THIS IS WHERE WE ARE GOING

ALICE SPRINGS HOG RALLY & AYRES ROCK

    Two long days on the bike -- approximately 1200 km -- saw us arrive in Alice Springs via the Barkly Homestead and Tennant Creek on Friday, 3rd September for the commencement of our long-awaited Hog Rally.


    We have enjoyed great weather over the 6000 kilometres so it had to change and it sure did when the sky opened for the last 100. We were reduced to a speed of 50 km/ph and had to lean the bike into the wind. This is the price you pay when you ride.


    Barkly Homestead was a great place to relax for an hour or so and our campsite at    Tennant Creek was a green and welcomed respite. We learnt what keeps the town of 3000 alive. Welfare!!


    Alice Springs with a population of 28,000 (8000 indigenous) is quite amazing and not at all what we expected. Everyone we spoke to loved the place even though there are major problems with the Aboriginal community which is mainly due to alcohol .



    Our Hog Rally was fantastic and the Alice Chapter made us so welcome.
    The highlight for Marie-Louise must surely have been riding the bike through the Bojangles Hotel, trailer in tow.
    The whole event was being broadcast around the world live.
         Here is a comment from their web site regarding how popular this pub is.

"Congratulations Bojangles for a record 5.2 million hits in a month!"


   We entered our bike and trailer in the Show and Shine mainly because so many people were
asking about our camper trailer.  No trophy but lots of interest.


   Monday morning, 5am and the bus arrived to take the two of us along with Stefan aged 15,
Anne-Louise, 13, Erika, 11 and Yoshi, 7 (Marie-Louise's grandkids) to Ayers Rock, King's 
Canyon and the Olgas. 
   No words needed except to say: 6.2 km walk around King's Canyon on the first day, and
10.2 km around The Rock on the second. 
   This was no small feat for kids especially Yoshi and Erika. 
   A 1000 kilometre round trip in 2 days; an early night by all is due.

Our Wedding Day Wed 26th January 2011

Arranging all the details of a wedding when you are traveling around the continent wasn't always easy. Starting with the rings, they were bought in Sydney and picked up in Perth. Graeme's wedding costume was ordered in Perth and picked up in Melbourne. My wedding dress was also bought in Perth and sent to Frances by mail to Melbourne. We met with Per-Anders Sandgren, the priest about 3 times during flying visits to Melbourne and so on.

However the big day finally arrived and everything fell into place. 

We got married in the Swedish Church on St Georges Rd in Toorak, Melbourne.

Jade, our flower girl stole the show!

Frances was our main help in organizing the wedding.

 We had over 100 family and friends at the ceremony and reception which was fantastic.

Finally Mr and Mrs Corin,               and then there was Jade, Sebastian and Elijah!

Reception followed and "The General" from Katherine NT and his band entertained us.

Thank you to all our friends and family for coming and for all love and support that made our day so special and unforgettable.

Welcome to follow our new adventures on our new blog
www. bundanoonlodge.blogspot.com

SEE YOU THERE!

Tamworth Country Music Festival

 Once we finished our tour we went off to Tamworth Country Music festival and this time we traveled in our 4-wheel drive and it was very comfortable and a welcome change from living on our bike for 5 months. It has been a longstanding dream of mine to go to this festival and Graeme was very happy to book it all. We also had the company of one of my best friends Denise and her husband David.

We had an awesome week there. The music and performance of the "stars" exceeded our expectations. We saw Adam Harvey, Beccy Cole, Troy Casser-Daly, John Williamson, Lee Kernigham, Casey Chambers and many others.

We also got onto the dance floor and practiced some line dancing, swing and more which we liked so much that we will try to keep it up. The day of our wedding was coming closer and closer and on the 23rd January we commenced our journey down to Melbourne for our big day on the 26th January 2011.

Bunnings Camden the next day, without the trailer of course!

The end of Our Tour around Australia and the start of our Next Chapter

On the 5th January 2011 we completed our tour around Australia in the same Bunnings car park we started from. We road 22 653 km and it took us 5 months to complete our journey. It has been an awesome experience and we arrived home more in love than when we left.  

We will come back to our blog readers from Tamworth Country festival.

Thank you to all the readers for sharing our journey with us!

Echuca to Camden our last day

Echuca is an exciting Murray River town where the river boats depart from and it is full of restaurants, cafes and quaint B&Bs. We stayed at the River Gallery Inn enjoying a lovely Greek meal at Nicks.
 A fitting place for our final dinner and I enjoyed it. My diet sure has changed from the pub steaks I used to eat most nights 12 months ago!!

We only stayed for one night and didn't have time to explore the town fully, but we did have time to buy a couple of things for our future home. We will come back and explore this whole area more at another time. Back on the road the following morning. 

There were big problems with the tow bar and being a public holiday I was concerned we would be stuck here but Bunnings was open so I replaced the strap that was broken.

We had purchased a Horse Float on eBay and again God was watching over us because Mick the guy we bought it off said pop in and I will weld it for you as he lives in Albury. He spent a good hour welding the broken parts .

 It was around 4pm before we could commence our final part of the journey. 

We checked the tow-bar as we traveled and it looked good initially. Around 10PM we drove into Bundanoon Motel and it was foggy and wet as the GPS had taken us a short cut along a dirt road!!!! The trailer was hanging on by a thread and almost touching the ground.  When we got off the bike it was completely broken on one side and on the other one small piece was all that was left. We could not have gone another km and we were certainly carried home in the hands of God as there is no other explanation. I totally dismantled the tow-bar the following morning, never to be used again and I will do my best to prevent others from towing a trailer on a bike in the future.
I have since found out this happens all the time and there were 80 Accidents involving  bikes with trailers on the way to and from the Ulysses Agm.
In the morning we will do the short ride to Bunnings without the trailer .

Horsham to Echuca

We took off from Horsham following the GPS that lead us along small country roads towards Echuca. 

We were traveling along the huge wheat fields again and the farmers were harvesting.
 We stopped by the roadside to photograph a combined harvester.
 The farmer stopped and invited us in for a ride.
 This was an amazing experience as the whole process is very automated. A GPS did the steering and other technology monitored everything from the moisture in the wheat to how many tones per acre etc etc  .
The Farmer was a third generation farmer and was very happy. This was the best crop in his life time returning 2 tonnes to the acre at a price of $360 per tonne. He has 6000 acres meaning a pay day of $4,000,000 and he also has 2500 sheep.
It was good to see a farmer not whinging! He said they were debt free and had just bought the neighbours farm so now he had something to pay off.
The Combined harvester was worth $500,000 to replace and is worth every penny. The machine does the harvesting, spitting out the wheat into a big bin on a tractor with the chaff being left on the ground for the sheep to eat at a later stage . The tractor offloads onto moveable silos. Trucks were then coming and transporting the wheat to the main depots.

We stopped for lunch in a rest area and discovered that the tow-bar was in a very bad condition. Graeme needed some wire to make up for the broken welds and turning around he found exactly what he was looking for a few meters away. Needless to say we thanked God and prayed before we continued our journey. 

One broken part, amongst many!!

Handorf to Horsham and the Salmela family

We Caught up with Nicole and Marko and our 2 boys in Horsham. Graeme gave them a quick ride on his bike and we relaxed enjoying their company and Nicole's great cooking .
We saw in the New Year getting to bed at 2.30 am and stayed 3 nights before heading to Echuca for our last night before Sydney and the end of this amazing trip.

Nicole, Marko and our God sons Sebastian and Elijah

We had a great couple of days here, talking, eating, walking and even visiting a farm with a couple of horses. It was a good rest before we embarked on the last leg of our trip back to Camden outside Sydney where we commenced our trip.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Wishing all our blog readers a Very Happy New Year and may 2011 be a GREAT year for you all!

Graeme and Marie-Louise

Yorke Peninsula and Christmas 2010

We were traveling along enormous grain fields as we rode up and down the Eyre Peninsula and then down the Yorke Peninsula. It is the middle of harvesting and millions of tonnes of grain are filling up trucks, trains, and big silos. It is so interesting to see and ponder that this is the start of the bread loaves we buy in the supermarket. I wouldn't like to be a farmer here, the fields are so big. Driving a big harvester day in and day out, you still wouldn't feel you are getting anywhere! 

 

 We arrived at Marion Bay on 22nd Dec, where Heather and Bill where waiting and welcomed us into their beautiful home, which became our "home away from home" over Christmas. 

We had some great fellowship together before they took off to Adeleide to celebrate Christmas with family for a few days and they returned on the 26th Dec.


Kylie arrived from Melbourne on Christmas Eve in her hire car from Adelaide airport and kept us entertained for the next few days. We had a Swedish style Christmas dinner with Christmas carols from the Sydney Music Bowl in Melbourne, compliments of Channel 9.

 

We explored the Peninsula and the Innes National Park 
and enjoyed more breathtaking views. We have become so spoilt and have seen so much. We are never taking it for granted, we are very thankful every day for the privilege of traveling around like this.

 All good things come to an end and soon the time came for us to move on so we could make it to Horsham and the Salmela family for New Years celebrations. We traveled to the German township of Hanhdorf in the Adelaide Hills, which was an easy distance of about 300 km. We had booked into a really nice motel right on the main street. The place was filled with holiday makers and cafés and shops of all kinds

However the main memory of Handorf would be our visits to Gale and Jim who's residence was no 85 on the main street. At the back of the house was the biggest surprise, a farm in the middle of this busy town. 

On the 30th Dec we continue our journey towards Horsham and we are getting closer and closer to home. We will have a very busy month in January with Tamworth Country festival and our soon upcoming wedding!!