Last day! Northam to Perth 97km

At long last! How can it already be coming to an end? What a mix of emotions we felt on the first morning.

Primarily though, the feeling was of dread, because we knew what was coming. Hills. After weeks of blissful flat plains the final stretch would take us over 300 metres skywards.

And yup, it hurt. We were givin’er though, every scrap we had because we knew there was no need to keep anything in reserve. One funny thing that happened was some guys who pulled up and were waving madly at us to stop, freaking us out a little. It turned out they’d seen us at Cocklebiddy and they’d gone out and bought a camera in case they saw us again so they could take a photo. Gosh, we should have charged for all those shots that were taken of us along the way. It was like being a celebrity for not really doing very much, highly entertaining for both of us, and it made us forget about the yucky climbing for a few minutes.

We made it to Mundaring, 30k out of Perth, by lunchtime and from there it was all downhill, top speed of 65k per hour.

Getting through the city was a little terrifying – try being thrust back into heavy traffic after four weeks of barely seeing a traffic light. But we made it, and even tackled the final challenge of Mounts Bay Road to get to King’s Park. Any Perthies will know how crazily steep this hill is! I think it was the worst one of the trip, especially because we both gave it one hundred percent. Must have been a funny sight to see a fully laden tandem flying up the hill like that with two people grimacing as they made their way up.

My parents and brother were madly waving at King’s Park to welcome us. We were so beat from that climb we could hardly stand up but it was smiles all round – we made it! My cycle clock tallied up 3695 kilometres of cycling over the 32 day period. Heaven knows how many pedal strokes it had taken us!

Made it! That's Perth in the background

Garrett and I felt tired and sore but very happy as we cycled the last tiny bit into Subiaco where a nice cup of tea and a properly cooked hot meal were waiting.

So that’s it! What an adventure, I still can’t believe we actually made it (well, mostly). I hope if you’re reading this it will inspire you to go for a bike ride – however long or short. If you’d like to see more photos check out our flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/29037965@N00/sets/72157617327870048/

If you’re planning a similar trip  and have stumbled across this blog leave us a comment or two and we’ll gladly get in touch with some tips!

Happy cycling 🙂

The thanks and high-5 list

Before I post the final entry for this blog, I wanted to do some shout outs.

Firstly, thanks to our employers, Yahoo!7 and Bike Addiction, for letting us have the time off to achieve this crazy dream and for being so encouraging during the lead up.

And to our friends and family, and those we met along the way (John and Shirley – thanks again, again!), who kept our spirits up as we went and helped us out where we needed it.

And while we didn’t have any sponsors, I wanted to mention some products that we just couldn’t have done without because they deserve a high-5 for coming through for us.

Cannondale. As you have already read, they went above and beyond to keep the black beast that is our tandem unstoppable. Thanks to Jordan, Cam and Simon for getting the wheel sorted in what must have been record time.

Mick Gaffey. This awesome guy lent us the Bob trailer, which we could not have done without. Thanks dude!

Plus thanks for Stan at Bike Addiction for making some custom fittings to get the racks on the bike.

Skins. These compression garments actually work. Even after the horror hill climbing days we awoke with fresh legs ready to set out again. Plus the long sleeves prevented us from getting terrible ‘roadie’ tans on our arms!

Sugoi. Japanese for awesome and if you’re ever buying knicks these are the best ones out there. Yes our butts hurt, but not as much as they could have. And my earwarmers are going strong over three years after I received them – best gift ever!

Ortlieb panniers. Rain. Proof. Unfortunately not fox proof, and we did lose a strap to a thief in the night, but these totally held up otherwise and are ready for many trips to come

Shimano. We both had a pairs of shoes that firstly fit comfortably and secondly held up the whole way across and the gears on the bike just kept on truckin’

Oakley. Prevented us from going blind from the sun. The racoon tans aren’t so bad

Exelite Lumi-sash. Bright, blinking sashes that made us look so much like glowing aliens that the trucks slowed down simply out of curiosity on those early morning starts.

Exped down mattresses. Easy to make big and comfortable or small and transportable, our only complaint was that sometimes they were too warm to sleep on!

Chamois cream. Does what it says! And also keeps Garrett’s bum from bleeding.

Dettol – for keeping the knicks as fresh as possible when we’re nowhere near a washing machine.

Bellaroma – the coffee we took across the country

Powerade – yes, we drank our own body weight many times over. I may now bleed ‘Mountain Rush’ blue.

Kelly’s Camping, Dee Why (and Sandman) for help and advice on high quality stove, mats, tent, sleeping bags etc. And all that Bushman’s spray!

Surly Bike Racks. No complaints, these held strong the whole way.

Nurofen Plus. How we love thee!

Thanks to tinned tuna, although we regret to announce that Garrett will never be eating it again, having consumed a lifetime’s worth in one month.

Merredin to Northam 165km

Prayers were answered with another tailwind making our trip too good to be true. Garrett made sure to eat at every opportunity today and it had cooled off a bit so we were very happy as we pedalled along.

Rain falls over WA

We found an open cafe and were given a free serving of fries by the owner, an old bikie who was very friendly but may have been extremely scary in his day!

Even the rain didn’t dampen our spirits, this was the first time the skies had truly opened up but we took it easy and kept out of the way of the cars that whizzed past us on their way back into the city.

And then some p***k decided he’d be funny and throw a half full bottle of soft drink at us, which hit Garrett in the hand. Words cannot describe how upsetting this was. You can probably imagine how we felt so I won’t go on, but suffice to say it would have been very easy to let that ruin the entire day. Strangely, a police car came past a couple of minutes later so we told them what happened and they went tearing off down the Highway, happy to have something to do. Hope they caught the stupid tosser.

The Northam caravan park seems to be residents mainly… hmm. But we met another couple who had been cycling around for 8 months! They didn’t do the Nullarbor though, so nowhere near as hardcore as us!

Yellowdine – Merredin

Last night the moon was so bright it almost lit up the entire sky. Spectacular.

Easter Sunday and although we passed through half a dozen towns it may as well have been none as they were all pretty much closed. The local pub owners did bring out a tray of hot cross buns when they saw us sitting eating a couple of apples outside their pub though.

The terrain finally started to change back to farmland after weeks of bush which was a welcome difference in the landscape, but another hot day meant we were pretty exhausted again when we made it to Merredin. Amazingly, a supermarket was open in town (an Easter miracle) and we were able to buy and cook our own dinner, something filling as well as delicious.

Our second last night on the road! So close yet tomorrow’s ride is still over 160 kilometres so it feels like a long way to go. We had been lucky to have a tail wind pushing us up to 50k an hour on the flat and 30k up the hills so it had been a good day, all we could hope for was more of the same.

Coolgardie to Yellowdine 157k

Oh the sun! Hasn’t anybody told WA that it’s now 6 weeks till winter? It continues to shine down at 30 degress, which makes us both quite grumpy, especially on long days.

The climbs increased a bit more today and we went through a burnt out section of National Park, very sad to see the skeletons of trees reaching uptowards the endless blue sky. A few truckies weren’t bothering to give us a wide berth on this road, but for the most part we were coming to recognise the regulars, and a few mentioned they’d seen us on every one of their runs for the past week.

Again we ran into some caravanners we had seen before – they certainly aren’t in a hurry – and we got a fresh supply of fruit, so welcome as today was our final day with no towns between destinations.

And Yellowdine is not a town. It is a servo that has only been open for 4 days. The owners are so friendly and enthusiastic – they didn’t even want us to pay for camping. It was nice to see such friendly people – if you ever happen to be driving to Kalgoorlie stop in and say hi.

Onwards to Coolgardie 110k

The previous day’s heat had drained almost all our water supply, we had to cook our porridge using gatorade, so it was fortunate that a service station resides at Widgiemooltha, 30k from where we camped. Here the man chatted to us for so long that we had a second cup of coffee. I don’t think there is much to do in Widgiemooltha, but the servo is up for sale for a million bucks if you’re interested. There’s also a bar and a caravan park, plus it’s where they found one of the world’s largest chunks of gold, so you never know you might be lucky.

The road around here felt hazardous, loads of trucks, no shoulder and heaps of blind corners. It was stressing me out because I was trying to think of profound things to say, just in case they were my last words. This continued right up until Perth pretty much, Garrett must have thought I was going mad with my constant declarations of love for my family and friends and statements about life being only for living to the fullest because each moment may be your last.

We arrived in Coolagardie to come upon our caravanning friends from Harvey Bay – we’d run into them at Penong, Nullabor, Eucla and now in WA so we caught up and chatted like old friends.

And oh Coolgardie. If you’ve ever been there – it’s exactly the same. The sun burns a line down the wide old main street making everything look impossibly dry and everything has ‘Closed until further notice’ on the front door. To our horror even the pub was closed as it was Good Friday. One good thing was we didn’t pay at the caravan park – the owners just didn’t seem to be there.

Our mate Oliver and his mother Jan arrived to see us, bringing much needed chocolate, chamois cream and painkillers (I won’t tell you how many we’ve taken over the course of a month, it’s quite outrageous). We enjoyed a ‘lovely’ meal at the local Caltex, the one and only place open in town.

Norseman to 65k north of Norseman

We were at the servo checking if our wheel had arrived at 6am, then back again at 9 and even flagging down truckies to see if they had it. Finally, one of them rang us and said ‘What, did you mean this thing in the box?’ and we finally had what we needed.
We ran back to the caravan park, wheel raised victoriously overhead, crowds cheering, streamers flying (part of this is an exaggeration).

It was a perfect fit so Garrett had the wheel on in no time and we hit the road at midday, cruising past the have-to-be-seen-to-be-believed salt lakes towards our final destination.

Red dusty campsite

More warm weather and a few hills of sizes that we hadn’t experienced for over a week took us off the road by around 4, setting up camp in a scenic but dusty spot populated by several million mosquitos, many of whom were happily nourished thanks to my butt and thighs. They were so bad we were in the tent by 6pm, and i proceeded to scratch until go time at 5 the next morning.

Disaster strikes

There was much talk before left on this trip of cracking. whether i would crack and refuse to go on, whether Garrett’s body would crack, whether the terrain would crack us both. however, just 10k after i wrote the last post we heard a noise and found a crack. in the rim of the back wheel. game over.

what follows this story of misfortune is one of mainly fortune. we rode on for a short while until coming upon two angels in the form of grey nomads Shirley and John Scott. after hearing of our plight they piled us into their already packd car, threw the bike in the caravan and proceeded to driive us past caiguna, through balladonia and then on to norseman, the next real town. all in all nearly 400k and 3 days of riding. i admit i shed a tear when we headed across the longest straight sealed road in the world, i wasexcited to ride it but it was not to be.. and we were so grateful to our saviours for the ride – thankyou thank! and they wouldn’t accept a cent.

once in Norseman we put our contact to work. Garrett phoned about a hundred shops, and finally the good folks at Cannondale, hearing of our trouble, sourced a new rear wheel for us and have put it on a truck which is currently heading our way! We are of course waiting with baited breath for it to arrive so we can complete our journey, minus the 400k taken in very quickly via a comfy 4wd.

The damage

This trip has been full of surprises, there is still more to come no doubt, we are not there yet and anything can happen.

Norseman has the first grocery store we’ve seen since Penong which makes us happy.
Plus yesterday we spotted four camels outside Balladonia, another thing to cross off the list.

Perth, here we come ( we hope!!!)

Thanks again a hundred times to John and Shirley, the friendly folk at Gateway caravan park in Norseman and our wonderful bike community mates, who will drop everything to lend us a hand – and a wheel!

Nullabor to Mundrabilla, Mundrabilla to Madura

After a slow-ish morning to Border Village, the rest of the day was quite pleasant. We stopped off 12k down the road in Eucla, where there are a lot of interesting historic bits and pieces to have a look at, including the old Telegraph Station.
Then a quick slide down the hill to the flat along the Hampton Tablelands and straight roads all the way.

One hazard of cycling is that there’s no escaping the fresh scent of road kill – and boy is there a lot along this stretch of road! Ugh entrails, revolting.

Mundrabilla is so completely in the middle of nowhere, but they’re so friendly and make you feel welcome. We thought we’d have the campsite to ourselves but of course some peeps rocked up, and we mistakenly set our tent up right under a light before it came on at night so that was unusual. Plus it poured with rain! But no damage done and the next morning we got the luxury of a bought hot breakfast before heading on our way to Madura.
Again flat flat flat, loads of incredible wedgetailed eagles so close to see and a delightful tailwind.

Unfortunately G made the number one traveller’s error of ordering seafood at the Madura roadhouse, which sadly resulted in a large technicolour yawn the next morning.
Poor thing, but he is a trooper, soldiering on with few complaints.

More asap…

The cliffs at the Great Australian Bight

Nullarbor to more Nullarbor 140k

So much for the stars over the Nullarbor! It was completely clouded over when we set off. The morning didn’t break until almost 8am, a sign that the border is getting close.

Flat flat flat and nothing nothing nothing in terms of trees, although the shrubs were very plentiful and green due to recent rains. Ironic that this part of the country isn’t in drought at the moment.

We pulled in to a clifftop viewpoint and were handed a bag of fruit by some caravanners we’d come across earlier in Penong. Thanks! Woohoo! We scoffed the bananas on the spot. The cliffs of the Bight are breathtaking, so high and treacherous looking, and the vista goes on and on.

More pedalling with plenty of stops to appreciate the view, we also took a break to change a tyre as we were near blowout. These days are easy but boy your butt gets sore as you don’t get the chance to coast. I have also picked up a couple of dozen agonising mozzie bites along the way to make things just that bit less comfortable.

Another caravanner pulled up and loaded us up with water, chocolate and muesli bars – we were so happy and grateful as we were planning to camp bush. Our resting place for the night was another clifftop viewing stop, so beautiful but we made sure our tent was well back as the wind was very strong, blowing dust through the tent and on to our faces all night. So romantic!

We’ve gained 2 and a half hours now that we’re at Border Village, hooray.

p.s Yesterday we saw a very rare black dingo. We didn’t know what it was but apparently they do exist. You can look it up!