Dec 1 2017, the Cairns temp is getting up to 32c and the humidity is up to 80% and rising to 100% during the rainy season starting early Feb, going by past seasons. I (Patrick ) decided to ride solo to Brisbane on my recently imported XTZ 750 with only 8,105 kms on the clock and to see if the bike will rise to the challenge. I will pick Belinda up at the Brisbane airport to save her from the long tedious kms that the Queensland outback has to offer.

Having ridden the coast many times, I thought the interior from Mount Garnet south to Charters towers and on to Emerald before veering toward the coast and Brisbane.

Roads were fine, fuel was plentiful, especially with my 600kms range and accomodation was adequate. The Queensland interior has had a dousing over the past few months, so creek and rivers and billabongs were full with plenty of greenery everywhere, hence I hardly saw a Kangaroo or Emu on the whole drive down, which is nice for the case of safety. The problem was that temps rose to 40c everyday forcing an early 5:00 start everyday with a finish around 13:00 .

After picking up Belinda, our first stop was to visit Ken and Carol Duval on Peter and Kaye Forwood's acreage inland of Sunshine coast, Kilcoy where the Bell Birds provided a musical backdrop. For those of you who don't know them, Ken and Carol have been travelling around the world on their 1985 BMW R80gs and have accumulated 860,000kms on that bike. The Forwoods have been to every country in the world on their 1995 Harley Electroglide clocking up 660,000kms. It will be a while before we catch up.

Hanka and Erik Forkert provided a mini H/U meeting with Mark and Carlie Schmitt, who sold us their year old Vstrom 650 in Rio de Janeiro back in 2014. We rode the bike Venezuela, Columbia and south to Chile.

Our first house sit was over Christmas for friends Murray and Leive Frame just south of Brisbane and the south again to Ocean Shores near Byron Bay for a family reunion with Paul (Belinda's brother), wife Jacqui with kids Daniel and Hannah on their acreage.

An enjoyable week was spent in a holiday house on the river mouth outside of Coffs Harbour, doing every water sport imaginable, before heading toward our next house sit in Avalon Beach north of Sydney to walk the cutest little Snoodle. All dogs are forbidden on most city beaches so we would place the little tike into a front loading backpack with his face forward. It worked a treat and even worked in an Uber, where the driver had no idea that we had a dog.

Moving constantly south we stayed in the famous Bondi beach, but our problem was that the temp had risen to 47.3 c and stayed that way for three days. Our only salvage was the walk from Bondi to Kudji Beach, where the ocean breezes cooled the air to 28c, which was an increadable relief.

As time was getting close for our return home, we needed a storage for the bike so we emailed the H/U Sydney communitee to see if anyone had some space. Errol Goodenough answered our call from the beautiful Blue Mountains above Sydney, so off we went. Enroute we met up with another H/U couple ,Peter and Kim Daskalopoulos with their BMW who really showed us around the hills.

Once the bike was stored inSydney, we were free to embark on a cheap 71 day criuse from Sydney to England through the Suez Canal.

While in London, our old friends Tim and Monica Marshfield, who me met in Costa Rica in 2001, offered to host us and lend us their spare car. We said no to the lend offer but said we would rent it from them, so off we went on a three month road trip  through the UK.

Heading south to Mousehole to meet up with our new found friends James and jacki Baker and explore the area together.

Meandering north , our intention was to partake in the H/U meeting in Hay Wire, and meet up with old friends Ken and Carol Duval on their BMW r100gs from the 1980s, Javier and Sandra from Dakar Motos in Buenos Aires on their 1998 Africa Twin. There were too many friends and aquaintances there to mention them all. What a great network and inspirational meeting it was with three days of lectures and partied and just so many travellers stories.

On to explore Wales, Ireland and Scotland to chase up some of our ancestral history. Most interesting of which was Pat's Lomont relatives from the 1600s and their battle of the Clans with the Cambells. Unfortunately the Lomonts lost and had their two castles destroyed and loss of life from one siege was about 350 males.

The Nc 500 route running the northern circumferance of Scotland , huggling the coast all the way through some very rugged landscape. Luckily we had the weather for it , with the local saying that it was the best summer since 1976. The normally thunderous seas were calm as a lake and the usual horizontal rain was no where to be seen.

Our very old friends from Canada and my university days were in Edinborough, visiting their ancestral home while on their Goldwing. Another roadtrip together was inevitable, so we wiggled our way across Scotland and down to England to be hosted by our old friend and inspiration Ian Coates who left home at 60 on hisAfrica Twin and returned home 12 years later.

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