Wednesday, 23rd February, 2005
February 20 – 22 – Across the border and back on track
The ride to Beachport was mercifully short, as we arrived deep frozen again. Beachport is another of South Australia’s beautiful fishing villages with a good serving of tourists on the side. 
The tourists must be from Europe because they seem to be able to wander around comfortably in sleeveless t-shirts as if it really was summer.
We had about 90km to ride to Mt Gambier the next day. In the cool morning the countryside looked almost alpine with cows dotting the hilltops against a backdrop of pine forests. It smells wonderful riding through the pines.
There is constant traffic from logging trucks hauling timber of all sizes from giant trees down to wood pulp. The drivers are very helpful and mostly give us plenty of room as they pass us. The road is narrow, with no shoulder, and the hills and bends make visibility poor. The road surface is terrible, very bumpy in parts, covered in gravel and sticky hotmix in others where upgrades are in progress.
We are very tired when we ride into Mt Gambier, but we have another few kilometres to go to Bill and Ann’s farm where we are staying north of the town. The homestead is a very old building. Ann’s father was born in it 100 years ago and it was not new then. The sun has made an appearance and it is great to explore the kitchen fruit and vegetable gardens and meet the farm cats. Bill, and Ann’s brother Lawrence, farm beef cattle here now and it is fascinating hearing about it. You need a degree to be a farmer now, as well as plenty of hard work you need to be a business manager, quantity surveyor, weather forecaster, mechanic and midwife to hundreds of cows and heifers.
We’re up early next morning for an interview on breakfast radio and Ann takes us on some quick pre-breakfast site seeing. Mt Gambier is famous for its network of caves and sinkholes. The town water supply comes from a huge crater known as the Blue Lake, as the water glows an iridescent blue in November and March. The blueness is thought to be the result of bacterial activity. We also visit a huge sinkhole in town that is now one of Australia’s most unique gardens.
Our weary bodies feel cheated of the day we were supposed to have off here, but as we ride out of town it is good to know that we are finally back on schedule and have made up all the time we lost getting our bike fixed in Adelaide. We crossed the border into Victoria today. There was no border post, just a small welcome sign. But to us it was a major crossing because now our journey has taken us to every Australian mainland state.
February 18 - 19 – Mid winter in high summer
South Australia is Australia’s driest state. February temperatures are usually in the 40’s. Yet we have encountered more rain here than anywhere else, and been cold more often than we have been hot. Long johns, spray jackets and jumpers are essential survival equipment.
The ride from Policemans’s Point to Kingston was wet, windy and very cold. Rain had set in and we were both very wet and very blue by the time we arrived. The town looked nice but the inside of a cabin at the caravan park looked nicer so no site seeing today.
Rain again in the morning so we decided to ride the shorter distance to Robe instead of Beachport as we originally planned. Our chain came off again today, but we still arrived with plenty of time to change into dry longjohns and defrost with a great cup of coffee. We walked the main street (very charming), met Larry the lobster (very big) and took in the great ocean views (very beautiful). You can really see why the area is known as the limestone coast – the cliffs are almost white.
We have to pay for our (exhorbitantly expensive) ferry tickets to Tasmania this week so the credit card will be out of action for a while. Luckily Ross and I like eating rice. A lot.
February 17 – Getting to know the wildlife
We spent the night at the small town of Meningie with Norm and Wilma’s friends Mary and Stan. Mary cooked us locally caught Coorong mullet. It was so delicious we had it for dinner at the pub the next night at Policeman’s Point. Policeman’s Point has a pub and a caravan park but no policeman.
There is however plenty of wildlife – particularly swarms of gnat like insects that fill the air in clouds. They don’t bite, but you have to keep you mouth closed while riding to avoid swallowing them. We spent most of the morning wiping them out of our eyes, ears and noses. Apparently these insects are native to the Coorong (like the delicious mullet) and you don’t find them anywhere else. Phew.
The Coorong is beautiful, but like the rest of South Australia’s coast it is very windy. As usual we were going the wrong way. Each day on the Coorong we have met another cyclist or cycling couple whizzing along on a fantastic tailwind in the opposite direction. Poor things, they are going so fast they don’t get to enjoy the scenery.
February 15 – 16 – Fair cheating
Pete the bike doctor works on tandems for paralympians, so we decided he was the one to fix Argo, even if we had to wait. It was worth the wait, with Argo practically purring with pleasure when we finally rode out of the shop on Wednesday morning. We used the waiting time productively, and have now got our banana cake preparation time down to seven minutes thirty seconds.
We had already missed the meetings Norm arranged in Victor Harbor thanks to our first set of bike problems, and now there was no chance of meeting the stroke group in Mt Gambier. But we could still make our Geelong meetings if we cut our rest days and enlisted some help from Greg’s campervan.
Greg, who had escorted us into town and wanted to make sure we finally left, gave us a lift 100km out of town to make up for our false starts. He had some clients to see at Kingston and made several sales on his mobile as we waited for the punt at Wellington so it was meant to be. And it wasn’t really cheating because we had already ridden the distance on our first two attempts to leave Adelaide.
Wednesday, 23rd February, 2005
February 14 – Visiting Adelaide, Part 2
It was sad to see Argo wrapped in a tarp on the back of Norm's trailer as he drove us back to Adelaide for repairs. But who to choose to do the work? We rang Greg (who had guided us in to Adelaide) and narrowed it down to three possibilities.
We arrived in town, asked for a replacement chain from the shop that fitted it originally, and then dropped in at the shop that we wanted to fix our problems. Pete would be in tomorrow so hopefully we’ll back on the road quickly.
Meanwhile, we moved back into Rick’s place so returning to Adelaide was not all hardship. Our demons were soon exorcised with some cooking therapy, then some 1984 vintage port left from our last visit, with a 1976 bottle to follow. Rick agreed to be our Valentine as we polished off a litre of chocolate Fruccio, our favourite soy ice cream (so creamy we can’t believe it’s not butter).
Tuesday, 15th February, 2005
Unlucky February 13
We rode out of town, with Wil guiding us. We were riding the coastal strip, on a wonderful bike path which went all the way to Goolwa. No cars, with beautiful beach views! A quick stop at the end of the path, then out onto the main road. Climbing a hill, I went for granny gears, which wouldn’t engage, then the chain was thrown off!
Cars were everywhere. We put the chain back on, but we were rapidly losing confidence in the work that was done to the bike. This was another first after 16,000 km and I wasn’t keen for it to happen again. Because of my limited hand control on the right and obvious safety concerns, we have to go back to Adelaide and get these problems ironed out. Oh no, backtracking!!
February 12 – Bonnie Barrage
Well the test ride was okay, but we were still having a few gear gremlins. I decided we’d gradually iron them out once we got back on the road (very dumb idea!), so Wil and Norm took us on a guided tour of the local sights and small coastal villages – Goolwa, Middleton, and Port Elliot. The beaches here are long and pristine, with big surf rolling directly in from the south.
The area is exploding, with many retirees moving here, and also the usual weekenders from Adelaide coming up to enjoy their holiday homes/mansions and yachts.
At Hindmarsh the Murray River meets the sea, which is held back by a long barrage, sort of like a dam wall. We walked out to the lock and watched as two boats went through, and met Anthony, the lockmaster. He asked us to post a photo of him and Bonnie the dog on our website, which we were happy to do for a price – a $10 donation to the Stroke Foundation – thanks mate. Our web site’s first commercial transaction!!
February 10 - 11 – Norm’s bike ambulance
Our last day in Adelaide. We spent it at the Art Gallery, relaxing at Rick’s, reading, and packing. Rick cooked us a wonderful fish meal then opened a bottle of 1984 port, so we’ll really have to rise to the occasion when he comes to Sydney!
We had planned a dawn start next morning but ended up leaving after 8am, with traffic allergies in overdrive. Luckily Adelaide's morning peak hour traffic is not a patch on Sydney. After climbing the hills leading out of town, we met Norm for lunch, before pushing on. Or tried to! Our brand new chain broke, leaving us stranded. The previous chain had done 10,000 km, but this one had only managed 52!! Our spare was at Victor Harbor, so we called Norm, his bicycle ambulance service arriving to find us sitting in a vineyard with very long faces.
Two rescues in just nine days – not quite the stat we wanted, or are proud of. When you are in a new city, and it’s necessary for some mechanical work to be done, it can be a bit of a lottery. Sometimes the bike ends up in worse condition than when we started.
We arrived at Victor Harbor and were immediately cheered up with a cuppa, and the sight of Wilma’s garden – it was fantastic! Ann was in heaven wandering through the huge veggie patch which was edged with lavender. Pumpkin, corn, cucumbers, beetroot, carrot, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, parsnips, basil, parsley, grapes, apples, oranges, pears, apricots, plums, lemons and brambleberries.
We tucked into homemade plum cake before I found the spare chain and fitted it to Argo. Oh well, we’ll do a test ride tomorrow. Time now for Wilma’s roast dinner!
Wednesday, 9th February, 2005
February 8 -9 - City Living
One of the big attractions of being in a city is the easy availability of everything, especially fresh fruit and vegetables. So we head off to Adelaide’s Central Markets. We walk through shopping strips and pedestrian malls and cross roads at traffic lights. Suddenly we are no longer homesick for Sydney city.
We stock up on tonnes of fresh fruit and veg, drag it back to the bike shop to load up Argo and ride back to Rick’s. As usual I bought too much and we have difficulty packing it into the panniers without squashing our peaches, nectarines and bananas.
Argo is unhappy with her new chains and brake pads. We have a hair raising ride through peak hour traffic without being able to get into gears or brake with confidence. Luckily we are quickly into the backstreets and after a few minutes we’ve adjusted the gears. We’re out again tonight, so the brakes will have to wait until tomorrow.
Except the morning comes with heavy rain. Hopefully it will clear in time to get Argo’s brakes working today, as we don’t want to ride the hilly, winding route to Victor Harbor tomorrow without them! You’ll have to watch this space to see if we manage to leave Adelaide or find ourselves willingly marooned at Chez Rick. Rainy days are not for riding, they are for drinking tea and eating warm cake. Rick and Ross have just finished Monday night’s banana cake so I think it will be an apple slice tonight. Yum.
Wednesday, 9th February, 2005
February 7 – Hospital for Argo and Rehab for us
Monday is a work day. First stop is the bike shop for Argo to get new chains, brake pads, a tyre rotation, and a general health check. The good news is that she does not need new steering bearings yet and the bottom bracket should last until Melbourne. Ross also gets new cycling shoes, his current pair are only held together by gaff tape. Then a long walk home while Argo spends the night in hospital.
We also spend the afternoon at hospitals, meeting staff and patients. At Flinders Medical Centre we also catch up with Tonya and Julie who we last saw at a stroke conference in Sydney two nights before our journey started last March. They have been following our progress. Tonya has just won a triathlon at Port Lincoln( remember the Tunarama festival?) and we feel very fat and flabby standing next to her. We say hello to Brian who runs Stroke SA, meet some of the team, and then have to race off to the Repat Hospital.
Once patients at Flinders are past the acute care stage they move to the Repat down the road for rehabilitation. The Repat facilities are fantastic, fully equipped gyms and best of all a hydrotherapy pool. Ross didn’t have access to a pool until he was well enough to go home from hospital and work with Andrew, a personal trainer. Ross sold his ute to pay for personal training but if we’d had to sell the house it would have been worth it because work in the pool really helped get Ross walking and eventually riding again.
The Repat’s focus is not just on the physical side. It is great to see the story boards where former patients send letters and photos of their lives after stroke. This is also why we like to visit hospitals, because it is always a great help to know that what lies ahead might be a different life but it will be a good life if you make it that way.
Jane and Leanne pick us up from the Repat as we are transportless without Argo. Leanne had a stroke seven months ago and is already back at work, although her legs aren’t as well behaved as she would like them to be. But it is still early days and with Leanne’s determination and commitment to physical fitness we know she will find a way to make things work for her.
February 5 – 6 – Welcome to Adelaide
We were feeling very fat and itching to get back on the bike although riding into a city isn’t something we’ll ever look forward to (we have traffic allergies). Greg, who we met at the Daly Waters Hotel in the Northern Territory, organised a group of tandem riders to escort us into Adelaide. He assured us that the traffic would be nothing, the road shoulders would be wide and the ride safe. We forgot to factor into the equation that Greg is a professional salesman. But we did arrive safely, and it was great to ride in with three other tandems.
Greg kindly escorted us to the Adelaide suburb of St Peters, where we are staying with Rick, a friend of a friend. Rick’s 1840s Victorian stone house is beautiful, and blissfully quiet. So is Rick. The perfect place to recharge our batteries.
On Sunday the weather suddenly remembers it is summer, and we ride in glorious sunshine along the Torrens River cycle way to visit Jon. The cycle way runs from the city to the beach and we don’t have to cross any roads for 14km. Jon and I used to work together in our consulting days, but both of us quit for lifestyle reasons. It is great to see Jon and his family are as happy with the change as we are. We have a BBQ (the cooking closely supervised by Jon’s son Sean) and then spend a few hours swimming at the beach. There are not many people in the water as a boy was attacked by a shark here a few months ago. A lady warns us to leave the water after she sees a fin, but it is probably a dolphin.
February 2 – 4 – Cheating
The wind howled all night with rain whipping the windows despite the deep verandahs. We were very happy to be inside under a feather doonah and not in the tent. Morning brought no relief. Terry rang from Gawler (our next stop about 80km up the road) to see how we were getting on. Before Ross could stop me I accepted a lift. Ross was appalled, to put it mildly, but he agreed that the gale force winds made conditions unrideable. Besides, Terry was already on the way to collect us!
Terry is Matt’s dad, the chef in the blue bus we’ve met many times on the road. We last met Matt and his son James in Norseman. Matt asked us to drop in at Gawler, where he would be working on getting the old bus roadworthy again. Matt came with Terry to pick us up, and they both got thoroughly soaked loading up our bike on their trailer while Ross and I had coffee in the homestead!
Sal has lived on the homestead for thirty years, and her husband’s family has been there since the station was established in the 1800’s. Their friend Ray had come to visit, he had a stroke about the same time as Ross did. Like Ross he comes from a craft background and finds it frustrating not to have the fine control in his hands that he used to.
I didn’t want to extract myself from under the gorgeously purring warm body of Top Cat, but it was time to brave the rain and head off. I was very glad not to be riding in it, the trailer was buffeted by wind and rain so hard that the able2ride sign on the exposed side delaminated and dissolved. But Matt cooked for us that night and suddenly everything was just fine.
The strong weather kept us off the bike for another two days. We saw on the news that we had actually got off very lightly: floods and severe storms in Melbourne and Sydney, with some fatalities. But for us the enforced break meant lots of eating and being pampered… lunch with members of the Gawler stroke group, dinner with Matt and his parents at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and a Barossa winery crawl. I was feeling very tipsy after the fourth winery so we decided we’d have to leave the rest to our next lap of Australia (only joking).
Wednesday, 2nd February, 2005
January 30 – February 1 - Heading to Clare... maybe?
As we pedalled out of Port Augusta it was obvious that everyone else was heading out too. The road was packed – the end of the school holidays. Boats, caravans, packed trailers, motorcycles, road trains and two cyclists.
Finally we turned off the highway to the small seaside village of Port Germain. Their claim to fame is that they are home to the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere. “The longer jetties have concrete bits in them” we’re told by the manager of the caravan park opposite the jetty.
Our phone card expires on January 31 so I call mum from the payphone and use up the remaining credit. It’s nice to have a good long chat with mum and just talk about nothing, without worrying about the call cost.
We’ve given up trying to beat the wind but we’re in the habit of getting up early so we ride out at sunrise anyway. It is a beautiful warm day, about thirty degrees. We get to Crystal Brook by 11.30 and like the town so much we decide to stay. It is like having a day off when you arrive so early.
The main street is lovely and wide and there are many old stone buildings, one of which houses a bakery. The bakery is fantastic – we decide to award it a gold medal for the trip, pushing Batavia Bounty at Geraldton down to second place and Coral Bay Bakery to third. As well as fabulous lamingtons (which all of the top three bakeries had) they have the best multigrain rolls we’ve ever eaten - but the key factor in winning is the wonderful friendly service and the great feel of the place.
We stayed the night at the pub across the road, a real old country pub complete with creaking stairs, sash windows and wide verandahs. Because the pricing is so good we can afford to buy dinner, our first bought meal in a long time. And what a dinner! For $5 we can eat as much salad as we like (and we like) and we buy a huge steak as well.
The night is very hot and the next morning is still sweltering. It is a hilly ride to Clare, but very picturesque. We stop for our “morning tea” break at the small village of Yakka, in a beautiful park next to an empty river. It is the first green grass we have seen for a long time so we probably stopped too long. When we get back on Argo the wind has progressed from a strong headwind to a gusting gale.
We battle on all afternoon. Sometimes we have to get off the bike to save ourselves from being blown over. It is hard not to be blown over even standing. About 15km out of Clare the rain came. Torrential, wind driven rain. Wiping the water out of my eyes I saw a sign “Bungaree Homestead – Accommodation”. It really was a sign – the homestead is beautiful and the owners generous, giving us free accommodation for the night.