Knock Knock

It's a fine day when we leave Adelaide. I was expecting the worst from the CBD traffic but it is easy going. This is a truly laid back city; even the drivers make room and take their time. However I'm dreading the mind numbing ride back to Port Augusta. It wasn't any fun the first time and I'm not looking forward to the repeat performance.

Two and a bit hours later, just outside Port Augusta, I get my first glimpse of what to expect once we head north. Across the horizon is a band of brown haze. At first I think it's smoke from a bushfire but it soon becomes obvious it's a dust storm. Strong winds tear across the drought stricken fields and throw dirt high into the air. Small tornadoes are visible near the highway, highlighted by the dust they carry. The dust whips around in organic shapes as the wind curls through trees.

This would all be spectacular if I wasn't in the middle of it. The dust gets inside my helmet and I feel grit between my teeth. The bike is buffeted by the wind which makes it an effort to stay in control. Oncoming vehicles keep appearing unexpectedly out of the gloom. At one point my visibility drops to a few tens of feet. I consider whether it would be best to keep going blind and hope I don't hit anything or to slow down and potentially be hit from behind. Fortunately before I can make a decision I'm through the worst and my visibility returns. The rest of the ride into Port Augusta is merely windy.

We stop briefly in Port Augusta for lunch then onwards to Iron Knob. This is an old mining town... have a guess what they mined. We pull into the petrol station to refuel. That's odd; the pump isn't working. We checkout the station house but the door is locked tight. It seems nobody is working at the petrol station today. Uh-oh, this isn't good.

I have enough fuel to reach Kimba, the next town west, but Dave will be about 30km short. Even getting back to the previous town might be pushing his luck. As we're sitting at the station, pondering how the hell we got into this mess, the strangest thing happens.

This old bloke with a long gray beard, riding a brand new Triumph Rocket (a bloody big cruiser), matching Triumph leathers and Triumph helmet, pulls into the defunct petrol station. He leaps off the cruiser and pulls from his luggage a can of Red Bull and a jumbo sized pack of Nurofen Plus. He starts eating the pills, washing them down with swigs of Red Bull. He turns to us and says:

"Where you boys from? Seems there's no fuel here. You should have refueled in Port Augusta. Might try asking for help at the pub."

And just as quickly he's back on his bike and heading off west. It's a surreal experience. Like something out of Alice In Wonderland.

We don't have too many options so we try the pub, only to discover it's shut as well. We then cruise around the town looking for signs of life. There are plenty of emu but not so many humans. Dave eventually spots a husband and wife out in their front yard. They tell us the petrol station has been closed for years so everyone in town stockpiles their own fuel. They'd love to help us but they only have diesel.

What follows is the craziest doorknock appeal in history as we go from house to house, asking to buy fuel for our bikes. At the third house we get an early Christmas present from a bloke who could well have been Santa Claus. He has long white hair, a bushy white beard and a reasonably large belly. He sells us ten litres of unleaded petrol for a price we're very willing to pay and we're on our way again.

It is now a hard slog to reach Streaky Bay by nightfall but we manage somehow. As I go to sleep I vow to pickup an emergency fuel canister to strap on the bike.

Adelaide Again

There's not much to do today except be a tourist so I start with a walk along Rundle Mall. It's a strange feeling being surrounded by all these people again. The isolation of the bike helmet has become really comfortable. There is time to chill out and reflect, even while tearing along the highway at breakneck speeds. That reflection is near impossible in the cacophony of Adelaide. Even in the swanky apartment I'm bombarded by the sounds of traffic and people. It's counterintuitive that the relative safety of the apartment is less relaxing, but that's the way it is.

We take the tram out to Glenelg to get lunch. Glenelg is an odd place. It's like a beach suffering from an overdose of Ritalin. There are restaurants and amusement rides and so much traffic. I see people nearly everywhere except on the beach itself. I don't get that; why travel all the way to the beach and then sit inside a cafe?

As we sit inside a cafe in Glenelg (don't bother pointing out the hypocrisy) to have a late lunch, Dave gets a call from the BMW mechanic. The bike has only just arrived and it was supposed to have been there hours ago. Dave descends into an even darker funk, which I didn't think was possible. He's now thinking we could be trapped here for days.

Then at 4:00pm Dave gets the call we've been waiting for; BMW has fixed the fault. The fuel pump had shorted and needed to be replaced. They didn't have a spare in stock so they stripped one off a brand new showroom bike. We are out of here tomorrow morning. Hallelujah.

Adelaide Hills

Today we're heading to Adelaide. It's an early start and the weather is superb. There are nasty looking clouds on the ranges up north. However all along the coast there are clear blue skies. It's a great day for riding.

This is a 350km stretch along flat and straight highway. I ride the bike like it's been stolen and soon leave Dave behind. The landscape blurs past and I get a flashback to the ending scene of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wonder if Kubrick got inspiration for that scene while riding a bike. Probably not.

Just outside of Adelaide I stop for fuel and wait for Dave to catch up. It's not yet lunch so we decide to check out the Adelaide Hills. I feel a bit sorry for Dave, stuck in his cage, because this is motorcycling heaven. The Adelaide Hills are covered with long winding scenic drives. Occasionally a climb will put you up high enough to admire the view. There are plenty of other bikes joining us today. I guess this is a popular destination for all the weekend riders from Adelaide.

We make a brief stop at the Barossa Reservoir which has been nicknamed the Whispering Wall. The dam wall is shaped such that if you talk at one end your voice is heard clearly at the other end. It's vaguely amusing for about fifteen seconds but then the novelty wears off. The ride to the dam was well worth it though.

Our next stop is Hahndorf, an "authentic" German village, and the cheesiest place on earth. There were several stores with names prefixed Ye Olde, I kid you not, but sadly not a single Coffee Shoppe among them. There are some buskers who sing off-key, a whole store devoted to fortune telling and tarot cards, and of course a bunch of pubs selling Ye Olde Authentic German Beer. I look around in horror and fortunately Dave concurs so we get the hell out of Hahndorf.

It's getting late so we head into Adelaide. BMW has gotten us accommodation in a swanky apartment in the middle of the CBD. I park my bike, covered in dirt and weighed down by camping gear, next to a Jaguar. The apartment is sheer luxury, possibly the last luxury I'll experience for a while.

Stop! Wrong Way. Go Back.

We're stuck in Port Augusta until the night of Saturday waiting for the tow truck to arrive from Adelaide. I try to make the best of a bad situation but this town refuses to make things easy. I scour the tourist brochures for ideas and the best I can come up with is a steam train departing at 10:30am. Unfortunately a combination of not getting back with the hire car until after 10:00am, both of us forgetting to bring our cameras, and neither of us remembering the whereabouts of the train station, means we arrive minutes too late. Disappointing.

Dave is in a foul mood over the bike so I do my best to steer clear of him. He wanders off to stare daggers at his bike while I make good use of a wifi access point. This isn't my idea of a holiday but it's only a delay of one day.

Or so I had thought. Unbeknownst to me, Dave has arranged to pick the bike up personally in Adelaide the morning of Tuesday, three days from now. I had assumed we would just continue the trip west because BMW is obligated to ship the fixed bike to wherever we are in our travels. That would be somewhere in Western Australia. However Dave wants to discuss the problem face to face with the mechanics. He even mentions he might need a few hours with them!

I'm completely surprised by the decision he's made. The delay of three days plus the 700km round trip between Port Augusta and Adelaide will leave us significantly behind schedule to reach Perth on June 30. This probably means missing out on parts of southern Western Australia.

There's not much I can do about it now though. I have an unspoken obligation to Kirsten to ride with Dave and I can't leave him in the lurch, even if he is heading in the wrong direction. Anyway it's only a few days out of the trip.

Friday the 13th

The time flies by altogether too quickly and three days after arriving in Wilpena Pound we're packed up and heading south. The trip today is lazy with plenty of stops to take photos. The road is straight and boring until we reach Quorn, famous for the Pichi Richi steam train. The next train departs tomorrow and there's no good reason to stick around in Quorn so it's full steam ahead to Port Augusta.

This stretch wraps through the hills leading down to the bay. The road sweeps under and then over the rail several times with plenty of high speed straights terminated by tight dipping corners. It's in stark contrast to the drudgery we went through this morning. There are heaps of other bikes on this section going in the other direction and I'm about to find out why.

Port Augusta is unpleasant. It's a shipping town with rails and highways and the constant noise that comes with industry. Advertised tourist attractions include (no joke) the hideous power plant and fishing off the 110kph highway bridge. However the next stop on our route is Streaky Bay and it's too far away to reach today, so we'll be spending the night in Port Augusta. We pick a campsite furthest from the highway to get some peace and quiet. Unfortunately nothing in this town can be far away enough from the trains.

The afternoon is not yet over so Dave decides to visit the local Arid Gardens. This is an exhibit of local desert plants and it's the best attraction on offer.

And then, disaster.

Dave makes a routine stop to take a photo and his bike fails to start again. There's a fault in the immobilizer or fuel pump - we can't tell which - and it's beyond our skill to repair. Dave's bike is stranded several kilometres from the campsite on a Friday afternoon.

A call to BMW roadside confirms there are no qualified mechanics in Port Augusta, they will have to tow the bike to the nearest workshop in Adelaide, and the earliest they can look at it is Monday. There aren't even any qualified bike towing truckers in Port Augusta so someone will be driving up from Adelaide on Saturday and arriving that night.

The worst part is we're stuck in this hell hole until then.

Wilpena Pound

Wilpena Pound is as great as the brochures had promised. There was a turn of good luck with the weather as it was sunny and warm(ish) the entire stay. The initial plan was to stay two nights but we extended to three nights because there is so much to see and do, with superb facilities and camping grounds.

The first day involved a scenic flight around the Wilpena Pound in a Cessna 172. Apparently the planes had been grounded for a week due to rain and low cloud, so it was more good fortune with the weather. The air was calm and the flight was very comfortable, which was great because these little planes can get bumped around when the wind is gustier. No barf bags were necessary and I got plenty of fantastic aerial photos.

After lunch we bushwalked up to Wangara Lookout. This is supposedly a moderate walk but I almost carked it halfway up the mountain. I eventually made it the whole way to the summit and the views were well worth the 5 years I knocked off my lifespan. Dave was keen to do one of the difficult walks so I told him to go for it, because I was retiring to the resort's bar for a beer.

The following day was a 4WD tour up to Brachina Lookout to see geological formations and fossils. I was still a bit ginger after the previous night's effort in the bar and the jolting of the landcruiser wasn't helping matters. I enjoyed the tour despite concerned comments from fellow tourists that I looked slightly green. The fossils - the ancient rocks, not my fellow tourists - were a highlight of the day.

I haven't figured out if it's because they're on holidays as well, or if it's because we're away from the city, but people are very friendly and talkative. Everybody wants to discuss travel plans. The gray nomads are a wealth of knowledge regarding places to visit and sights to see. We even achieve minor notoriety in the camping ground as the "mad bastards" on bikes. It's a welcome change from the cold indifference of Melbourne.

Plains, Trains and Automobikes

One good night's sleep in Clare has really improved our spirits. The forecast for today is more drizzle but it's dry when we gear up and ride off.

Dave confesses he's never been to a winery cellar door before. He doesn't want to spend the whole day in Clare tasting wine (nor do I) so he settles for just one, Annie's Lane. Some cellar doors are a sham because the wine is made elsewhere and shipped back to Clare just for show. Sometimes even the grapes are grown elsewhere. Annie's Lane is guilty on both counts. It's all in good fun though.

The show is soon over and we're riding north. Dave wants to stop in Burra, an old mining town where previous generations of his family once lived. The pie shop in Burra makes a fantastic Cornish Pastie which ends up being my lunch and dinner; miners obviously eat more than average people. We check out the various tourist exhibits and also the local church before continuing north.

We're heading into a large flat expanse of SA desert. The roads become predictably straight and flat. With no trees or hills to obstruct the wind it quickly reaches gale speeds, making it difficult to control the bikes. Occasionally the wind gets under my helmet which lifts like a parachute and makes me swerve unpredictably. Fortunately the roads are almost empty of traffic.

We are stopped at the railway tracks in Peterborough by the Indian-Pacific train. This particular train only runs twice a week and it was blind luck we arrived at the exact same moment it was passing. This chance encounter inspires us to visit the Peterborough vintage train exhibition, which has the silly name of Steamland. The restoration society has had bad luck recently with a tornado destroying the shelter and rain damaging the subsequently exposed carriages. Despite the damage there is still plenty to see. We get a guided tour of the trains and workshops by an extremely enthusiastic volunteer. It was well worth the time.

Our destination today is Wilpena Pound in the Flinder's Ranges and it's getting late in the afternoon with a fair distance still to travel. The roads are chockers with sheep and kangaroos who apparently think the highway is the safest place to hang out. The dead animals by the roadside might have thought otherwise, even if only in their final moments. Dave is in the lead and sensibly slows down but the downside is we arrive well after dark. I was hoping to see Wilpena Pound as we rode in however that will have to wait until tomorrow.