Long Road Up

As planned, we did finish all of our beer and most of the bottle of rum we had brought along for the ride.

Real regular vacation-like night, watched Top Gun, drank, and just hung-out laughing with the “ride team”.  We had planned to make another run up the coast to the spot where we had previously hoped to see wild Kangaroos, but the morning weather report said that rain and high winds were expected in the early afternoon, so we decided to super-slab it back to Melbourne. 

Not expressway like super-slab, but straight, flat, single lane roads north into the Australian bush where we seldom even saw a car. We cruised along often running for 120 Km per hour (about 74 MPH for you metric challenged Yanks) for an hour at a time. Small towns, mostly cattle and sheep farms. Funny once you get a few kilometers in from the coast, the country side looks a lot like some of our Midwest states like Oklahoma or Kansas. Everything is pretty much flat, few trees and covered in brown grass. An interesting observation about construction. I would say that half of the homes that I saw were square, box like structures with flat roofs, kind of Frank Lloyd Wright looking. Not what I would say “farm-like” structures that you see in the states. Another observation, although we passed a couple of hundred miles of “farm land”, there was not a crop to be seen. Sure there was the occasional wheat field, but not any that would sustain human life. I guess that is why everything is so expensive here I suppose, that and the fact that most folks take off at least 1 month straight for vacation a year. In fact when I told a local that I was taking 2 weeks to explore as much as I could of Australia, he looked at me oddly and said I should have taken off at least 1 month, which is what he does when he travels. I tried to explain to him that is just not possible in most jobs stateside, but I think he wrote it off as just an American being impatient! Anyway, we hoofed it back to Melbourne, the ride was pretty but uneventful.

We unloaded our bikes at Neal’s than drove that crazy drive back into town to the rental place and dropped them off. So our motorcycle part of the adventure was over. The bikes ran great, the scenery was spectacular, the company was awesome, and we got to see about 400 miles from the seat of a motorcycle in one of the most beautiful spots in the world.  Now back at Neal’s, washing cloths and chilling one more night with our dear friends Neal & Sandy. We are planning to visit a local market in the morning and hope a plane to Sydney for the final phase of our adventure.