first road trip

Just back from our first proper aussie road trip. 1800km in 36 hours down to the other side of Esperance via Jenny's brother at Albany for an overnight stay. Weather off the southern ocean was cold and wet - just like a certain english summer - and we're still saddle sore even though Harry did all the driving. Esperance is as far east as civilisation reaches in western oz before you start crossing the nullabor plain....

Saw our first 'roos, one in the morning bounding along the verge, and 2 more after dark just stood there on the side of the road. Brings it home how dangerous they can be and you definitely need  a serious bull bar on the truck as they are big buggers.

Cloud started to break last night as we were driving back and even on a partial view the night sky is fantastic. for much of the drive we were the only light in sight - no other traffic, streetlights, farms, pubs, villages on the horizon, nothing. Stopped briefly to turn off the headlights and its the darkest i've ever know - even on safari there was still a glow from the camp.

stopped for a final fuel up near wave rock and as they were closing up they were giving away pies. And no, I didn't eat ALL of them. They are a bit like Gimlet's rat on a stick - definitely need ketchup.

Shipped luggage arrived on monday and we were able to pick it up tuesday morning after 24 hours waiting on customs, and australian bureaucracy is just as messed up as british - customs to shipping agent, back to customs, wait 24 hours, over to quarantine, back to shipping agent and then finally to the warehouse to collect. All in good nick, and ended up costing us about 6 quid a kilo. Daft thing is that it came in via singapore airlines the day after we did, so if they had a sensible pricing policy for additional luggage it could have come in with us and cleared customs without the running around. But they wanted £55 a kilo....

bought bikes on monday - Maria's was from cash converters for £140 - RST forks, shimano everything else, cable disks and alloy frame. I ended up buying the same make, next model up new for £300 - hydraulic brakes and rock shock forks, but wanted the larger frame, so not a bad price and i'll hopefully get about 1/2 back judging by prices at the swap meets.

oh, and we bought a rig....