"everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives"The first time we tried to leave Sydney the fog was so thick and the rain was so hard that it made our face masks fog up that we pulled in to have lunch and stalled in an aborigine culture center. The rain never let up so we found an upstairs 3 bedroom flat surrounded by tropical trees and flowers and birds. It was within walking distance of the ocean and people were surfing. The next morning it was still raining pretty hard. Two little green, red & yellow birds were huddling together against the sliding glass door. I know they wanted me to open the door and let them in. We went closer to Sydney to find internet and ended up using McDonalds. The next day we went north and crossed the Blue Mountains where it wasn’t so high, still getting rained on. By the time we had crossed the mountains and arrived at Orange ,we pitched our tent in a campground where the ground was pretty saturated. We were camping with cherry pickers. There was a group of french speaking young people. But by 6am it was raining hard on us again. We pulled into a little town called Sturt to use the post office and internet. The internet café was closed for a funeral in hall next to it, but the retired postmaster came to our rescue. He opened the shop, served us coffee, tea and fairy cakes and conversation while Bob used the internet. You know Americans in this small town was more exciting than the old fellow could stand.

We checked into a motel in Dubbo by about 3:30 because it was raining so hard and traffic was terribly backed up. There are 5 highways that come into town but water was closing roads and bridges. The next morning traffic was still backed up for blocks but we got out of town. A few miles out is where Bob took the picture of the flooding river and big round hay bales floating down stream. We had to cross water over the road 4 or 5 times that day but we were able to pick the center of the road and never over 6 inches deep. It wasn’t raining when we got to Copar, a town where they found copper in 1870, but it was predicted so we got a motel again. And the town was having a Marti Grau party that Saturday night. People and dogs were dressed up, goodies and things for sale on the sidewalk, old Fergusen tractors and one McCormick tractor on display. They had set a lowboy set up as a stage and people were singing Christmas carols.

We had a lovely day on our way to Broken Hill. It was our first day in two weeks without rain! But we found a nice room queen bed, pool and internet and it seems very quite and private. And it was raining by 6pm. The rain out here is not so bad as it seems to last a short while then dry out. When we were on the coast it was rain all the time, just changed from lite to heavy.

The rain almost stopped and we set out from a nice motel we had sogged into last night

The combination of rain, fog and lots of traffic made it unsafe to continue west. So we waited here for a couple of hours hoping it would lift then went back to coast and found a nice place to dry out.

Here we are within walking distance of the ocean with much tropical growth outside our window

These two bird wanted in real bad, they did not like the rain ether.

Hotel in small town we stopped in to use internet, the small towns are neat and clean looking like they have not changed in decades.

Macquarie River flooding, saw seven hay bales go by in the short time we were there. The river was not to reach peak flow for 8 more hours.

Thunder storm in the distance that we had to ride through

The long straight road, The land is greener than normal due to the rain. This area has just gone through 13 years of drought, floods may be a problem but most are glad to see the rain.

Martha was looking at traffic and not at me and ran in to me denting can. I caught the bike, was all I could do to hold it up but with no way to tell Martha to back off I ended up dropping it right in the middle of traffic,

Repairs to Sportster, silage tape, better than duct tape