It's been a long road since the idea came to us to ride the bike around Australia,the first question was whether to buy a bike over there or to take ours,decided on the latter,she's a 1985 BMW R80RT with alot of engine and gearbox noise,so into the workshop she went,2 months later and a fair few dollars is now ready for the big adventure.
Well we have arrived,Spent two weeks waiting for the bike to be offloaded from the boat,so hired a real cheap camper van and toured around Queensland.
The bike became available on the 11th Dec,so went and paid the compulsory 3rd party insurance ($300 aus) .Paid another $190 aus for customs clearance,picked up a tempory driving permit from Queensland transport (free) .
We got to Stanthorpe,found a camp site ($14),and went to a place called Aus/jobs to find a job,they took all our details,next day we got a call to say they have found us work,Anne got a job in the fruit packing shed at Balandene,I got a job picking plums just down the road from there,so turned out I could drop Anne off and carry on to my work,I actually moved from plums to nectarines and peaches,graduating to driving the tractor that towed a mobile picking platform with 2 pickers on it which suited me fine.The weather varied alot in Stanthorpe wcich is on the Queensland/NSW border,most of t
Really good to be on the road again,decided to travel through the hinterland and visit all the small country towns between Q/land and Melbourne.So we left Stanthorpe on the20/1/04 and headed for Glen Inness about 200kms down the road,booked into a motel and stayed 2 nights,was able to do some fossicking for saphires and rubys here so the locals told us,we found nothing!