Today was work, that is, get all the mods done to Eric’s bike and also be at the caravan park at Kinka Beach by at the latest 5pm ish.
Well, out here in the bush you get woken by the birds and this meant I was woken up around 4.30, but managed to sleep until just after 6. Knowing how much needed to be done, I got straight into it.
The mods that Eric wanted done were the following
1. Blue Seas fuse box
2. Kisan headlight modulators
3. Backoff tail light modulator
4. Stebal airhorn
After a slow start getting my brain into gear, especially as the bike was an 08 ABS version and the layout under the seat was a tad different, I got the fuse box done first. Then I did the Backoff unit, this involved the tedious process of removing the Givi pannier frames, but in the end I only took off enough to remove the left side rear plastic panel and found the wire I needed there. After that the headlight modulater was a breeze. It was now 10am and as I had never done a Stebal install, I backed out of this because I did not want to leave a job half done. Eric was fine with that, but I guess he would have liked to have seen it done. I needed to study the info on that a lot more before I attacked that type of job.
So, after packing up I said goodbye and headed off back through the creeks towards the sort of main road 🙂
Rather than hit the highway and head home, I decided to continue on the road west until it hit the bitumen road from Many Peaks to Calliope. There was a massive bushfire out that way and the electric mob were doing major surveys on the powerlines as well. The funny thing I saw was a sign advising of Burn Off ahead, then not long after was a sign which said Wildfire 🙂 It obviously got out of hand! Anyway, the road was gravel and up though the twisties with the smoke and fire hazard made it interesting.
Once reaching the Many Peaks road, it turned to sealed and as I knew the road I enjoyed the fast and furious sections, just had to make sure I did not come adrift because the cheese grater barriers were all over the joint!
I eventually got to Calliope servo around midday and had a great salad roll, called my mate Steve who was working at Port Alma and he said drop in.
On the way there I could see a lot of smoke around, especially on the Mount Hopeful ranges, welcome home dude, it is bush fire season.
I then headed to the coast and salt mines and had a chat for a while with me old mates Wart and Reddog.
After that, I headed north for the final leg and around 2.30pm on a stinking hot day was welcomed into Rocky by the bulls arse. They really need to do something about that statue, I am sure it would be nice to see a bulls head when arriving, not its back end!
After a quick chat with my parents it was off to the beach and up with the tent and have beer out of the esky and chat with the local birds. It was our local xmas party for the Ulysses group the next night, but quite a lot had decided to make a weekend of it, so I did also as it saved unpacking the bike and repacking 🙂
And that is the end of the Australian leg of my trip.
Day – 275km
Trip – 34,240km
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