All photos related to this blog entry can be found at Grant & Julie

Early Morning Start - Hay

Time to leave Brisbane and we have decided to whip down to Adelaide rather than womble along.

A 'glitch in the matrix' has seen us cancelling our South African stop over and heading straight to London, via Singapore, has resulted in an urgency to sending the bike as we will be four weeks early in the UK.
A big thanks to Peter from Cairns Central Travel for waving his magic wand and fixing the mess.

Ipswitch and Toowoomba sped by, crossing the Great Dividing Range we free camped at a roadside stop somewhere between two towns. It wasn't a bad spot, nice and scrubby, a little noisy but all was ok... until...

Trying to sleep Jules was kept awake by critters rummaging in the front vestibule of the tent. Kangaroos? Echidnas? Tyrannosaurus Rex? (Things always seem scarier and bigger in the dark!) She tried to put it out of her mind until the pots and pans started crashing about. Waking Grant to investigate, the culprit was discovered to be a little field mouse. Jules, furnished with earplugs slept soundly while Grant lay awake listening to the continued carry on.

In the morning the devastation was fully realised. The little blighter and his army of friends broke into the cooking bag and devoured the crackers and commenced on the porridge.

A lesson was learnt. Camping in the grain belt, just after the harvest and some heavy rains equals rampant hungry mice. Lock up your food bag.....

Until the following night...(da da da dun) Spending the night in a safe, secure and sterile campground... the killer mice attached again. WHO LEFT THE FOOD OUT?

We escaped with our lives. In all seriousness we were very glad they did not take a liking to tent fabric. Next two nights were motel nights!

Mice in Australia are seriously huge!?!

We took a break at Parkes in New South Wales. This is sheep grazing town is famous for ‘The Dish’ or the CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope.

This telescope has been a forerunner of design and innovation through out its life. It operates approximately 85% of the year, has a down time of 10% for maintenance/testing and 5% of the year it is not operational due to bad weather – high winds.

It was built in 1961 and the basic structure has remained unchanged, however, technological upgrades over time has made the telescope ten thousand times more sensitive than when it was commissioned.

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Early morning conversation at West Wyalong

SCENE: AT THE PETROL BOWSER, GRANT FILLING BIKE WITH FUEL, GENTEEL FARMER EXITS HIS VEHICLE

FARMER: How far ya headin’?

GRANT: Adelaide. [pause] Then we ship the bike to Europe for the summer and will head down North and West Africa for the winter.

FARMER: I would have done that when I was younger. I am too old now. I’ve been riding bikes for years, never registered one though. Always kept em’ on the farm. My son wanted to register a bike for the road once. Told him if he did I’d burn it.

GRANT: [smile and nod, hang up petrol pump nozzle]

We read a quote recently on Word Porn (Face Book) – ‘A comfort zone is a really nice place, but nothing ever grows there’.

Australia