No motorcycle adventure turns out as planned. The only
reason that we were even in Australia was because we had
decided to circle the world again on a motorcycle. We had
already done it east to west, so now it was south to north,
and we had just completed two trips to New Zealand.
Australia was next.
Disregarding the poor performance of our BMW's, a 1991 PD
and a 1991GS we purchase a 1992 GS in the states for $5500
and planned to ship it to Australia. Then after talking with two
other motorcyclists we found out what a horror it was to
ship a motorcycle from the US to Australia. And
Australia was one of the few countries that requires US
citizens to have a visa.
By good planning, we had no problem shipping our motorcycle.
Not only did the freight agent in Australia arrange for us
to pick up the motorcycle in their storage building, but we
never ever even saw a customs agent. One has to have a
carnet or post a 30% value bond. It proved to be cheaper
to post a cash bond and our agent somehow convinced customs
that the motorcycle was valued, not at $5500 but at $1500
saving us tying up hard earned money until after we left
Australia. We thought this was quite clever of him until we realize that
in Australia they know the true values of BMW's.
Because our main vacation time is in July, summer break for
school, that is when we planned to go to Australia. Of
course, it is winter down there but we don't like heat.
There are three bad aspects of traveling in Australia.
First, one can not travel from dust to dawn because of the
dangers of kangaroos. It is debatable if they are more
dangerous than deer but they are dangerous. Just as one
see the carcass of dead deer along highways in the US after
they are hit by vehicles one sees dead kangaroos along the
roads in Australia. They are so bad that many vehicles
have special "roo" bars to protect the front and sides.
By traveling in Australia in the winter there is not more
than eight hours of sunlight. We are use to traveling in
Nordic countries where there may be 20 hours of sunlight.
We like getting up early in the mornings, traveling
until noon, having breakfast, then traveling to 10:00 pm at
night. One can not do this in Australia in the winter and so the
motorcycle hours are limited. Especially if there is ice
on the roads and one has to wait until it melts.
These long dark hours makes camping more difficult because
not only is it quite cool, but lying in a tent for l2 hours
a night is not invigorating. So camping was limited,
especially since one of us forgot to pack the camp stove and
other camping items. And one doesn't lie around the
beaches too much. In the winter these beaches are
basically deserted, especially, as our video showed, the
nude ones. Although we did find some strange things
at the beaches.
Australia, in some respects, is quite like the US. It is
about the same size, the natives speak English, and one can
find gas, food, shelter, paved or non-paved roads of one's
choice, unlike Russia. But this is also a disadvantage.
While traveling we like to go off-road where there are no
other tourists, the natives don't speak English, and the
trip is some sort of a challenge. Very hard to do in
Australia. In fact, this is a disadvantage, as who wants
to travel to a foreign country to see a McDonalds, much
lees eat in a Kentucky Fried Chicken. And there
is an H & R Block, and 20th Century Real Estate and
other forgettables just as as at home.
Of course. Australia does have problems with their
hamburgers. They may ask you if you want it with a
salad. This means on top, not on the side. And, they
always serve it with beets instead of pickles. Not being
beet lovers, we learned the hard way to ask for it "plain"
but when we did it proved to be better than US hamburgers
because it was real meat with no sawdust mixed in.
We don't like the traditional breakfast, but this is what is
served in Australia. Tourists are people who travel
thousands of miles to find food like they have at home.
We are no exception, and so often had hamburgers or steak
sandwiches for our noon breakfast. At home, we
normally eat Chinese food at home and now that Australia
has changed their immigration policy, one can find more
oriental food as about 30% of the population is no longer
Northern European. Most of the population is concentrated in
the cities. In fact, 85% of Australia 20 million people
live in cities, mainly 5 large ones on the east coast.
While in Australia, we decided to see if the Australians were
the friendliest people in the world as we had been told.
We had been told in New Zealand by an American living
there that New Zealand people were quite friendly, but
didn't really like Americans. Then again, we didn't
like her either. Time would tell about the Australians.
We arrived on our flying cattle car in Melbourne at 3:00 am
and was at our freight forwarded at about 8:00 a.m. Within an
hour or so we had the motorcycle out of the crate and were on
the road. We stopped and arranged to ship our motorcycle
to Tasmania on a drive on-drive off ferry in a week.
During this week we drove west from Melbourne along the
famous Ocean road, taking our time as it wasn't that far away,
less than 1000 miles.
Along the way, one day on a deserted rural road, it started
to rain a little and we saw a sign that said there was a
rest area ahead. So we decided to put our rain gear on and
so sped up, just a little, to get the gear on before we got
very wet. Then, behind us suddenly appear a cop car and
stopped us. We tried to explain the international law of
immunity, we being tourists, motorcyclists and one of us an
attorney by profession. Being a rural traffic officer, he
did not understand this concept. In fact, most of the
conversation centered around his amazement with Germans who
might be traveling 80 miles an hour and never looked back as
he would have to follow them for miles. We didn't have
the heart to explain to him that this was nothing for
Germans to drive fast on the autobahn, they might be going 160 mph.
We knew that if he was every on the
autobahn he would wet his pants and we were afraid that he
would do so just by us telling him about it. And, since it was
still raining, we would never know. So much for
the theory that Australians are the friendliest people in the
world. In fact, this incident merely showed how much
Australians were like Americans since in the US traffic
officers are merely meter maids that have had a sex change.
And seven thousand miles later they gave us, just like in
the states, another ticket. Both officers told us that
they didn't care if we paid the tickets and unlike in the US
they would not report the incident to our insurance company
to make life as misable as possible for us. We have only
gotten speeding tickets in two foreign countries, Soviet
Russia and Soviet Australia, if one doesn't count Canada and
Utah. In retrospect, we made have been somewhat unfair to this
Australian traffic officers because when women meter maids
undergo a sex change they need to add some parts and little did
we realize it but they took the need parts from their brains
which they would no longer need as
traffic officers (which is why they could not
understand the international law of immunity) and put it
elsewhere. Or in
other words, as with all traffic officers, US or Australian , their
brains are between their legs.
Australia in the winter is like Oregon. So the cool
weather and rain did not bother us.
Then it was to the ferry and Tasmania. Here there was
more ice on the roads but also often pleasant weather. But
one day it snowed on us, in fact, the weather here was worst
than that we found in Iceland.
One week and tourist
things and back to the ferry to the mainland where we went up
the east coast as far as time would allow.
The three of us, which includes our motorcycle, voted on what
we did not want.
We did not want to motorcycle in
the heat nor cities. Our motorcycle voted against sand.
We named our motorcycle Ostrich. It is much like an
ostrich. An ostrich sticks its head in the sand when
frighten and our motorcycle often does the same, except
ass-backwards. It sticks its rear wheel in the sand and
that is the end of it. We learned that when we did the
LA-Barstow-LV rally. We were not too opposed to not
driving in the sand as sand usually means heat and due to a
back injury suffered in Iceland we did not want to engage in
attempting to pull it out of sand nor re-right it when it
falls over, which it frequently does.
After five weeks and about 6000 miles time ran out so we
left Ostrich with a friend in Townsville which is just
south of Caines. Donny was the proud owner of a new BMW
1100GS. We told him that we would have our freight agent
contact him about shipping the GS to Indonesia. We were next
off to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa that X-mas But it was not
too be.
Due to a confrontation with a carton of Pepsi, the back
injury was re-garavated and so no mountain climbing for us.
The doctor said to bed for ten days and rest. But isn't
that the same as riding a motorcycle on paved roads. So
5 months later we were back in Australia. Unfortunately
it was summer and hot as hell. We decided to go to Caines
which was even hotter. It was so hot that we could not
motorcycle between noon and four o'clock. We would get up
at 4 am., be on the road by five, motorcycle until 11
or l2 and then have breakfast and try to find a waterfall
to immerse ourselves.
Then at four we would be back on
the road and ride until dusk which was about 7 p.m., this
far north. We gave up the idea of heading further north
and decided to go south where it is cooler in the summer.
Further south we met a woman motorcyclist who said that once
she moved to Townsville and spent the entire time in the
shower drinking beer. Another motorcycle friend said
that just a few weeks before he had driven from Sydney to
Melbourne and found it very hot. On the way back he
decided to take the cooler coast road and when filling up
with gas would soak his head under tap water to cool off.
One time when he asked where the tap was and he turned to
go there he fell down from heat stroke. He spent sometime in the hosiptal. We were lucky
it did not happen to us.
One has to be very careful riding in Australia. For one
thing, when sober, they drive on the opposite side of the
road. Then there are the kangaroos and wombats and other
strange things. Kangaroos are bouncing little things and
often not little. Some are 7 feet tall and can weigh 200
pounds. The can leap 25 feet at 3 miles an hour, and are a
moving obstacle course.
Then there are those that live in
trees and can hop 50 feet down to the ground. We met a
GS rider who ran into one at night, causing $3000 in damages,
and 90 days later BMW still had not obtain all the parts
necessary to repair his motorcycle. Another similarity
between Australia and the US.
Wombats are another hazard. They are dark pig like
animals that have very short legs and are about 3 feet
long. Hit one and that is it. We never did find anyone
that lived to tell about it but we saw dead ones (wombats
not motorcyclist) along the side of the road where they were
getting even bigger (and smeller). The local motorcyclists seem
to fear Emus even more. During the day, emus would run
straight down the road towards you and be too stupid to turn
aside and run right into you because they didn't know the
difference between a GS and a bush that they could brush
aside. We saw all these animals but never had any close
encounters even when we misjudged and did not reach shelter
until after dust. No, no koalas even fell out of a
tree and hit us on the head but we did see dead ones on the
road and live ones in trees)
However, there are other strange animals that one has to be
careful of on the roads.
Everyone told us that Australia would be hot in the summer
and it was. To hot for us to go everywhere we wanted.
But no one told us that when we got as far south as Sydney
that there would be a freak hurricane. Now the rivers were
starting to flood. Often it would rain very heavily, so
heavy that we often couldn't see too well but the rain was
semi-warm, not cold as in Oregon, so we didn't have to worry
about hypothermia. In the mountains, the unusual fog and
rain curtained some of our off-road riding and activities
but at least the days were longer as it would not get dark
until 8 to 9 o'clock.
As we headed south Ostrich began to run rough and early in
the mornings couldn't go over 60 miles an hour. When we got
to the Blue Mountains and the Snowy mountains which we had
missed before due to snow we found then covered in fog.
Then the charging system quit. Fortunately, we found a BMW
dealer and he had a
rebuilt alternator but not one other part we needed. But
we made it back down to Melbourne and then back up near
Brisbane where we left our motorcycle with Australia's
greatest mechanic, Paul, who is making several modifications
to our GS. Among other things he is installing dual
shocks and has developed a technique to fix the problem with
the drive shaft failing after 30000 miles because that is
what we now have on Ostrich. Hope it works because we are
hoping to ship our GS to Indonesia and then to SE Asia and
the next mechanic is over 10000 miles away.
Wish us good luck.
For more information about this country go to the page for AUSTRALIA
Or, return to INTERNATIONAL MOTORCYCLE TRAVELLERS
Or, the HOMEPAGE FOR INTERNATIONAL MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURERS
@ http://www.rio.com/~tynda
4DEC 96.