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.