South or North?

Not to get all Spanish soap opera on you all but already 2020 was already turning out to be a pretty shit year for us both. Then old mate munched on a bat and the rest is history.

Back before Wuhan Chan and his virus had started to change life as we know it, The Gypsy wandered in one day to the lounge, where I was doing some of my best work on the couch, with her pineapple bobbing from side to side, she then dropped ¨do you want to cycle from Perth to Melbourne?¨ At this stage Annie hadn’t heard of the Nullabor or what something like this actually involved. Her naivety and lack of thought for the finer details of the trip immediately had me sign up for the adventure.

With everything that is going on it was good to have a little project to focus on and something to look forward to when all this shit is over. Personally I was going that well with life, that when all the restrictions and lockdowns came in it was one of the first times I enjoyed Sydney. No more traffic jams and less wankers around in general. I found it a positive.

¨The Kung Flu¨ has changed our plans since then. Originally the idea was Perth to Melbourne, and the more we looked at the map the bolder our plans got. Instead of riding the Eyre highway across we were going to follow the coast to Esperance and then follow the Old telegraph line past Israelite bay to Bilbunya dunes, up on to the Baxter cliffs and meet the Eyre highway up near Caiguna.

The only problem we had was we couldn’t find any information on people riding this before. I’m sure it has been done, just none have bothered to write about it. The only thing we came across was an old post on a bike forum from back in 2012 asking if anyone wanted to give it a go. I ended up tracking down the author of the post and it turns out they never ended up doing it. Life and all the other stuff that comes with it got in the way for them. Since then I’ve spoke to Al a few times about doing something like this. He has been a wealth of knowledge. It was quite refreshing and comforting having someone back you in and encourage you to give it a crack, instead of the ¨don’t do it you will die ¨sort of encouragement we have had previously. Al keeps things pretty simple and all the tips from years of touring have been much appreciated and like Annie said ¨if we can’t ride our bikes because it is too rough our legs still work ¨. Hopefully the borders open up so we can give it a go.

Having said that it is a pretty remote area and it does need to be respected. If we get into trouble we are on our own. All the 4×4 videos on youtube haven’t had a problem but I think us on our pushy´s with  2” tyres will find it a little tougher. We have switched to tubeless tyres for this trip hopefully that helps with punctures and riding on sand because of the lower pressures we can run. During the trip it’s certain we are going to find out they are called ¨push bikes¨ for a reason!

To help us carry enough food and water to get across that section we bought a bob ibex bike trailer that is now waiting for us at our mates house in Perth (cheers Rich).  The next problem was actually having access to water. We tried desalination ourselves by boiling seawater in a pot but it turns out google makes it sound easier than what it is in reality. That idea got quickly shelved. Al has a Katadyn survivor 35 hand pump desalinator from his years doing kayak trips. They are ex U.S military that are used in their life rafts if they get stuck at sea. Weighing in at 3.2kg and producing about 4.5 litres of water from an hr of pumping. Al suggested getting one and after a few attempts we finally won a bid on eBay. Hopefully, that along with our capacity to carry 26 litres of water between us should solve the water issue.

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Next was food, Annie came up with the master plan of buying a dehydrator and shipping a box of food to Esperance for us to collect when we get there. It turns out you can pretty much dehydrate anything. It even looks like Ana has put my head in there. I am looking that rough. It takes a long time to dehydrate stuff, Ana has it running overnight most nights, but we think the effort will be worth it. It really does save a lot of weight. Only problem is we didn’t check with W.A border control first about if we can bring anything over. Turns out we can but will be down to the officer at the border to make the final call if we have dehydrated it properly. Hopefully they are legends and the effort will be worth it.

But all this is up in the air atm, when we first planned for this we thought for sure the borders will be open by now. Sadly because all you filthy Victorians have been coughing over each other and not washing your hands properly everything is in a little bit of limbo. We are just making it up as we go now. So on Thursday we are going to stuff ourselves with Wan´s breakfast burger from the Zebra cafe in Maroubra, ride past the real estate to hand the keys in and then off to central station to catch a train to Katoomba and the Blue Mountains. It’s going to be freezing at night time but hopefully the scenery will make up for it. Otherwise I will cop an earful from Ana. From there we are going to head south and cut across to the coast past Nowra and follow that down to Merimbula. From there it will depends on if you Mexicans in Victoria have been washing your hands and coughing into your elbows properly. If the virus stuff has died down and there’s been news on a W.A border opening we will head inland and drop into Victoria from either Bombala or Jindabyne. Or if the media is correct and the world is going to end in a fireball of disease and economic destruction we will just keep pedalling west towards South Australia and see what’s happening over there. Fingers crossed all this shit dies down soon. I’m sure all you guys have had a gutful as well. Looking forward to seeing you all at home and catching up over a beer.

Ana & Matt

P.s If you have made it this far well done. However scrap all that crap I have just written. The plans have changed. Yesterday we decided to head North. We got a transfer car from a rental company in Sydney and we are heading to Cairns. We are going to cycle from Cairns up to Cooktown then do a loop and head back down south. At least it will be a bit warmer and the Gypsy will not give me shit for freezing to death.