TravellingStrom

Hi all

Not much happening since the floods a few months ago, but now the water has gone and revealed all the road damage, I am now head down bum up saving for the next leg with a job out on the roads, mainly out west. A bit of a bonus from the floods though, some of my photos were selected for the documentary that aired last Sunday night on the weather channel. On top of that the local paper saw it and wants to get some background and also want to use some of the photos, and to cap it all I got nominated for a “Disaster Hero” award, wow 🙂

Not much bike riding for me recently, but I did a camping trip out at Barcaldine over Anzac Day weekend, to meet some of the people I rode with on the Long Ride and Rumble to the Rock trips. Quite a few of these were going to do the Rumble to Broome, on the north west coast of Australia, so we were meeting to see them off as well. They will be raising money for Prostate Cancer on the way. I spent a few days out here and also did some Geocaching during the ride out and back, so it was a leisurely ride and good weather. I even found a few dirt roads to play on even though one of them was a bit knarley!

So a few old grave sites visited, before stopping at a local servo for the usual, now lucky for me they had a sign there, or I would have been pissed off, but not as much as the cleaner!

A bit of local history, part of my Geocaching part of the ride 🙂

So after reaching Barcaldine late afternoon and setting up the campsite, I had a few beers down the pubs, there are 6 of them down the main street, beer drinkers heaven 🙂 I found one that had the footy live, so that was all good, go the Broncos! Next day was a Geocache day, I was planning on seeding some caches out into the world, but needed co-ordinates, so I went for a ride, as you do. The first was at Back Creek Bore.

The rest of the day was getting the caches ready to place and reading a book, before heading up the pub for some beers and to meet more of the arrivals. As I was not sure about attending, I had no idea where they were all staying, but it turned out to be at the other caravan park, up the road, so I wandered up there for the session, took my own rum of course 😉 This is Mick, he lives near my town and met him on both trips, he just survived a horrific crash on his Harley and is getting better, hopefully to ride again, get well soon Mick 🙂

And the fairy girls, always having way too much fun these two! At least this time they did not have attachments! But they always manage to get people to cough up some donations for the cancer fund, so goodonyas 🙂

Anyway, the night progressed as you would expect it too and I staggered the 1km to my bed very late!

Next day was home time, not an early start but as it is only 650km to home, no worries. I stopped on the way to seed the caches I had made, the first at the Tree of Knowledge, in the main street of Barky. Then I headed east and I had noticed that the table drains out here were still chockers, with quite a few lakes appearing where they normally aren’t, attracts the local wildlife though and looks better than brown dry grass!

Here is a thought on cooking on the road, I had bought a sausage roll earlier for smoko, a Mrs Macs of course and found a way of keeping it hot, tucked in nicely on top of the front cylinder 🙂

The idea worked and it tasted great 🙂 Heading east and into Jericho, this small town is on the Jordon River and south of Lake Galilee, hence the name, well they built a stone sculpture depicting the original middle eastern place of the same name, I left a cache here 🙂 I also left a few more between Jericho and Rubyvale, so get out there and find them 🙂

I am thinking of going to this years Horizons Unlimited meeting, it will depend on if I can afford the time off, if I lose my gig out on the work crews, then it could cost me thousands in lost income. But, it would be a nice weekend, so I may choose to go anyway, if I can sort out a relief person, we shall see.

These meetings for those who don’t know, are for adventure motorcycle travelers and during the weekend, as well as rides of the local area, there are ‘break out’ sessions, where equipment is evaluated and demonstrated, for example, your choice of bed against others, your stove against others. Also, things like “how to’s”, change a bike tyre, remove a helmet from a crashed rider, things like that, great stuff to watch, listen and do.

During the evenings, there are presentations from other travelers from all around the world, who talk/slideshow about trips they have done. These are fun and if you intend to go to those countries, invaluable for first hand knowledge from someone who has been there done that. I spruiked at last years event, sorry for all those who needed sleep, I was still going at 2am I think, rum does that to me 😉 I may do a shorter version this year, try anyway 🙂

Anyway, thats all for now, rubber side down

Cheers
TravellingStrom