left over porridge from our own human breakfast. What a PIG!

When feeding's over we shovel alpaca/llama poo moving it all to the poo pile where poo buying patrons come and fill bags ($7 a piece for a big bag full) to use in their own gardens. We clean and fill water buckets, check the chicken coop for eggs and do odd jobs around the farm as required. I should mention that we're accompanied here on the farm by two other WWOOFers who are wonderful and ton's of fun. Maggie has come to Australia from Wales and is working on extending her visa here. This is her second WWOOF stay so she's the most experienced of all of us at this stuff. Laura is here from Bavarian Germany for 7 months to do some traveling, hoping like Zach to sort out what she might like to study at University when she returns home in September. In fact all us WWOOFers here are in a similar state of limbo, each spending time and energy to sort through the expectations, experiences, and possible futures of and for ourselves. Seems like Australia is a popular place to go when you're trying to sort out the course of your life, or perhaps just to take a break to consider the course you're already on.

Since we arrived on the farm we've come to learn a lot about llama and alpaca love by helping with their mating. When we left for this bike tour never did we imagine we would spend hours 'assisting' alpaca sex. (We are doing you all a favor and sparing you all the gory details...). On the big Sunday work day we set up a run for the alpacas and llamas to weigh in. This exercise involves shoving the animal from behind down a narrow fence gauntlet, often having to carry them wheel-barrow style, and convincing them that they want to stand still on a slippery metal scale for a moment. We found that sometimes we had to lift the entire animal onto the scale because they have gone into cush (lying down). And in a rare successful attempt at catching a male alpaca, who's especially known for his surly attitude, Elise recieved a hard kick right in the thigh (don't worry though not even a bruise!).

Our time here has been beautifully chaotic and we are sad to leave the farm and family. The family has been wonderfully hospitable, welcoming us into their family and giving us a glimpse into their incredible lives. We've shared many laughs around the biggest dining room table we've both ever sat at, were included in a friday night with their friends complete with pig cuddling, and even made an appearance at the local Yeppoon pub to sit in as part of the "Llama Farmers" trivia night team (We came in a respectable 4th out of 9)! We were also refreshed to find that T.V. wasn't a major fixture and I don't think either of us even watched 10 minutes during our whole stay!

Pending monsoon-like showers we plan to leave the farm tomorrow morning. There are still storm systems coming in over the top end of Australia but we feel the need to push on in order to make it to Townsville by a reasonable date allowing us enough time to explore the Northern Territory. It will take us a number of days to reach the majorly flooded areas of Queensland so we hope most of the rain will have passed and that the roads will be open (cross your fingers!). We have been checking the Australian Bureau of Meteorology "the bomb" for their latest updates - wish us a dry ride!

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Wet Sleeping Bags, Mondo Spiders, and Wwoofing

Departing Brisbane we hopped on the train and started our journey north 40 miles outside Brizzy, in Nambour. Having already decided to stay off the main highway as much as possible, we headed toward Noosa Head. Our first night out we camped in the backyard of a young Australians guys house and his 5 Irish mates. We had just met the fellows by sheer coincidence as we rode by. We found we could help them out with their two flat tired bikes by supplying them with our pump and in exchange they offered us a few beers and a spot to camp in the backyard! We had a great night with these witty guys, sharing dinner and drinks, and learning some interesting new card games.

The next day we sluggishly rode to the small town of Kin Kin, which boasting only one raucous tavern. On the way we passed through the surfing and tourist laden beaches of Noosa Heads. This day was the first where we experienced the summer seasons stifling humidity. Feeling like we were riding through a brightly lit sauna room, we stopped numerous times during the day to peel our wet clothes off of our sticky bodies. In Kin Kin we camped in a sports field next to the tavern. Every town has one of these fields that they call "The Oval" and we're pretty sure the only sporting that goes on is Cricket. Having not expected such strong rain this night we awoke to the feeling of sleeping on a water bed! The rain was pooling on top of and underneath our tent leaving us damp and our sleeping bags wet.

After a couple of nights of sloppy sleeping we headed off the Bruce Highway 1 to the Great Sandy National Park at Tin Can Bay. Deciding to take a short cut we spent much of our 120 km day on a gravel rode. We climbed and skitteringly descended what seemed like an endless line of hill tops - up and down up and down. A thick coat of dust would shroud over us as the 4WDs zoomed past. We are used to gritty sand between our teeth these days. Coming into Tin Can Bay we passed an Australian Military Training Base, their signs warned us of laser beams and fatal explosives. Hopefully they warn the kangaroos of these threats as well! We stayed at a lovely caravan park that evening and when Elise went to open her pannier out jumped the largest spider we both had ever seen. Yelling and thrashing about she threw the pannier on the ground forcing the giant spider to take cover farther inside the bag. Both Elise and the spider made it out alive. It turns out the spider is called a Huntsman and it is the only spider known to feed its young. Although Australia is home to some of the most poisonous spiders in the world the Huntsman only packs a small punch and hardly ever bites when unprovoked. The next morning we rode into the town marina where dolphins regularly come into feed out of tourists hands. Supervised by marina volunteers the dolphins will gingerly take the small fish out of each persons hand - no petting or swimming with the dolphins though. On the way out of town we passed a few large groups or "mobs" of kangaroos including little joey roos hopping about.

Said Spider:

Each day we set a riding goal based on where we plan to stay that night. On this day in particular we hoped to make it past the town of Maryborough. Following an old logging road most of the way we descended on Howard outside of Maryborough. Often we will pass through or stop shortly before bigger towns, preferring to camp in smaller places because we find it easier to free camp. This night we spent in a local park along a stream. Soon we will no longer be able to camp near a water due to the crocodiles that are known to gobble up unsuspecting tourists. Surprisingly we met two extremely friendly local track cyclists walking their cute and slightly gimpy greyhound mutt whilst we were stealtfully setting up our camp. They tipped us off to some races that would be going on in Bundaberg the following night and assured us that we were in no danger of being persecuted for camping illegally.

Like the new bright bags?

The ride to Bundaberg was beautiful and relatively quiet as we routed ourselves along a less major road. This was our first day of really loooooong straight flat stretches and both our butts were terribly sore by the time we arrived in the mid afternoon. We followed our normal routine: Stop at grocery store and get food, visit the Tourist Information center to ask about caravan parks, find said place and set up tent, shower, and eat dinner. We also threw in a trip to the local bicycle shop to peruse the stock and to inquire about the velodrome. We were pointed in the right direction and the nights races were confirmed by the shop owner. We decided to cook dinner and take it with us to the track to watch the races... I'm sure we made a great impression as we ate our mashed potato surprise out of a camping pot with our sporks while the guys and kids warmed up. Their track has almost no bank in the corners but is fairly long and it's interesting in that it's the best lit anything in all of Bundaberg at 7:30 on a Monday night. The racing was pretty good and their turnout was about 30 in all with about 10 of those folks being under the age of 14. They had an interesting handicap system where the younger kids or slower adults would start a certain distance ahead on the track. This seemed to work well, especially for the kids. The littlest of the kids couldn't have been more than 6 and was on a fixed gear bmx with special 650c wheels (which he rode standing most of the time) and he got to do 3 time trials. Each time he'd get the bell he'd keep going for an extra lap until his dad would call him off saying he was done and other people we're wanting to race too! Cute. We met two more Irish guys and an English guy at the caravan park we stayed at who warned us off of visiting the late night take away shops in town citing that their friend had been jumped the night before and was busy getting his jaw wired shut back in Brisbane. One of the Irish guys had been with him and his face said as much with a black eye, bloody lip, and butterfly bandages here and there. There's been a bit of tension between the locals and the travelers who come to Bundy to get labor jobs picking fruit. With the economy doing so poorly everyone's on edge and although we hear the kids in Bundy would never pick up the fruit picking jobs they're not keen on foreigners taking the wages and work from their community. In the morning we walked to the McDonalds and picked up breakfast sandwiches for ourselves and the guys, who were gracious and grateful. We hope they've gotten out of Bundaberg, healed up, and found some work by now!

We left Bundaberg (the Ginger Beer capital of Australia) headed for Agnes Water with a long day in store for ourselves. After the previous days flat stretches we were glad for the rise and fall of the slight rollers and kept a good 23 kilometer per hour pace almost the whole day... It helped that we had a few soda and candy breaks along the way :0 ! We got a TON of waves and honks from the drivers starting as soon as we took the turn off bound for Agnes Waters. We had headed here,and more so even to the town of Seventeen Seventy, because Hugh (of Gretta and Hugh) had told us all about Lady Muskgrave Island during our stay in Ormeau. We'd decided that we'd make the extra 40km detour off our route to visit this magical place. The town of Agnes water is not much more than a dozen store fronts with a grocer that closes at 7:30 most days. We stopped in to the Tourist Information center and got an update on the status of our intended cruise, not good... the trip had been cancelled for the past 3 days due to strong winds and would be cancelled for sure the following day with a possibility of going the day after. We decided to stay and see if Mondays sailing would go out seeing the opportunity for a rest day as a great idea after our longest day yet at 125km. The council run Workmans Beach campground we got ourselves situated at was great and cheap at $5.50pp/pd. There were nice composting toilets and free bbq's and even an outdoor shower! Our campsite was situated under a great big banyan tree and the rest of the campground was shady and sheltered by eucalyptus of all varieties. Scrub turkeys abounded and were willing to eat anything and everything we couldn't finish, I assume they also keep the frog and lizard population to a minimum but we did manage to see some great big tree frogs and even a small goanna (which really aren't that small). We slept well and welcomed the change of a cool breeze through the tent after opting to keep the rain flys open despite the warning of rain.

From Agnes Waters we made a big push to Rockhampton (Rocky), stopping one night outside Gladstone in Tannum Sands. We quietly rode through Gladstone on Sunday morning. All shops seemed closed, with few people out walking about. The sound of us loudly chatting on our bikes echoed through the streets. Heading out of Gladstone we saw our first "No Swimming Crocodiles" signs lining the river. We took a beautiful quiet side road back to Highway 1 where we abruptly got back on the road with the truckies. Many over sized vehicles passed us as we rode - often we would have to pull completely off the highway to let the trucks pass transporting giant sized pieces of farm equipment. We were both looking forward getting to Rocky because we made arrangements to work on a farm through Wwoof (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) for a week outside of Rocky near Yeppoon. We spend 2 nights in Rocky because Zach had to get is bottom bracket on his bike re-set. For weeks he had been riding with crank arms rocking back and forth causing his bike mechanic mind to shutter. Different Cycles in Rocky completed the work for a nice 20 bucks. The refreshingly surly mechanic gave us a talking to regarding our single-speed touring bikes - asking why we should be so crazy!

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Brisbane is bicycle heaven

Brisbane is bicycle heaven

We've finally ousted ourselves from the comfort of Brisbane and we're at the train station awaiting our trolley that will sweep us off almost to Noosa Heads. We said goodbye to our lovely and incredibly gracious hosts, Heather and Lindsay this morning. We thanked them with a big hearty home cooked breakfast of French toast, potato-onion- capsicum scramble, and a heap of fresh fruit salad.

These folks that put us up offered us a great fully furnished basement unit, a wonderful backyard garden to admire, a flock of chickens to visit with, and a menagere of suburban wildlife to be dazzled by. Ohnandvthey had an incredible hot meal waiting for us when we arrived! They are both lively conversationalists as bike advocates and tourers with heaps of local knowledge as well as having quite a bit to say about traveling through many parts of Australia. We were invited to attend a dinner among friends of theirs, their primary source of friendhip stemming from all of their membership in the BBTC or Brisbane Bicycle Touring Club. The best Indian food of our trip was enjoyed whilst discussing gear ratios, past tour foibles, and projected routes. It was supeising to learn that there seem to be quite a few large supported tours being held throughout Australia with upwards of 1000 riders in most of the ones mentioned among the dinner group. When we weren't dining out with worldly cyclists we spent our time in Brizzy riding along her beautiful network of dedicated cycleways, most butting up against the river and running up to 10ks. We discovered a number of cycle shops around the suburbs which gave us a chance to experience the less tourist parts of town. Sadly our hopes of catching a not of the Tour Down Under featuing Lances infamous comeback, were dashed when we discovers that not one sports pub or coffee shop equipped with a television would be playing any coverage. The locals were much more intrigued with the Australian Open which soundly beat out the tour in both Aussie enthsiasm and channel coverage. Before arriving in Brisbane we stayed with Greta and Hugh smack dab in between the Gold Coast and Brisbane city in the little township of Ormeau. We spent 4 glorious days and three restful nights reading, relaxing, eating, and getting to know these two wonderful and quirky people. While there, we were given a tour of Mt. Tambourine and had our first walk in a true tropical forest at Witches Falls - which interestingly was the first park established in Australia in 1890 (or thereabouts).

We've also undergone another series of gear changes, which we like to think of as part of our cycletouring evolution. E. is now part of the front rack and pannier club and is enjoying the freedom to pack more books and snacks. Z. got a proper low rider front rack made for suspension forks which despite being a rigid fork, is working out MUCH better. Consequently we're not using pipe clamps on either of the bikes anymore and the loads seem more balanced and secure.

We are heading up to a WWOOF farm stay outside Rockhampton about 6 days ride from Brizzy. We'll stop in Noosa Heads for a look around and then set off into a few days of hinterland riding.
We hope everyone back home is doing well and we are desperately trying to send some of this hot weather your way!

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