Summer Journeys - Road to Adelaide

This leg of the trip was filled with highs and lows. Examples of a high is stopping in Mt Gambier an experiencing extreme blueness or visiting Kingston SE. An example of a low is the 145km of nothingness between Kingston and Meningie.

I get a little excited about state borders

We left Nelson fairly early on New Years Day. Michelle, ever the geologist, was very excited about witnessing the crater and blue lake. I will not lie, it actually was quite amazing and very, very blue.

Following some advice from a local Michelle and I stopped by the local motorbike races. We watched a couple of laps and left a little disappointed.
We continued up the Princes Highway stopping in Robe and Kingston SE (I think the SE stands for South East - if anyone knows please leave a comment). Robe has both an interesting name and an entry in Lonely Planet - but it seemed like a fairly boring place. We had lunch there - I think it was an amazing pizza.

Michelle locates us on the local map at Kingston SE

Kingston, on the other hand, was great. There was a stone menagerie, a giant lobster, random tiles, weather predicting rocks, and even a sun dial!After Kingston was a crapload of nothing. The road was straight and empty; we couldn't see the beach. Every now and then we would pull over to look at rock stacks (as directed by little roadsigns with cameras).

Only some people will get this joke (also in Kingston)

Suprisingly these were often better than the ones on the Great Ocean Road (ie the twelve apostles), just without the marketing of Victoria.

There was a little bit of excitement when we came across humourously named places such as Chinamen's Wells and Policemans Point (there were neither chinamen or policemen), but two chuckles didn't really liven up the hour and a half on the road.

The Kingston sundial

By the time we got to Meningie it was getting late in the evening, but Michelle and stopped to stretch our legs and do a bit of exercise at the local playground. Then we pushed on to the Mighty Murray.

The Murray, which will be a feature of a future blog post, had me ecstatically excited.

This was our first sighting - there will be many, many more

We stopped off in Tailem Bend, named after the sharp bend in the Murray. It has some history with trains I think, as there was a locomotive near the entrance to the town.After a brief rest we completed the final 100kms to Michelle's cousins house (Geoff - more on him later), where we ate a pasta feast, drank home brew and slept.

For those of you who ride motorbikes observe the angle of the 'bag rack' in the shadow.
I kept an eye on it all the way from Torquay and I am 110% surprised it didn't snap off.

Night of the pie

There's is something about Georgia's outrageousness that is somewhat contagious, and so if you you knew her you would clearly understand how the following scenario panned out. Whilst we were enjoying an episode of masterchef (I think as a guy I'm not supposed to admit to liking this particular program, but its awesomeness knows no bounds) we started discussing pie.
The conversation quickly degenerated into a yelling match over which pie was best with the end result being a night of pie. That is three courses; all pie.

Three courses of pie all in an oven

Knowing our culinary skills were not complete without ElleBro we coerced her to join the pie team by explaining the benefits of the idea (you get to eat pie all night).

Entrée and main cooking side by side

Then we set out to construct our dream meal.

The beer bottles were an intricate part of our preparation - they were used to roll the pastry. They were also empty before we started.

The entrée was a sage, leek, and goat's cheese tart - an idea stolen from the Masterchef website. It was not only delicious but allowed me to feel cultured and aloof from the everyday riffraff (because I was eating goat's cheese).

I'm not sure what looks better, the tarts or Georgia photography

The main was difficult to decide - meat pie is tasty because it provides a great excuse to eat equal amounts of tomato sauce as dinner without insulting the chef. Chicken pie is tasty because it has chicken. However, the final decision was to make a beef and guiness stew, and then throw it into a pie. This resulted in some of the best cooked potato and beef I've ever had. It also tasted like Guinness. The best part about this dish was that to eat it all we pretty much needed spoons to finish up the stew sauce.

I was a little bit excited about this experiment.

Dessert was apple pie. Hilarious because something went wrong with actually making the pie dough, so we turned it into biscuit towers (everything tastes better if it's in tower form). The best part of this dish wasn't that I got to eat the remaining stewed apples, but that my room has smelt of apples and cinnamon ever since!

Apple Biscuit Towers

The evening was finished off by drinking truly terrible wine, eating a citrus salad (that's a masterchef joke - if you were cool you would understand) and watching Black Books.

Elle and Georgia ready for dinner.

Summer Journeys - The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road was a magnificent leg of the trip. Michelle and I competed it in two parts. the first day we left all our luggage in Torquay and traveled through to Port Campbell and watched a motorcyclist nearly die.

At a deserted beach

In the second part we followed the Princes Highway to Port Campbell, completed the Great Ocean Road, nearly died, and than rode to Nelson (near the SA border) to celebrate New Years Eve.

Small kids with big ideas - they know how to enjoy camping

The traffic was a bit thick, but the scenery made up for it. We were either following the coastline or winding our way through forested national parks.

Bushwalking action shot

It was in a national park that some fool on a motorbike attempted to overtake a whole line of cars, only to have some vehicles round a corner traveling in the opposite direction. The oncoming vehicles had to swerve off the road to avoid a collision.

Not all motorists are as lucky ......this is a speed deterrent at Port Campbell

We stopped in Lorne for Brekkie, and then went bushwalking to Cumberland Falls (advice I received from a store owner in Cann River.

Michelle points out Cumberland falls

Lunch was at a picturesque pub in Apollo Bay followed by a pretty average dinner in Port Campbell.

Lunch at Apollo Bay (Day 1)

After a days rest in Torquay we loaded up the bike and finished our sightseeing on the Great Ocean Road.

The Razorback

At the twelve apostles I was amazed to see someone who was a splitting image of an acquaintance of mine, and than astounded when ten minutes later it turned out to actually be Camilla from Canberra.

Some of the twelve apostles

After leaving the GOR Michelle and I were greeted by stupendously high and erratic winds. The buffeting wind wold blow the entire bike across the road and for half an hour my sole goal was not to crash.

The Grotto

Ten minutes before Warrnambool whilst on a bridge crossing a river the wind suddenly changed direction (again), sending us careening towards the railing of the bridge.

The Lock Ard Gorge

For the second time in ten years of riding I saw a life ending crash, but thankfully I was able to regain control moments before impact.

Gratuitous tourist photo

We stopped for a poor lunch to celebrate life in Warrnambool.
During the final leg of the journey Michelle and I stopped in Port Fairy, an absolutely lovely little town. We stopped by a pub and visited the beach. Unfortunately there wasn't any accommodation left so we pushed on to Nelson.

A beach (at Apollo Bay though)

We found a small caravan park where we set up my hootchie buy tying it to my bike. The other guests were absolutely amazed that we would sleep in something that offered such little protection (they all had massive caravans and tents). It was New Years Eve, so Michelle and I went to the pub across the road for dinner and a bunch of beers. We retired to our humble 'tent' just after midnight.

A spectacular photo that sums up the entire trip

Fremantle Conference

Fenner Hall, being the fine establishment that it is, sent me to Fremantle at the beginning of July to learn how to improve the first year experience in higher education. As far as conferences go it was okay, but the real bonus was being able to catch up with old Fenner friends who have moved to the large state of WA.

Fremantle in 2D form

On my first night Simon and I met up in a pub, sampled a couple of paddles of their (tasty) beer, before retiring to his place. We then plugged in his old playstation and indulged in the original Time Crisis.

Paddles of what was once beer

I saw the sights of Fremantle on the Wendesday and Friday. I went for a short run along the coast - heading south - passing places such as the Round House, the Little Creatures Brewery, and the Fremantle Beach.

On Friday I visited the Shipwreck museum

Part of a restored ship

A cannon - I think I could find a use for this in the Fenner Carparks

and went on the Fremantle Prison 'Ghost Tour', which was surprisingly good, and in all honesty gave me the best ideas to implement back at Fenner (a gun tower maybe).

Whipping post for 'post' Thursday night antics

The gallows - set up on the roof of Fenner for extra excitement

Saturday brought Jeremy up to Fremantle and we joined forces with the meager Gold Coast fans to support the Suns in their endeavour to defeat the Fremantle Dockers in Perth. It was Pavlich's 250th game to which added to the occassion.

A ball up at the Sun's attacking end

This was followed by dinner and a bucket load of beers with Sim at the Little Creatures Brewery.

Little Creatures Brewery from the outside

Little Creatures Brewery from the inside - Sim and Jeremy sharing a few obnoxiously loud ones with me.

It was with a heavy heart (and throbbing head) I had to leave behind footy and this fabulous tasting mango beer and return to Canberra.

Summer Journeys - Torquay

So, I’m in Melbourne with as motorbike and a grand scheme to travel the 850km or so to Adelaide with Michelle via the Great Ocean Road. It was a pretty simple plan with some minor difficulties, they being sports bike, passenger, luggage, Lorne Festival, and weather (that final comment will make sense later).

Michelle, or, as her T-shirt states - SuperWoman

The luggage problem was solved with multiple occy straps and the rest with sheer minded doggedness . I am always nervy riding around bigger cities because a) lots of traffic makes is unsettling in a strange place, and b) I don’t have any street directories for them and getting lost is easy. So Michelle and I wobbled off from my brother’s house on the 28^th of January heading towards out first destination: Torquay.

One gearsac, one hiking bag, 1 sleeping bag, 1 sleeping mat, 2 backpacks, 4 occy straps, 3000 kms

I giggled at the amount of traffic heading in the opposite direction for the cricket, but this humour was short lived as I took a wrong turn and immediately found myself stuck in said traffic. I swore multiple times whilst sweating in high heat in the traffic.

A beach at Torquay (not Bell's)

We were in traffic for the next 107km because of the Lorne festival and because the Great Ocean Road and Christmas a synonymous for the majority of the population of Melbourne.

Kleemo and I in our natural habitat performing an ancient meeting ritual

3-4 hours later we pull into Torquay stopping at Kleemo's humble abode, which we made the base of our operations for the Great Ocean Road. I was great catching up with old mate again and we got up to our usual tricks. We drank copious amounts of alcohol, played copious amounts of pool - I even won the first couple of games before Kleemo got his eye in (I lost the next million).

The intense concentration speaks volumes of the importance of this game

Kleemo surfed, I ran, and Michelle sun baked (literally). In between doing all this we feasted at Australia's best Coffee Club and scoffed amazing amounts of Gelato. Only once did I mention I'm friends with Layne Beachley's sister.

Also, what is a trip to visit Kleemo if you don't get to see your name written in pee!

Welcome to Australia!