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Nov 09, 02 | 12:37 pm - The Summing Up
RAAUST 2002 - Ride Across Australia
Adelaide - Sydney September 10 - 25, 2002
Perth - Adelaide October 7 - 25, 2002
Why?
“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather bed of civilisation, an find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.” Robert Louis Stevenson
5,607 km, 3,504 mi – Bob’s RAAUST route
5,127 km, 3,204 mi - Bob’s actual distance ridden
4,315 km, 2,697 mi – Bob’s RAAM route (for comparison)
4,200 km, 2,625 mi – Paul Salter’s RAAUST route (Bike Australia – see bibliography)
480.0 km, 300 mi – distance Bob covered by bus
176.8 km, 110.5 mi – Bob’s actual average kilometers ridden per day
29 - number of days on bike
4 – number of break days (Adelaide, Melbourne (2), Sydney)
hundreds – number of nice people met in Australia
hundreds – dead kangaroos/wallabies seen (all over, but mainly western Nullarbor)
70 - people who registered on the website and joined the trip
dozens – live kangaroos/wallabies seen
dozens – number of times dive bomb attacked by magpies
dozens – live emu’s seen (western Nullarbor)
a few – dead emu’s seen
4 – flat tires (Bairnsdale, Orbost, Mandurah, Nundroo)
3 – dead camels seen (20km east of Norseman)
2 – koalas seen (in a nature park by Bateman's Bay)
2 – number of assholes met in Australia (really only one guy)
1 – oz. liquid per kilometer (fuel, kind of like mpg)
1 – number of live camels seen (on a farm outside Augusta)
1 – number of live dingo’s seen (eastern Nullarbor)
Places in Australia I’d go back to:
#1 – Southwest coast & forests from Perth to Albany, maybe Espreance too
#2 – Southeast coast from Lakes Entrance to Sydney
#3 – The Cities: Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth
Most fun places to ride in Australia:
#1 – Southwest coast and forests
#2 – Great Ocean Road
Places in Australia I want to go that I haven’t seen:
#1 – The East Coast from Sydney to Cairns, Queensland
#2 – The North Coast and central Australia – Darwin, Ayers Rock
#3 – The Eyre Peninsula Coast
Places in Australia I will probably not ride across again:
#1 – The Nullarbor, from Esperance to Norseman to Ceduna
#2 – The farms and pastures – Melbourne to Lakes Entrance, Eyre Peninsula
#3 – The hills between Lakes Entrance and Wollongong
Some things I like about Australia:
#1 - The people. Almost universally friendly, helpful and into life.
#2 - The culture and scale of things. Less commercialism, more egalitarian, very comfortable.
#3 - The differences. Flora, fauna, language, side-of-road, seasons, etc. Makes it feel like you are exploring a slightly different world.
Next BIG rides:
#1 – Europe (Lisbon, Madrid, Lyon, Munich, Prague, Warsaw, Minsk, Moscow)
#2 – South America (Lima, Antofagasta, Salta, Asuncion, Sao Paulo)
#3 – Asia (Moscow, Omsk,Semipalatinisk, Ueumqui, Lanzhou, Shanghai)
#4 – Africa (Freetown, Lagos, Douala, Bangui, Kisangani, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam)
And thank you to everyone who "rode" along with me...
Aaron, AB, adam werbach, Administrator, alex, Anne, Barb, becky snyder, betty, bill, Bill Capps, Bob, Bob Jackowski, bob lee, Brad Johnson, Bridgett, bryan, BryanR, Charlie, Christine, chuck, Claire, Colby, csalisbury, DAVE, Dperkowitz, Food Snob, Ginny, Glenys Thompson, Guy, Holly Welch, Jessie & Nora, Jim McLaughlin, Jim Wilson, John Calaway, John DeCock, K, Karin, Kathy, kort, Lisa, Lisa C, Lynne, Martin, Matt & Bobbi, Mette, Mom Perkowitz, Niece Nicole, pdt, ray, Rob Bierregaard, Steff, Stuart C, Susie Perkowitz, sybil, Sylvia, teresa, terrim, The Other Tom Perkowitz, Thomas Morrissey, tica, TinaK, Tom Perkowitz, Tracy R., Treven, VBOGUST, Wandaurbanska & Warren (and Andrew Ward)
November 9, 2002 Charlotte, NC
(If you're new to the site, the days are marked with *, **, *** to indicate more interesting days. Go to "About" for full information on the site.)
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Oct 25, 02 | 12:21 pm - Adelaide 0km, 0mi *
I spent my last cycling night in the Flinders Hotel in Port Augusta. Like many of the rural hotels in South Australia, it features “Pokies” – a video slot machine/poker game thing that I don’t understand, but it’s a big addiction and controversy around here.
Then I wandered around Port Augusta a little bit while I waited for the 6AM bus. They have a nice walking tour of the town with historical markers containing photographs and text of the history of the city.
In my calls to the USA earlier, I found that Tom had taken a good turn for the better and I was torn between continuing the ride (only 1-1/2 days left) or sticking with my adjusted plans. Tom’s condition has been variable, and I had already changed all my travel arrangements, so the bike and I ignobly got on the bus and headed to Adelaide.
When I got to Adelaide, I rented a car and drove to Bernie Jones Cycles to get the bike packed up and sent back home. I last saw Jeff, Gary, Lynne and Tracey on 9/11, and they were as helpful to me in just shipping the bike back to the USA as they were to sell it. Then it was to the Medina Grand Treasury Apartment Hotel to check in, to a couple of shops to by some clothes (the expected package from the USA didn’t arrive) and back to the base of the Adelaide Hills and take a picture of the first mileage sign, which I missed 7 weeks ago.
Stuart Clement and Glenys Thompson from Adelaide have been most helpful on this trip (see pix from 9/9 entry). We went over to their house for a glass of wine, played with their bird Vinnie a bit and went out for Chinese.
I still had some time open on Friday, so I drove up to the Barossa Valley, just north of Adelaide, and checked out what some consider to be Australia’s best wine growing area. On the way back to town I went to Australia’s National Wine Institute and tasted some (more) of the stuff.
Thanks for coming along on the ride. Here’s to you.
(Sept 25, 6:15PM Adelaide)
- I arrived Saturday morning at LAX, rented a car and headed down to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach to visit Tom. He was liberated, after 9 days, just a few minutes before I made it to the hospital. He is back in his apartment with Theresa and his mother, and recovering nicely now.
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Oct 23, 02 | 3:09 pm - Pt Augusta 189km, 116mi *
These updates usually end when I get to the destination town. At that point I need to a) find the grocery store, b) find accommodations and c) find dinner – quickly. Grocery stores (supplies for next day) close at 5:30P, and restaurants stop serving at 7:30 or 8. I write the updates at dinner. Some bits of information about the town need to go into the next day’s update.
I was soaked arriving in Kimba yesterday, so a hot shower and drying out my stuff (always packed in plastic to avoid dust and water, but everything still damp after hours of riding in the rain) were the priorities, after a) and b) above. I couldn’t call to check on Tom in the evening (8PM here is 4:30AM in LA), and I didn’t have a phone (i.e. online connection) so I prepared for an early start, and crashed.
(For those of you who are not getting the email updates (not registered), son Tom is in Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach with a ruptured appendix and some other complications – and likely to spend a couple of weeks there.)
Because Tom’s condition seems variable, I decided to try to head back to the USA SAP. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Leaving Kimba, two photographs. The giant parrot is the Great Galah, a local attraction. The other photograph is the town’s information bay.
I almost always take multiple pictures of the information bays. They have history, geography, commerce and other tidbits of information. For instance, this one says the area was settled in 1908 for wheat production, in spite of very limited rainfall. The secondary purpose of the second picture is to show the wheat silos. They mark the towns and are visible from many kilometers away. Here’s the first mileage sign.
These distances, 86km to Iron Knob and 154 to Port Augusta are not impressive. I’ve been making 140km or so by noontime each day. If there was any kind of public transportation that would have gotten me out of these one-roadhouse towns (perhaps less than 100 people each), I might have taken it. Stuart Clement made an offer to drive out from Adelaide to get me, but that would have been a 10+ hour round trip for him, and I thought I’d get there almost as fast by riding to Port Augusta and taking some non-pedal powered transportation from there. In any case, as the Kimba information sign said, it was off into the undulating hills
This looks like lush scenery along the 3-chain wide road, but when you’re alongside it the foliage is bushy topped with sticks underneath, so you get to see all the wheat fields. Then, for the first time since pre-Nundroo 3 days ago, the scenery changed.
I had a welcome couple of hours riding through the Lake Giles Conservation Park. Green everywhere. No wheat or buildings. Then, when I came out on the other side, it was like I was back in the Nullarbor. There was a range of hills, one (only) of them badly mangled
This hill marks Iron Knob, the only human habitation between Kimba and Port Augusta (except for a couple of farmhouses outside Kimba and something called Nuttbush Retreat (looks like a ranch converted into accommodation) north of Iron Knob.. Here’s Iron Knob’s local attractions sign and the image from which they get their image.
I took my first off the bike break here at the little Iron Knob roadhouse 1km south of the main road. There I learned that the mine closed in 1998, and the place became a mostly empty little town. They have a good sense of humor though. On the wall was a magazine article featuring the 6 worst places in Australia to go on holiday, featuring Iron Knob. They also sell t-shirts that say “Skip the foreplay, go straight for the Knob.” I went straight for Port Augusta. Here’s the mileage sign leaving town and a road shot that could have been taken in the Nullarbor, but was taken east of Iron Knob.
Highway Australia Alternate 1 rejoined Australia 1 (second major intersection in 1,500 km) 26 km west of Port Augusta. There were a variety of welcome signs to Augusta – this is the one with the pretty picture, and the information bay with the “Crossroads of Australia” designation, which Port Augusta deserves.
Then I crossed the Spencer Gulf on the new bridge, and started looking for a way to get to Adelaide.
I was unsuccessful finding any available public transportation to Adelaide. The last bus left at 1:30, just as I was learning about it 2 blocks away. The airport (5 km south of town) said they had a seat on the 4PM and my bike would fit, but when I rode there, it wouldn’t. There are no trains. I could have taken a taxi, but getting to Adelaide after 8PM just wouldn’t have been helpful, so I bought a ticket for the 6AM bus, and that’s what I’ll do.
(Oct 23, 7:20PM, Port Augusta)
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