Shostakovich Plugged

While in Perth "Girlfriend-like-creature" told me I needed to be back in Melbourne by the 2nd for some undisclosed reason.

The reason it turned out was a performance of one of my all time favourite pieces of music: the Shostakovich String Quartet number 8 in C minor.

The performance was in a small art gallery in town and was played by a quartet called Shostakovic Plugged who use amplified semi acoustic instruments.

What a wonderful and special suprise. That GLC is kind of ok.

The violinist talked prior to the performance and I was surprised to learn that the peice was dedicated to the victims fascism and that the four note theme, which has been in my head since I first heard it more than a couple of decades ago, is actually based on Dimetri Shostakovich's initials.

The music was beautiful, scary, devastatingly powerful and darkly disturbing. Even GLC said it wasn't awful.

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Day 19

Waking up feeling a little cold in my sleeping bag, I checked the temperature and found that while it was a nice sunny morning it was only 2 degrees.

Cooking and eating hot porridge in the cold, still morning was a joy and I finished breakfast with a strong coffee while I contemplated packing up my tent for the last time.

The ride through the Grampians was great. It's such a spectacular place and I saw more (living) wildlife on the roadside than I 'd seen previously on the entire trip.

Exiting the Grampians at Dunkeld I pretty much felt like I was now on very last bit of my holiday. The riding was cold but I took regular little stops to warm up and before I was probably ready for it, the Melbourne skyline was on the horizon.

Lots of stop and start traffic on the Westgate then there I was pulling into the garage. Trip over.


What a fantastic trip it was. Amelia and I covered about eight or nine thousand kilometeres and had met a whole bunch of interesting people and saw a whole bunch fantastic, spectacular and never forget type stuff.

While I don't think I'd do the trip again I'm very glad I've done it.

Next big bike trip planned is to Mount Gambia via Great Ocean Road in November.

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Day 18

Checked out of motel and started the long ride through the Ngarkat Conservation Park.  Finally made it to Boarder Town and fueled up and then after reminiscing about "girlfriend-like-creature" and my last stay at the Dukes Motor headed off for Horsham.  Again riding through the green and yellow of wheat and canola fields.

Stopped for supplies in Horsham and started towards the Grampians  The road sign to Melbourne saying 300km or so away sort of tempted me to head straight home but I kept on and finally the mountains came into clear enough view that they distracted me from my desire for my own bed.

Pretty soon I was in the mountains and the roads and views made it all worth while.

Eventually found a fantastic campsite which was pretty far of the main road and completely isolated.  Perfect.  I set up camp and, as it was feeling a little cold, actually made a fire in the camp fireplace.   Cooked a yummy barbecue chops dinner under the stars and then watched the fire burn down to ashes over a couple of glasses of red.

Day 17

Waking to another sunny day headed off for Magnetic Hill which was a pleasant 20 minute ride out of town.  We carried out careful scientifically controlled experiments to see if the mysterious powers of Magnetic Hill would have any determinable effects on motorbikes.  Allegedly a vehicle parked in neutral at the bottom of the hill will role back up the hill.  We experimented for about 10 minutes and this is what Amelia had to say about the amazing results.

Next was the ride through to Morgan where we caught the ferry across the Murray.  It was nice to be riding through the big fields of canola and wheat again.  Slowly the crops started changing vineyards and orange groves.  The wild flowers besides the roads were quite brightly coloured.

Shortly after getting off the ferry Amelia and I stopped for a light snack and after consulting the map realised that this may as well be the time to split up.  Her plan was to go on to Mildura to visit a friend, mine was to start heading south to visit the Grampians.  We had a final fuel fill up together and gave each other a hug and said good bye.  Actually we said, "maybe see you at band next Tuesday."

I spent the rest of the day fanging it down to Pinaroo.

Day 16

Pretty much only two goals for day 16.  The first was to get Amelia's rear tyre changed in Port Augusta and the second was to sleep somewhere on the other side of the Flinders Ranges.

After a quick bit of internet research and a phone call we found the shop we needed set off for a leisurely ride into Port Augusta.

Amelia's old tyre

Getting the tyre changed was no fuss at all, while we waited we had lunch and I changed my headlight bulb had conveniently lost low beam during all the riding around in the dark.

Me changing my lightbulb

Amelia's new tyre

Next was the Flinders Ranges which we decided to cross at Horrick's Pass like last time.  This time with the clear skies and the sun out the views were spectacular and with curvy road dry the riding was a lot of fun.

With nice long stretches in the foot hills we eventually came to Orrorroo where, starting to feel pretty cold, we decided to stop for the night.

The Orrorroo Commercial Hotel was the best country hotel experience we had.  Very  friendly good food, and good rooms.  During the course of the evening we chatted with the other quests, many of whome were in Orroroo to work on finding grasshoppers. 

Back of napkin directions to Magnetic Hill and other places

After dinner we had a conversation with David and Carly who were staying near by.   They gave us lots of directions for our next days travel and also referred us to Magnetic hill.

Day 15

Woke to a windy morning with the tent flapping about but the sky was clear which was good news because this morning we had planned to fang up to the Nullarbor road house go for a 30 minute joy flight along the cliffs to look at the whales.

We ate breakfast while enjoying more of the cliff side views, packed up camp quickly and made a new cairn over the top of the camp fire before hitting the road.

The joy flight was fantastic,  and the views so spectacular that I quickly forgot to take photos.  But we saw lots of whales with baby whales and even saw a shark swimming along in the shallows.  The water was so blue  and the sand dunes so white and the plain and cliffs seemed to extend on forever.

Feeling pretty uplifted after the flight we jumped on our bike and had a long stints on the road through to Ceduna where we went on the hunt for somewhere where we could get a replacement rear tyre for Amelia's bike.  We were eventually referred through to Port Augusta and was also given the advice that the steaks at Wudina were worth the drive.  So. back on the bikes for another long stint this time drawing on to well after dusk.  We eventually got to have some pretty monsterous steaks for dinner but unfortunately there was no room at the inn. The barman at Wudina was kind enough to ring around to find somewhere for us  and ended up having to back track another 40kms in the dark to Minniup, where we were pretty happy to get to bed.

Day 14

Got out of Caiguna as soon as we could and started riding east.  The goal for this day was to make it to the place we had camped on the westerly journey.

We stopped at Eucla for lunch and while we were there we thought we take a look at the old telegraph station which is slowly being consumed by the sand dunes.  I told Amelia that I needed to take photos so that I could show the "girlfriend-like-creature" what would happen if we're not diligent with house work, she said that that sounded like a joke that Ashley would make.

1. Another stop along the way was so that Amelia could put her old shoes onto the shoe  tree.  Its an odd thing and I don't know why people do it or how it started, but the are a few specific trees which seem to have become the final resting place for worn out shoes.  It seems as though it might be related to the practice of shoefiti. Amelia added her old camping shoes which I think she said came from her trip to Italy.

We made it to our camping spot just on sunset, just in time to set up the tents.  We were pleased to our cairn still standing showing us where to camp.  Amelia collected some wood and we had a little campfire to help keep warm.

We had a nice dinner and finished off our cask red.

 

Day 13

 We woke to another fantastically sunny day and, after packing the bikes, rode around and looked at the beautiful beaches and scenery of Orleans Bay.  As inviting as the water looked we decided that we weren't going to become shark food, so stayed out of the water.

We then started our journey up the Parmingo Road. We had been told about the Parmingo road at the rest stop the night before and about how it was a good short cut through to Balledonia, and how "it's a bit rough but you should be right on the bikes".   With some last minute instruction and full tanks of fuel from the Camp ground operator we headed off and eventually found the road.

We eventually made it to Balladonia about three hours of very challenging riding with deep gravel, huge ruts, and road corrugations like I've not seen before.  We were both pretty exhausted by the time we got to the roadhouse and had a beer and a road house hamburger to recover while watching the last 10 minutes of some football game that people were excited about.

After a bit of a rest we pushed onto the next roadhouse, this involved the big 160km straight road to Caiguna which was pretty boring but kind of nice in the sun set.  We camped in the road house camp ground which was pretty much just the gravel car park next to the air field. Not the best $15 I've ever spent.

Day 12

We left our cabin at the Caravan park in Denmark pretty early and started the ride into  Albany. 

A text message from my internet savvy mum and dad came through in messenger to remind me that the Albany was the place of the first Anzac Day dawn service and the place where the WW1 troops left from and that the Mounted Desert Corps memorial at the top of Mount Clarence was special and that we should definitely go and have a look.  It was and we spent a bit of time walking around and enjoying the views.

On the way back into town we spotted what looked like Albany's equivalent of San Franciscos' Lombard Street.  Bridge Street is Very steep and very curvy. At the bottom I plucked up my courage and attented an ascent.  It was a lot of fun and more than abit scary but I made it to the top with out a problem.  Amelia's ascent was sucessfull too.

Next was the big ride to Esperance. Not much to report here other than it was long and sparcely populated.  Highlights of the 580KM journey include the turn off to Bremer Bay and the road house just near by which would have to be one of the nicest, cleanest, and generally pleasant road houses experienced so far.  Other highlights of the journey were Amelia's power nap and Raventhorp, the two seperate eagles which seamed to swoop down to investigate Amelia's pink crash helmet, and being pulled over by the police.

Coming around a corner to be flagged down by a policeman had me feeling a little anxious but all it turned out to be was a mandatory rest stop.  We had our cup of tea an biscuits and to pass the time we started a conversation with the staff  about where to camp.  The conversation became quite animated and we were enthusiastically directed to a camp ground  2 hours ride away on the other side of Esperance and that we could probably make it by dark. This seemed a little ironic given that we had just been given quite somber lectures on the importance of not travelling to too longer periods of time.

We passed through Esperance on dusk just stopping for fuel and wine, and headed off in the dark with some vague directions and a few road names in our heads.  The road turned to gravel just as the moon made a stunning appearance on the horison and we rode side by side to double the power of our headlights to help in spotting animals. Eventualy we came to a caravan park and stopped.  It wasn't the Luck Bay camp ground we were looking for but we'd had enough of gravel roads int the dark by then and decided to stay for the night.

We made a yummy indian dinner out of an unexpected set of ingredinents.

Day 11

We broke camp and had breackfast. Both feeling a little tired, I made the coffee extra strong, this certainly had an effect on Amelia who pre coffee was struggling with her tent and post coffee was all "come on lets get going..." even before I had a chance to put the coffee away.

Cape Leeuwin Light House

First stop was the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse.  It was a lovely ride down to it the roads all curvy and the temperature just right and when we got down the the cape some of the views was spectacular.  The light itself is pretty amazing, it's still operational and they need to keep the lens rotating during the day to stop it from overheating in the sun and cracking.  We had a nice second breakfast at the cafe at the light house and really enjoyed the views.

The guide at the light was really interesting, he said that the wall of the light house at the base are two meters thick so that it can with stand the 160km/h winds that there get.  He also said that it's the tallest mainland light house in Australia and that it was only converted from kerosene to electricity in the late 80's.

Below is a video of the Cape Leeuwin Light house lens rotating

View of coast from the top of the light house

 

Next we were back on the road for some lovely riding through forests and national parks in the south west.  We chouse to take some short cuts through some of the some of the forrests on roads that were not quite what the guzzi was made for.  It seemed to hand the roughness ok and was sort of stable on the loose gravel.  Lunch time inspection for bit which had fallen off showed that the bike had held together ok over the corrugated roads and nothing seemed to have shaken loose.

Nice riding through the forrest of the South West

 

Later on when we were coming out of the forest we noticed at huge pall of smoke, we're hoping it was only controlled burning off and not a bush fire.

With it getting late we pulled into Denmark, both of us feeling pretty exhausted from a great days riding.  We bumbled around looking for somewhere to stay and have dinner and eventually found a nice caravan park cabin by the water.  (we needed a cabin because we needed to recharge a whole bunch of electrical things.

On the way we must have ridden through a bunch of bugs.

Day 10 - the first day of the return journey

Amelia and I met up in Kings Park, which has a fantastic view overlooking Perth.  It was really sunny and just a little cool and it was a really great place to start the next big phase of our trip.

The view from Kings Park

We braved Perth traffic (which seems a little crazier than Melbourne's), and after one or two near misses and occasional wrong turns we made it to Fremantle for breakfast with Frank and Nicole.  We had a yummy breakfast with lots of good conversation.

Frank joined us on his bike for the first hour or so while we rode down the old coast road and then after a quick roadside goodbye, Amelia and I were off again for the next big adventure.

First stop was Bussleton for a much needed fish and chips lunch and rest at the pier.  It certainly looks like a 2km long pier but we couldn't tell really because it was closed.

THe sun setting into the sea

The goal was to get to Cape Leeuwin.  We made as far as Hamlin bay in time for the sun setting into the sea.  The riding was lots of fun, just the right sort of curvy roads.


Camped for the night in a national park campsite,  it was very peaceful.

A selection of Bike Cam shots from the trip to Perth

Exploring the cliff tops (sorry about the bugs)

The South Australian Boarder

Sandbags on side of raod due to Victorian flooding

Nice Victorian Riding

Getting ready to depart from Melbourne

Getting some slipstream action

There really are no trees on the nullarbor

Oh no ! looks like its's going to rain

It's raining

An awkward moment coming into Balledonia

Riding with Frank and Amelia