The ride to Tom Price was quite tough. We had a 45km section of dirt road and we had no idea what condition the road was in as everyone we met had a different opinion on the condition of the road. Admittedly the road was not too bad apart from the red dust and the passing trucks which bathed us in fine red dirt. It was quite a long day of about 135km and the winds were not too bad until we reached the final stretch of 20km which follows the bottom of a valley and we almost blown away. For the last hour of the ride, after spending 4 days in the bush, all we could think about was steak and pizza. Everyone had told us that Tom Price was a large town so were were expecting to be able to ride into town on a Saturday night and find somewhere to have a good meal. We were wrong, everything was shut and we were forced to again pitch the tents and cook our own food.

Sunday morning we rode straight into town looking forward to a big breakfast. When we got into town the only bakery was shut and only one cafe was open. When we walked in and asked for breakfast their response was that they are too busy to cook breakfast an we can only have what was in the hot box. Needless to say we were quite disappointed. The town was very quiet on Sunday and most shops were closed. In the afternoon we joined a tour of the Rio Tinto mine which built the town. The mining machinery they use is incredible, after seeing the machines they use out there all of the construction machinery in the city look like toys in comparison.

After speaking with some of the other travelers and locals it became apparent that it would take us quite some time to cycle out to the gorges in the national park and that the roads are quite rough. We decided to see if we could hire a car to drive out to the national park. Unfortunately all of the cars for hire were reserved for the miners. We then spent some time trying to plan the rest of the trip as it was becoming apparent that we would run out of time if we spent some time checking out the national park. One of our plans was that we could take a tour out to the Karanjini national park and maybe the tour operator could take our bikes and leave us out there as that would save us a lot of time. We called the tour operator and he just so happened to be in town so he met with us. He was a very friendly and colorful fellow and was happy to give us a hand. The only problem was he only had a mini bus and was not sure if he could fit the bikes in so he offered to take us to his place and try to fit the bikes in his bus. It was only a 5 minute ride to his place but his wife was doing the shopping with the car so he actually ran alongside us back to his place. In the end we decided not to take the bikes as we would have difficulties in making to to Port Headland in time. So we got to relax for the rest of the day and on Tuesday we spent the day visiting the beautiful gorges of Karanjini. Its amazingly beautiful to see running water in a place where we did not see a single creek with water in it.

After some deliberation we decided to fly back to brisbane from the next town, Paraburdoo, so on Wednesday morning we posted the majority of our gear back home and cycled unloaded to Paraburdoo, which was 90km away and went very quickly as we did not have to cart around our gear. We were lucky as the town had a pub so we spent most of the evening at the bar. Late at night we then cycled to the airport which was 10km out of town. We had already posted back our tents so we had the luxury of sleeping in the red dirt in our sleeping bags. In the morning we checked in at the airport and were lucky not to get charged $200 for our excess baggage as the Qantas staff were in a good mood on the day. Surprisingly the little airport has 4 Boing 767s fly in every day to move the miners in and out of the town. The trip home was quite enjoyable and the feeling of being home was great.

All in all it was an amazing trip and we learned a lot. We will be adding a new page to the site shortly with descriptions of the gear we used and our experiences with same. Also I will be adding a slideshow of some of the panoramas that we Took during the trip.

Quite sometime since a decent internet connection, so this update is being written a day before it goes online. We are camped tonight at Beasley River Rest Stop on Nanuturra Munjina Road approximately 180km West of the Nanuturra Roadhouse (on the Route 1 highway).

Our trip back from Denham was awesome, we ended up finding a small township a few kilometers off the main road. It was a working sheep and cattle station called ‘Nanga’. We ended up with a cabin in the camping section of the station and soon met up with a couple we had met a few days ago at the ‘Nerren Nerren’ camping stop along the highway. We exchanged stories and even got to watch top gear in our retro 80′s style cabin. We realized that we hadn’t missed the television all that much as the headline story on Today Tonight was about the size of Julia Gillards ear lobes.

The following day was awesome, we didn’t have all that much distance to cover so we took sometime out to visit Shell Beach and the Stromalites. Some really nice natural attractions, Phil even took a swim at Shell Beach, it was rather cold and he did have some strange looks when he walked back to the bike dripping wet when others were in jumpers and beanies. We also passed a line of caterpillars, all 143 of them were in a single file on the road. There’s a little picture below of them.

When we made it back to the Overlander Roadhouse we had sometime to kill before boarding the bus. Just enough time to pack our bike for the trip, have dinner and a shower and relax. The bus took us up to another roadhouse called Nanutarra. We arrived at 3.30am and pitched tent, Justin woke up with a sore back because he fell asleep before bothering to inflate his mattress. We even managed to pitch the tents without pegs, simply unhooked the extrawheel and tied one end of the tent to the bike and the other to the trailer, problem solved. The roadhouse was super expensive, about $50 spent between us got us two bacon and egg burgers and two drinks. At least we didn’t feel too ripped off as we were warned about prices and it was the best feed in town. We got to use our Bio Magic water treatment for the first time at Nanutarra. A few drops of this awesome environmentally friendly, chemical free water treatment gave us suitable drinking water for the next few days. We have been keeping our water in the water bladders as shown below and refilling our bottles as need from the bladders.

We started our trip along a very remote road towards Tom Price, 280km of nothing but awesome scenery. We met a cyclist from Belgium who was traveling alone from Darwin to Perth and had already covered most of Australia by bike. It was interesting seeing his setup, very simple, neat and tidy. We had a quick chat and carried on some 105km yesterday. A little while down the road Phil’s buns of steel broke his seat rail leaving him lopsided. Lucky it was easy to fix by clamping it on either side, could have been quite a mission making a bush bike seat. We bush camped on the side of the road for the night and woke up to the worst head wind ever. We only managed 77km today and it took close on 7 hours. Today was awesome with the help of some friendly caravanners. The first couple flagged us down and were kind enough to give us 10L of water, although we had sufficient supplies, we would have kicked ourselves had we run short. It is 3 days between water stops, and we are using about 6L a day minimum. The creeks on this road are bone dry and it is hard to comprehend it can flood in such an area. The second couple pulled up as we were stopped for a breather and gave us cold drinks. The best Pepsi and Ginger beer we have had….. ever. We wish we had got contacts for these two couples to return the favor, such a nice gesture! Hopefully someone will do them good in return?

When we pulled up at tonight’s camp grounds, we were kindly offered a tea… or coffee as well as sausage and onion rolls, water and a free loan of a hammer to get our tent pegs in. We felt like we were in paradise and although we had planned to carry on cycling tonight we felt at home so we pitched the tents for the night.

Tomorrow we are headed for Tom Price (nearest township to Karijini National Park). We have about 100km to travel tomorrow, maybe shorter if the dirt road is suitable for our three wheeled rigs. We will post this update when we have telephone service, stock up on supplies and check out the gorges within the national park.

Enough said, check out the photos and the cool shots that Phil got last night. We had a clear sky and the full moon has gone away so there are stars everywhere!

Hope your having fun, enjoy the weekend, !!!!!

Justin and Phil

It has been sometime since we last updated the site, we apologise. Friday was a rather long day, over 100km with a fair bit of that being done after sunset. We arrived late, somewhere around 8.30 at the Overlander Roadhouse. It wasn’t quite what we were expecting, but they still had warm showers and a decent feed.

It was a late night, we spent some time planning the next two weeks as well as booking some bus tickets for a future leg of the trip. Phil took the chance of the awesome clear sky that night to get some good long exposure photography and it also gave us the chance to fix some stuff on the bikes.

We woke to a cold morning and had a rather late start, it was made even later because just as we were heading out of the roadhouse a couple turned up on their bicycles. They have been travelling for the past two years anti clockwise around Australia and have clocked 15,000km to date. We spent some time sharing stories before heading up the road (150km) towards Shark Bay.

The ride seemed to go for ever, we were both amazed at how long the peninsula was. The temperature dropped almost the instant that the sun went down and we were riding for the last 4 hours by torch light (130km in total). We both were expecting a small town in the middle of no where when all of sudden we saw a heap of lights in the distance and thought it was a massive cruise ship. Turns out it wasn’t, it was just that the main street in Denham is extremely well lit!

We have spent today relaxing and only rode 10km around town to visit the butcher, baker, hardware, information centre and local store. The bikes are now modified to carry our newly acquired fishing rods we purchased today (it will look funny in a few days time when we are in the desert with fishing rods on pushies). We spent the afternoon with Shrek our quad bike tour guide mate who showed us around the national park and along the beach. We are now back at camp drinking beer, eating steak and cheesecakes.

If you ever get the chance to visit Denham we recommend you do. Such a nice place, the water is crystal clear and so calm, the weather is perfect most of the year so we have been told and it is one of those places where everyone seems to be on holidays.

Tomorrow we leave and make our way back to Overlander Roadhouse. From there we will catch a bus to Nanutarra Roadhouse, some 550km up the road. We then plan to spend a week cycling to Karajini National Park and onto Port Headland where we will catch another bus to Broome. We decided to take the bus along some of the trip to enable us to take some detours and visit some of the national parks along the way rather than see just highway the whole trip.

Sorry about the length of the post, I assure you that it is the short version. So much has happened in the last few days we could go on forever. Will leave you with some pics from the couple of days.

The last few days have been rather windy, hilly and hot. We have pushed on though and still managed 100km + on the last two days. The roads have been good, and plenty of caravaners and boats are passing by. The dirt is certainly getting a more red the further north we are going.

We have not passed many towns over the last two days. Friday night we camped in a sheep paddock on the side of the road and last night was at a truck stop.

Woke up this morning and did some repairs to Phil’s rear wheel. Taking the rear wheel off a loaded bike was not that easy. First came the trailer, and then the draw bar from the trailer. The rear wheel then came off and we had to hang the bike out of a tree instead of using a repair stand. Just when we were ready to head off, dopey Justin realized the key for his bike lock was missing, so out came the hacksaw blade. I now have no bike lock but at least I packed a hacksaw blade in the panniers. I knew it would come in use for something.

Lunch was at a place called Billabong roadhouse, big steak burgers are the best, and we are slowly comparing all of the burger places on the west coast. Todays lunch I rate number one.

We managed really good timing today, and are camping at Overlander Roadhouse which is near the intersection of Monkey Mia National Park and the main highway. Hot showers and even a powered site.

Ps. Congrats to Sarah Jane (Justin’s sister) on graduation last night

Peace out.

We headed out of Arrowsmith this morning after a late night from doing about 40km in the dark last night. We were making really good progress last night, quiet roads, little to no wind and we covered 150km in just under 10 hours of cycling. To give you an idea, our average speed has been 16km/h for the trip so far. Last night we were averaging at least 22km/h. The landscape has been breathtaking. Mainly consisting of rolling green hills and white beaches.

Slept in this morning and headed for Port Denison, a short distance off the highway. A very lovely town by the ocean, we had time to eat our hearts out and then go for a short ride along the sand.

On the way out of Port Dension, Phil snapped another of his rear spokes, as well as the aluminum tubing for his solar rack. Justin has damage as well, a snapped battery tray below the solar panel and bar bag needs some bush mechanics.

Eddie and Inge were kind enough to organize us a cabin at Sunset Beach Caravan Park just north of Geraldton, so tonight we have all the mod cons, including running water, stove and a dual flush toilet to name a few. Absolute luxury after living in the scrub for the last few nights.

The Vaude Power Lizard tents are performing awesome, they are so toasty warm, take less than 5 minutes to get up and have been really quick drying in the morning ready for storage. Another benefit we have found is that unlike the hammocks we have previously used, we can store gear inside them to keep them dry and out of sight. Not to mention not having to look for trees to hang the hammock from.

Tomorrow Justin gets his replacement UHF and Phil is off to the bike shop for parts, might be a late start, but we are looking forward to a real bed and checking out the town in the morning.

Got some pictures below of Port Denison and today’s riding.

Finally made it into Cataby around 7pm last night. Had a bit of a chat with some of the local farmers at the Cataby hotel and picked up a six pack to compliment dinner. Justin cooked up a spaghetti bolognese and Phil was a master chef with his Hot Beer Salmon Soup. It taster better than it sounds.

Camp was freezing this morning and we warmed up with heaps of peanut butter infused porridge. We have made it nearly 40km this morning. Destination tonight is a town called Eneabba. It’s probably just another roadhouse but as long as they have hot food, we should be happy little campers.

Yesterday we left Perth after doing some food shopping around lunch time. We headed straight for the beach and found a cycle way that follows the coastline for about 30km. The ocean was beautiful and every time we stopped for some photos the locals stopped for a chat all very interested in what we are doing with such funny looking bikes. The first thing that everyone comments on is the solar setup we have and then the next comment is always if the bike is solar powered which of course they are not.

In the evening when the sun went dowse the temperature dropped very quickly and we found a pine forrest were we setup camp and got to use our tents for the first time. Not surprisingly they were nice and warm.

Form here on we do not yet know which way we are heading apart from north, we will just see where the road takes us.

We touched down at 1.30 local time and took a while assembling the bikes right at the front door of the airport. Phil had minor damage to his front chainring from the packing and a few teeth needed some filing and bending. We headed straight for Paddy Pallin to collect our gear we had shipped over in the past week. Spent some time out the front of the store assembling our bags onto the bike before heading off to the backpackers we had booked for the night. However upon arrival the office was abandoned. It wasn’t the easiest place to find either as a lot of the city centre was in lockdown mode as a naked gunman was on the loose around the city centre. We have eventually found a hotel room where it was a little easier to rearrange our bags.

After discussion with an experienced rider who had ridden the route before, we held a team meeting last night. We are considering an inland route which we will sort out over the few days. Local knowledge further north may help with which way we can take.

Phil is fixing his handlebar bag as we speak and we are preparing for one huge breakfast. We will turn on the spot tracker in the next few hours and head towards Lancelin.

Talk soon,
Justin and Phil

We just made it through security after having our bags scanned at least a dozen times each. The security guards were quite surprised to see the contents of our bags which had items such as solar panels, 12-240v inverter, two way radios, first aid kits and an assortment of cables. Justin had his tent pegs and some scissors removed and I had some tools taken. Luckily we were able to put these items back into the bike boxes.