Kalbarri National Park And Fucken Swearing Warning.

 Kalbarri NP.

From Geraldton we headed north again, in my head I am still trying to work our where the hell I put my ear plugs and tyre gauge.

Arriving at the Pink Lakes Ellen asked where is the fast charger, cables etc?

Then … another bag which our hiking gear was in….where the hell is that?

At this point in time we finally put 2 and 2 together, we had been robbed and a lots of bits and pieces flogged, that sinking feeling again…ouwh fuck what else has gone!!

FFS this was getting to us, so far in OZ my hat in Tassie, Ellen jandals at Jurien Bay and now this gear has been flogged….cunts.

Arriving at Kalbarri we went straight to the Police Station to report it, we arrived just on 4.00pm and they had just turned everything off so Kegan (the officer) gave us the case number etc, we went back down the following morning to do the full report, great way to spend part of the first day in a beautiful place.

Too say we are fucked off is an understatement, even in the full Americas trip over 3 years we had 1 issue once in Bolivia, here 3 fucken times, this time a BIG dent in our gear.

As we had not been hiking in the last few weeks and we had packed our stuff away, as it turned out I had not been lazy when putting stuff away and our bag, chargers, GPS, cables etc had been taken.

Trouble is the Police can do nothing to get back our gear and to sell it on the street it is worth bugger all but it is going to cost us a coupla K to get it all back and now we are heading into the sparsely populated area of WA which doesn’t’ have this motorcycle specific and hiking gear on the shelf, talk about the frustration of this and we were in the security of a proper caravan park.  

If I ever find the cunts they will be wearing a Ural shovel….one size fits all.   

Now the cool NP stuff, we did a few walks and climbs which were well cool.

In the park they had all sorts of cool metal anthropods (sp?) etc, similar to a Harley, they were life size and big bastids, we woulda shit ourselves if we had seen one for real.

The ocean side of the NP.

The inland walks part, this was really cool and well worth going too.

The skywalk is awesome, any engineering minds will love this, it is a stunning piece of work and worthy of, firstly standing on to see the epic views and secondly to appreciate the engineering excellence that went into providing you the epic view with epic engineering, yeah I love this stuff so take the dues where they are worthy. 

Sorry for the rant earlier (not really tho) but people who flog other peoples kit leaving them in a hole need decapitating in order to save oxygen and space. 

        

 

Pinnacles And Geraldton

The Pinnacles was our first destination for a drive through tour of the sand and rock formations.

Our destination was Jurien Bay, there is the worlds single biggest collection of HRD Vincents plus a few other goodies, just a few of the many that weigh my phone done now.

Ian Day (The owner) took me for a personal tour of the stable full of hot lusties, many of them 1 of 2 in the world.

It was magnificent to say the least, returning back down to earth and back to camp I went to the beach to find Ellen.

She was talking with some people as her new jandals had just been flogged…wankers.

Taking our wine and cheese to the waterfront to watch the sun go down we drunk away the bad spirits of oxygen thieves who steal stuff.

We had a crack at fishing the evening as well but lucky we had our lamb chops …again.

Geraldton being our next stop we swooped passed Dongara, the weatherman was delivering a big package that was about to hit, before we could do much down it came, Dongara Bakery was our shelter, by the time we got there we were wet so we sheltered and bought fud there. By the time we had finished having a scoff the sun was back out.

At Geraldton our mission was to change the engine oil in the bike, that is where we met Peter and Cheryl, Peter is part of the Ulysis MC Club and we were duly invited to a ride with them the following day, to ad to that he invited us around to his house and workshop to change our oil which was superb.

Cleanas bro !

We also met Nigel, a dude from Scotland on a BMW 1200GS who joined us on the ride as well.

A great ride was had with the lads and ladesses taking in some back country.

Nigels GS, stickers from everywhere...respect.

The aftermatch function was down at the waterfront with the international contingent making a good showing, thanks guys, was a great day and excellent night at the marble.

Finishing at Geraldton camp we went to Grahams, another rider on the trip and local and Kiwi, invited us to change out our rear tyre, again perfect timing.

When we went to blow up the tyre I could not find my tyre gauge…this was unusual as I am very particular about putting things back where they belong....hmmm.

We said goodbyes after getting sorted I could not find my riding earplugs either …this time I am thinking WTF…anyway we had The Pink Lakes on our list so off we trollied.

A big thanks to Peter for taking the time out to chat resulting in good times, oil change and tyre change, the power of knowledge and mates.

 

Perth The Big Smoke

Perth, always wanted to go here and now that boxed is ticked.

The city is pretty easy to get in and out of which is great as we sit on a 750 heater in traffic.

Meeting Angela and her girls again was really cool, hearing the story’s bringing us up to date and chewing the fat about old times.

While in Perth we wanted to change our fuel filter but the dealership didn’t have one, suspecting it had some rubbish in it a local Perth Sidecar dude let us use his workshop and backflush the original, to be fair it wasn’t too bad and a through wash saw it go back in.

Angela took us for a city tour by night which was superb with lit up bridges, view points over the city etc.

We also took a day hoon on the bike finding our way around easily, Angelas day off saw us head to Fremantle.     

 

While we were there it was our 18^th Wedding Anniversary, Edwards wine, Roasted duck and some nice Chinese vegetables etc was very very nice and certainly a cut above camp fud.

 Time to say goodbye saw us head north again leaving the big smoke behind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leaving Albany To Margaret River

Margaret River

On the way outa town stopping at Skippy Beach...not sure what was similar.

Margaret River, a very nice place to stop and take a breath, only intended to stay a night and stayed 3.

Our riding gear was starting to stand up by itself and my jacket was starting to chase me.

Some nice local walks took us around the district with a nicecream stop along the way, a trip to Edwards Winery netted a beautiful lunch and a bottle of wine to take home.

The winery had a small tiger moth in the entrance and the lady gave us the big run down, as it would turn out the day before they were flat to the slab 4 of them run off their feet, today us only for the afty so the boss kicked her feet up and enjoyed our company without demanding customers, although the tasting was specific she just bought out everything.

The place has an amazing ceiling feature, hand crafted plane prop.

Cowaramup, yeap a place with 30 cows scattered around the town center.

From Margaret River Naturaliste NP was on our radar, we only went there to check out the lighthouse and carry on inland again.

We stopped at a potential camp but decided it was too early so continued on up on a back road, purely by chance we met Carl, a sidecar enthusiast and there was a bunch of them camping that night where we had just from.

Not doing things by halves the bon fire was literally half a tree which lasted all night.

 

One of the sidecars

This was our last wild night out as we were heading to Perth to meet Angela, a good friend from Wanaka that moved to Oz about 15 years ago.  

 

Western Australia South Western Corner.

Cruising our way west to the WA southern corner we stopped off at various points along the way, our destination led us to Walpole which is 13903 km form the North Pole and 6118 km from the South Pole according to the sign…who are we to argue.

The dude at the camp helped us with a pump as we had a faulty valve to replace and needed a decent pump, with some strategically placed rocks under the Sidecar the job was done…so we thought, bugga me if it was still sticking so ol mate gave us a valve etc so we could sought it, so cool, above and beyond you know there are still great people in this world.

Some of our neighbours ...jumped up bunch they were..

The lads opposite us at camp were going out fishing, they had had little luck but were still going, we joined them for moral support and fun, I ended up pulling in the only one of the evening, a King Whitey which are treasured eating.

Our major catch of the night tho was the aurora, holly shit it was awesome and we had landed the bullseye on a clear, calm night on a southern beach, sometime the travel goods reward you handsomely for making the effort, tonight was the night.  

In and outa little detours the next day took us to an unsuspectingly great place called Karri Valley, weather looked great until it wasn’t, a MASSIVE thunderstorm came across providing us with a spectacular pyrotechnic display …the sky just kept providing.

Augusta, we were told to go there so we did, a beautiful place, Ellen bought a bikini and sunnies, the camp right on the shore line with stingrays and Octopus cruising past...brilliant.

The bakery there is highly recommended with a Guiness and mince pie finished off by a cream donut which saw me choca for the rest of the day.

The only thing we didn’t like was the humidity, nothing would dry and everything felt clamy, maybe you could get used to it but for me no, I love dry climate as the damp has been giving me shit with my arthritis which I hate, this is my body problem tho not the destination to be fair. 

Heading off to Margaret River was our plan, only 50km up the road, of course our TMK style we took off down every side road finding a stunning beach for a lunch stop.   

Taking some detours took us to swing bridges, big trees and scenic rising which ticked the boxes away from the main drag.

Making it to Margaret River the place was nice, we decided to kick here for a coupla days taking advantage to wash all our riding gear which was getting pretty manky.