Finally we made it to the east coast!
Sorry for being lazy with updates, BUT before we coming to the very last chapter of our motorcycle journey, the red continent had still the Great Alpine Road to satisfy some motorcyclist needs. Bamn!!
24. Mai 2017
Melbourne
Australia / Victoria
From the desert back to the sea!
After so much red dirt, riding straight and heat, we got the opposite with blue coastline, curvy, twisty roads and chilly temperatures. We saw groups of birds moving northwards away from the cold, but we moved further south. We're tough Germans, so wet-cold weather (even at night in the tent) doesn`t bother us. Really?
"Bikers Dream", in form of the Great Ocean Road, was high on the wish list, despite the upcoming winter and the inclement weather and we we haven´t been disappointed. Mystical fast-moving cloud formations and a sun-rain mix gave us a panorama which changed constantly. The coast was rough and spectacular. First on the bikes and later in the air with the paraglider. Thanks Tim, for reinfecting us with the flight virus!
Wow, we had a fantastic time. Another great part of Australia with interesting people. We recharged human batteries and got new input as well. Walking through the streets of Melbourne with a coffee in the hand and looking forward to the next section was exactly what we needed. Thanks at site as well to Cliff. Next, we will cross the Australian „Alps“ with the compass headed to Sydney... Will we still find snow in Australia?
After the hardships of the past, the engines of both machines started to sound more an more old, sick and weak. We hope to reach the east coast with 1 !!! remaining position left (Tim) on the timing chain tensioner and a couple of other interesting little problems...
P.S: So are we still "ze germans" ? Don´t think so anymore... cause we are actually the ones, who wear warm jackets far before any other Ozzie would even thought of it. (-; #toolonginthetropics
Finally we got all the turns, twist in a complete package which we never thought Australia would have them... Pushing our brittle Ténéré`s through the mountains was great fun.
One day before the first snow felt down, we escaped over the last pass of the Great dividing range to Jindabyne. Couple of days later we found ourselves riding through a huge green park, which was at the same time Australia's capital city with the name of Canberra.
From now on it seemed that motorcycle gods really wanted to proof us until the very end. All started with the fact that Tim' s engine couldn't been turned on anymore in a convenient way... Neither with kick nor electric start, due to a dead starter clutch, which made the next couple of thousand kilometers even more challenging, and sightseeing in the big park city a quick stop and run kind of thing...
Nobody of us really wanted to turn off the engine anymore...
Better park both bikes downhill became a motto, cause Lilly had a flat battery as well. Murphys Law... Again... Otherwise we would have had our nice little "push start workout" with 2 almost 300 kg+ fully loaded adventure bikes every single time... It wouldn't have made much sense anyway to fix the issue by looking at the remaining time, considering the amount of work, money and hours it would have needed to open that engine. So we kept on pushing.
Days later we made it into Sydney, where we stayed a week at a friendly couple in a real house!!! Wow! Instead of camping in cold, wet forests or fields, what we already did all the weeks before. Simple thinks became ones again truly wonderful! So at least there will be one outcome of this epic long journey, when there would be no other, that houses actually really makes sense... (-;
Harbour bridge and opera house, .... are for sure the bright side of this Australian metropole , but beside that, we also found a motorcycle wrecker, got a right size second hand battery for 25 bucks and some other spare parts there. What a city!
We had a successful "test riding day" around the blue mountains then and went finally further north on the boring Pacific Highway... Later the gear lever and shafts of both bikes were worn out so extensively, that even shifting became a mission. Thanks to McGyver technics we stayed in the game and even managed to do a few detours to improve riding quality ... Peace to Nimbin, Byron Bay, Mullumbimby... Every country seems to have it's hot spots for alternative people, so we enjoyed... Camped a while here and there, until the rain washed us out to the warmer Gold Coast and later to sunny Brisbane.
So here we are now on the east coast of Australia, where we always wanted to be and years ago we could never imagined, that we would have a chance to reach it. Despite the old bikes a combination of wild dreams, courage and meeting an unbelievable amount of good people (without them it would have never been possible) allowed us to make this a successful motorcycle journey.
03. July 2017
Sydney
Australia / NSW
20.August 2017
Brisbane
Australia / SA
Goodbye Tim & Lilly! Goodbye Australia!!!
Finally we had to make this translation from a adventure biker to a normal pedestrian fast. After been thrown back in a new chapter, there was not much space in our heads for a full update. Sorry for informing Facebook lately about that... (-:
The packing, crating and delivering into the harbour of Brisbane were "processed" in a really busy 1 day marathon..., cause crying to many tears by having to much time wouldn´t have changed anything! So we did it this time, like efficient robots and said goodbye to Tim & Lilly, the toughest team members of our journey. It really meant for us as well, that a chapter in our live was closed now. So many remarkable memories, adventures and the function as a heart opener to so many different people in all kinds of cultures are connected to these old motorcycles...
After we sent them on their journey back home, we went straight up to north Queensland to have something else to think about... With the luxury of a camper van from now on and Cocos Mom by the side, who visited us here, we saw everything from a slightly different perspective. One of them was the wonderful Laura dance festival, which gave us at the very end of our stay a delayed gratification with the aboriginal culture. After having seen still so much struggle of them during a lot of parts through the country before.
So we had a lovely time our 4.500 km drive (it´s Australia (-;...) along the east coast as well, by showing her the Humback wales jumping, a little bit of bush experience and some good last weeks in Australia, before we finally flew over to New Zealand.
In our 11 month time in this huge, amazing country we were riding about 23.000 km with the motorcycles (Tim and Lilly) and that was much more what we expected to squeeze out of our elderly bikes. When we think back of that amount of stunning landscape and gorgeous people, we are pretty sure we will see us one day again...
Thank you Australia for the great time we had on this colorful continent, which was of course much more then red dirt... (-; We are really grateful and like to thank all our australian friends and total strangers along the road, who supported us in whichever way and showed us "the Germanz“ the true Australian lifestyle. We have never been to a western country with more enthusiastic support from the people side in general and it really never got boring.
We will now continue our translation with some last impressions in this part of the world, before we will be finally head back to Germany for a new chapter and a big, long detour over „normal life“…
Thank you Australia!
tent (we call it the Super dome) work like a charm, we have enough supplies, no water inside and plenty drinking water outside ��. Keeping fingers crossed that it will stop raining tomorrow and open the day after, so we can cross over to Alice Springs...tent (we call it the Super dome) work like a charm, we have enough supplies, no water inside and plenty drinking water outside ��. Keeping fingers crossed that it will stop raining tomorrow and open the day after, so we can cross over to Alice Springs...c
11. March 2017
Leonora
Australia / WA
CAN YOU FIND US? Hidden Bush Campside.....Normaly kangerus are resting on this rock, but this time it was our perfect place for a rest after a long riding day.
24. March 2017
Laverton Shire
Australien / WA
Stuck in the mud and in the tent since days..... We expected heat and a lot of sun, but we got constantly super heavy rain in the last 48 hours... We are in front of the Great central road (Laverton), bush camping due to the fact that the road is due to the weather temporarily closed..... Luckily our new
tent (we call it the Super dome) work like a charm, we have enough supplies, no water inside and plenty drinking water outside. Keeping fingers crossed that it will stop raining tomorrow and open the day after, so we can cross over to Alice Springs...
27. March 2017
Laverton Shire
Australia / WA
We are off from Laverton..... Finally, after 4 days waiting! The "Great Central road" has reopened this Monday morning 9am. We had already our motorcycle adventures in the last days before it even started... Nearly drowned our bikes in a flood area where we
just escaped before it was to late and several bush repairs. Will report later.
Now on the longest shortcut in Australia from west to east... Haha
See you soon
01. Mai 2017
Cape Jaffa
Australia / SA
5,000 km detour to the "red heart" of Australia...!
We have been away for a while and now we are back. Just a couple thousand kilometers, how the Australians would say or better understandable in the dimensions of an European: More than the distance from Norway down to Spain with several countries between just to see "the middle“. Half of it on gravel or sand road. Should be the last time to get the final, sandy, dusty, hot outback impression for us on our bikes.
Coming from the west, via the Great Central Road, almost 1.500 km through the semi-desert, with relatively few elevations, was an unforgettable feeling, when we first saw the red rock formations of the Kata Tjuta and the Uluru suddenly appearing on the horizon.
The "Rock" or better Uluru, is the holiest place of the Aborigines and is located almost in the center of Australia. It is a large sandstone formation, with its iron parts in the sunrise or sunset light giving it the spectacularly red appearance and is named as "Heart of Australia.“
We went over the "Red Center Way" up to the MacDonell Ranges, past the Kings Canyon and made an 8 hour hike on the fourth highest mountain in NT up to the Mount Sonder. Even than we couldn´t get enough of the red dirt, so we headed south along the Finke racetrack through the foothills of the Simpson desert and said no to the boring Stuart Highway.
Indeed the part around Finke was the toughest challenge for human and machine, with the amount of sand on our fully loaded bikes…
Brrrrrrrrap…….. a few times we were overtaken by racing motocross guys, on the parallel race track, with their light dirt bikes training already for the upcoming Finke Race in June. We also would have liked to get rid of our bags and all our stuff :-) Maybe another time…
So we continued along the Old Ghan train track further to the south and passed Finke, which should be the farest town from every Australian beach. The geographical center of this continent, which is near this place and just around the corner. The Dalhousie Springs with 40 degrees warm water invited us later, to take a bath and relax our sore bodies.
Even during the night... Heading down for the Oodnadatta Track, we past the hottest and driest “town“ (180 inhabitants) Oodanadatta itself, where we had a nice birthday party. We finally kept on going south over the Flinders Ranges to Port Augusta /Adelaide
After all this tracks and this challenging adventure riding, we had to fix and maintain quite a few things... Lilly´s fake rubber air intakes -which we didn´t realized while buying, from ebay Germany lasted only a couple of thousand km and fall apart on the way to Adelaide. Bugger! We call it that´s why the "miracle of Adelaide" cause we found the original ones in the garage of our hosting friends, where we also did the repairs. Found an old XT600 engine sitting for years in the shed and waiting for „ze Germans“ at their place. Don´t need to mention that we haven´t seen any XT of our model (except of ours...) in Australia so far… There should only be a few around the whole country… So by coincincidence we met one of the few right people out of 23 Millionen. Should have played LOTTO that day as well we thought later… Thanks for helping us out Adam & Adonica!
We are now already behind Adelaide, heading for the Great Ocean Road. From now on there is much more civilization along the coastline with the well-known benefits, but on the other hand we miss already the outback. The wild Northern Territory, the giant WA. We miss the vastness and the "felt“ infinity, we were able to experience in the last month. Now, with course set to east, everything becomes more civilized, more populated or simply more full. Brrrr... and we are missing the warm temperatures as well, after this long time in all the warm regions of this planet. We have been quite well adapted to the heat, so our our handle bar heat grips are getting something to do since a very long time. The new chapter in Australia has begun.
05. April 2017
Uluru- Kata Tjuta Nationalpark
Australia / NT
Over 1200 km off-road through the relatively flat, remote outback and then suddenly Katja Tjuta and Uluru /Ayers Rock are coming in sight. WOW! Happy that we have done this sandy "detour" into the middle.
© www.losgezogen.de
08. March 2017
Bremer Bay
Australia / WA
Live like an Aussie! Days in the South West
Timber giants, stunning beaches, climbing rocks or karri trees, kayaking, wineries, fishing in the southern ocean with a proper boat, crabbing, sheering sheeps and all that in a good tempartured environment. Concerned as days in paradise for us “ze germans“. For an „Aussie“ from here it´s just an other normal day in the south west. We really enjoyed our given back biker freedom, after we have been for so long in Perth. Big thanks goes this time to Ross and Graham, who had every day a new idea what we could do "just around the corner". We will still have a couple of days left down here, before we hopefully and finally make progress to the east. It will be exciting again, cause we not heading straight east.... Not our style! Be surprised… It will be hot again... Will keep everybody updated!
12. February 2017
Perth
Australia / WA
What nobody tells you before, what would happen, when you drive around the world with an old motorcycle.
If you produce a lot of scrap, then one day a lot of scrap has to be repaired - With our decision to ride east, there was not much time to lick only our own
wounds and enjoy the riding free time. Instead a new fixing marathon on Tim and Lilly had also started. Arggg… So we looked once again into the holy KEDO online catalog for the missing spare parts. Together with a lot of other bits and pieces, we shipped everything via express in 5 days from Germany to Perth. In addition to that, we won Mitas for our trip and got new sponsored Mitas E07 tires. Thank you for this great support! So many kilometers we did already on these long lasting soles since Germany. For a motorcycle overlander the perfect long lasting tire for a reasonable price. We are able to make it now to the east coast. Unfortunately, a motorcycle -especially an old one... requires much more maintenance than for example a car. Tires can last for 60 - 80,000 km, where you can be already satisfied with 20,000 km on a bike. An oil change on our old single cylinder horses should be done after 6,000 km. As a matter of fact all this means a lot more work and it becomes more obvious, when you are dealing with these enormous distances here in Down Under. With our arrival in Perth and while we were looking down on our pressure cleaned bikes it became clear. What we have done... in the previous month to our bikes... All our driving mishaps, abuse and wear stand 2x times sadly looking in front of us. There was so much to do! So here is for everyone who´s interested a „short“ -ironic list of all the things which had to be done after 10,000 km in Australia with the one or the other off-road part included:
• It´s started with a proper cleaning with a pressure cleaner
• The first big thing was to fix the broken frame of Lilly properly. Of course, there was not only one frame part which was broken as you have maybe read already in our last post. Thanks to german effiency we broke it at 5 sections !!! ;-) So a BIG thanks goes to Mike the legend and his extraordinary welding skills, tools and help to join that metal scrap back together. He did not really know what he was running into when the Germans rocked up, but now Lilly has healed bones again ...!
• Oil change (Tim and Lilly)
• Changed tires to new Mitas front tires (E07 Dakar 90/90 - 21) and rears (E07 Dakar 130/80 - 18) (Tim and Lilly)
• New rim strip band (Tim)
• New chain changed from DID 520 to 525 with reinforced chainrings front and rear (Tim) • New sprocket front and rear (Lilly)
• petrol fuel switch seals renewed (Tim and Lilly) and attached the inside filter on Timg again
• Air filter cleaned and lubed with air filter oil
• Carburetor changed from Tim to Lilly to get rid off the startup problems. Sadly, no big difference…
• starter sprockets changed between Tim and Lilly. No difference...
• Changed alternator (Tim) with wiring. Tim's start-up problems intensified again, so we had to get to the bottom of the problem. In our big storage area in the right panier... (-; we had a spare alternator, which we were driving around for almost 2 years and 40,000 km !!! Time to use it!!!
• Carburator intake renewed (Lilly)
• Plugs, cable replaced or crimped and wire connection newly soldered
• Heated handgrips at Lilly refurbished with self glueing tape, cause bare heating wires sticking out could be seen already
• Indicators front and rear renewed (Tim)
• Various petrol hose replaced (Tim and Lilly)
• Overflow hose Oil tank replaced (Tim)
• Different screws on the panier frame mounting renewed (Tim)
• Brake light bulbs renewed (Tim)
• Rear brake light switch renewed (Tim)
• Gear shift lever renewed (Lilly)
• Rear shock absorber exchanged (Lilly) replaced broken spokes back wheel(Tim) and front wheel (Lilly)
• Removed snapped key out of stearing lock (Tim)
and a few duzend other small things: „Losgezogen“ sticker refurbished, pannier edges renewed with old tubes (Tim), motorcycle gear sewd with sewing machine, etc. In addition to that, we spent almost two days in the Department of Transport and the Vehicle Check. Nobody had a clue how to register a foreign motorcycles over here… But finally we got it done in WA. Much cheaper than in the Northern Territory. BUT the most important thing was that we found a real home away from home during this time, where we could finish all these endless repairs. A BIG Thank you to Renee for the beautiful and long time we could stay in Warnboro / Perth. Thanks also to Nic and Ike, who hosted us directly before our final departure. Without all these great people, our journey would certainly not have been the same. Now we will keep on. Looking forward to the upcoming adventure to the east …!
Countrys visited in 2016:
New Pictures:
Asking yourself where we are right now? Then you are here at the right place!
08. January 2017
Perth
Australien / WA
10.000 km in Oz
- Beauty vs. reality -
Sometimes you produce a lot of scrap on a motorcycle world trip.
Madness! Now we are finally in Perth and have been riding almost 10,000 km here so far. We discovered a big part of the western part, saw
an incredible landscape and met great people, but so much turned again into scrap on our bikes! The way down the west coast was a battle of material and really hard earned. Everything was set up only to reach Perth. Not further. The plan was to decide over there, if and how how we can proceed. That we had calculated on our limits, became pretty obvious on our way during our visit of Karinji National Park and from there it was still a long way to go. Calculating on the edge in Australia is generally not advisable. 500 km detour for another national park are absolutely not worth mentioning on this continent, but for old motorcycles with so much luggage, it can be already the final step to a total breakdown... One frame broke multiple times, a front and rear sprocket became toothless, a chain extended to the maximum and later both bikes were finally on their last leg or better said on their motorcycle tube… Just to tell a few things... We didn´t had a single day without having something, which was not broken or at least lost. Beside the beauty of the landscape, all went wrong. But nevertheless, we made our way down with all our accumulated bush mechanic tricks. Beside that, there were times when it was so hot that even the needle of our analog thermometer tried to go through the limiter - which it obviosly couldn`t - and broke. We definitely wanted to go south. The part of Australia where people are supposed to say, that you do not wake up in the morning in your own sweat. Cool nights, even in summer? Is there really a place like that in Australia? That would be the first time for us. So we went on and on. Along the coastline to the loneliest city in the world - Adelaide, next big city, is almost 2,500 km from Perth - and licked our wounds ... When we arrived we were in doubts, whether we really want to beat that recurring and never ending repair battle again and in a moment of weakness we thought, that we might simply chuck the old bikes in a crate and ship them back. These are the moments, besides the beautiful pictures and the wild stories on a motorbike world trip, nobody will tell you. But did we really cleaned for so long in East Timor to stop it here? Without the east coast? Nope, certainly not! With almost two weeks distance to the old horses (over Christmas and New Year), a house break (thanks to Renee for it!) and with the new intentions for 2017 we try to reach the east coast in the next month. But first of all it means: Irony on "Yehaa, we can hardly wait to work again on the bikes" Irony off.
„A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."
Lao Tzu
Impressionen
News
News 2017....
15.06.2015
Varanasi - Riechen, Schmecken, Hören und Sehen einmal anders - inmitten des heiligen Wahnsinns
14.08.2014
Pakistan ein Land der Extreme, zwischen grandioser Hochzeit, Zollchaos und [...]
....... to discover the world!!
Travel Stories (german)
Instagram
Share this post
Subscribe to newsletter
Visit us on Facebook
Google Translator
Falls euch unsere Artikel und Bilder auf der Webseite gefallen oder ihr einfach nur denkt, die Beiden (bzw. vier) sehen mal wieder ziemlich müde aus und könnten ruhig mal wieder ein richtiges Bett oder ein paar Liter frisches Motoröl gebrauchen, so könnt ihr uns ganz einfach und kostenlos hier unterstützen. Erledigt doch einfach eure nächste Bestellung über diesen
Vielen Dank dafür und weiterhin viel Spass beim Mitreisen auf unserer Seite.
Letztes Update: 09.03.2017
Newsletter abonieren:
Teile diesen Beitrag
Reise dauerhaft mit uns
© 2013-2017 losgezogen.de. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.