I’ve fallen behind on my blogging of bike related goodness, so I thought I’d catch up by giving an update on some of the parts I less than loved on my big trip, parts I need to replace and parts I would swap out.

So before I get into bike parts, first my gear. I took a single set of riding pants and some jeans. I really should have taken another set of riding pants, a more breathable set at that too. Although my waterproof pants were comfy they held in the heat and after 2 weeks started to grow a little. I also found I could have done with a jacket at least one size down, its a great jacket, but too big about the arms, my guns are not that large. But this is what comes from having to buy over the internet and not being able to try it on in person.

So the bike gear, before I set off I knew the pannier locks would be entertaining, at times you need a screwdriver and key to open the lock, this is ok for getting the bike off the frame but a pain when your trying to get your camera out in 38 degree heat. If I was near the bike I’d tend to leave one of the locks open. You can get panniers that take pad locks, the problem with this is you’ll sound like santa all the way home. I’d also hate to have to cut off a lock damaged in a fall. One good thing about the OEM inbuilt locks in the barrel is wide enough to flush out any grit that gets in there, you can’t say this of most locks. I did however get a dust guard snapped off in the lock, after returning home I had to drill out of the lock, it took a while but not more than 30 minutes, so they are not that safe, but people will hear and see it happening before anyone can get at you gear. I’m going to replace my damaged lock barrel and not use any dust covers again, one thing the dust covers do well is hold tight in the locks, this doesn’t help you when they break.

The extra rotopax fuel tanks were practical in the sense that I’d not run out of fuel, but they proved hard to get on and off the bike as well as swelled up in the days sun. By the end of the day I’d have too release the vapours from the fuel cans to return the cans to the correct size. I did need to use the extra fuel a couple of times but the rest of the time they really just looked daggy. Another problem with using the rotopax for that much fuel is that it decreases the amount of weight you can put on the back of the bike. In fairness until I got past Darwin I was carrying way too much extra gear, after Darwin I inherited another set of tires (another problem I’ll talk about soon).

Since getting back I’ve found websites like bike bandit will sell you the OEM BMW tank for the adventure, there are also several good guides on the internet including step by step how to remove and upgrade the fuel tank. Since owning the GS I’ve come to love its largeness, and raw power, it will never handle as good as a track bike, dispite my grinding the foot pegs on the occasional corner. It is however an excellent all rounder, and considering what you get extremely light. I know the KTM is lighter but it is also less of a fancy ride with one set of suspension settings and features for all terrain, rather than an electronically adjustable beastie. Installing the OEM GSA tank would give me the same fuel capacity and is really the only tidy option for more evenly packing the bike by putting more weight over the front tire. I do attribute the occasional fish tailing in the sand to be too heavy on the back.

I used a set of tires on the trip and have eaten into another pair, I had intended on swapping my road tires up the coast for some more off road capable tires only to find it was impossible to get a set without ordering them in advance, perhaps I should have planned this better. I did even up purchasing an additional set of road tires, these were nice and heavy to carry, they replaced the weight I had removed from my pack. I had always intended on getting some spoked tires, but cost and availability of a GS with spokes kept me from them. That said I would still change up the tires to spoked rims with off road tires and an inner tub. Carrying extra inner tubs is a lot better than carrying extra tires, extra tires are not avoidable on all trips but lipping back a couple of hundred kms on a patched tire with a new inner tube would be fine.

I’d also fit valves with a right angle, too many service stations have air hoses that cannot find the standard GS alloy rims, it would be easier with spokes but not much. It would also be nice to have the tiny weight reduction from switching to spoked rims, when I stop by the dealer next I plan to organise some spoked rims and tires to be fitted, keeping the original rims and tires. I’ve not found a website that can supply there at a cost much cheaper than the OEM BMW components. I have seen a couple of GSs getting about town with the bobby tires, I expect slightly less grip on the tarmac but am wonder how much as well as the kms I can expect out of a set.

During my last two services, including the service in perth someone nicely rounded off the bolts on the underside of my skid plate, I’m not sure when this happened as I’d not been there since fitting the plate. The plate has done its job a couple of times on dirt rocky tracks and some steep approaches to services I took at speed. Perhaps I applied too much torc as well. I love the bash plate, so after the upcoming service it will be reinstalled. I’ve got to send a nice email to the supplier asking for a set of the bolts which shouldn’t be a problem. I also lost a single bolt while changing the air filter, I do have a box of those so should be able to fit one from the collection; this is the only part of the bike I lost during 17000kms, pretty good really, it was my fault too not something that rattled off, so years of perfecting the model as made a difference, the engine mounts definitely do there job.

The bark busters which I flitted in the place of the zero protection guars that came with the bike really do work; unfortunately tho if you want to locate them to as not to bust a lever on a drop you also have the problem that the bark buster will collect the tank in a nasty fall. I’ve not had big drops but I do have two little indentations on the bike from the bark busters, they did however protect my hands. Bark busters are also a great way to pick up the bike, probably the easiest I’ve found. I did some research and found Touratech make some snazzy looking alloy covers for the out of the box guards. I might switch off to these are well as replace my scratched panel. My much loved map bag also wore a little of the gloss off the same panel, a soft material patch on the underside might help with that, I do love that bag.

Lastly there were a couple of tools I am missing from the kit. First off a spark plug remover, this would have been very handy. I might also look at replacing the spark plug lead remover, the current one I have doesn’t get the best grip. I also found when trying to change tires I really needed a torc wrench, or to at least loosen up the factory torc before the trip. I picked up a torc wrench the other day as its a good to use so as to not stress the bolts. Lastly I also need a rod to hold up the front tire, its nothing to complicated just a bar with a flat plate on the end, you can buy them, unfortunately they don’t look too compact. You can also lodge a pannier under the bash plate to take the weight of the front tire, but that method realises on you panniers not being force locked to you bike.

On the second night I camped at a place called Ellis Beach. After looking at the flat and hard ground a the back of the camp ground I decided to camp in the sand. I gunned the bike into the sand, something that proved a little difficult to sort out in the morning. After rolling the bike back a bit, uploading and creating a massive cloud of sand dust I got the bike back onto the grass. It reminded me how heavy the bike was, deep sand without momentum its no-ones friend; well unless you have super wide tires. The heat probably didn’t help too the sand was like powder.

The first couple of photos are my campsite in Ellis Beach, very nice spot. After packing up I headed up the Captain Cook Highway to Port Douglass for lunch, there are a couple of pictures from lookouts on the way as well as a nice shot from the Port Douglass lookup looking south back to where I’d come from.

After lunch I headed up into the Atherton Tableland, after laughing at a bunch of tourists photographing a terminate mound I spotted some about the size of a car and pulled over. I’d end up photographing terminates all over the country The last picture is my night 3 camp, this was in Mount Garnett; nice enough campground, but a shame about my neighbours. The couple next door were fighting for a good part of the night, spot the fancy bike cover I picked up in Cairns. Walking around Cairns in my bike gear was super hot, it was hot like this until I got near Cairns. I kind of got use to it, I missed the heat when I was frozen in WA.

I did a lot of kms on day 2, by the end of the day I was past Cairns and well and truly stuffed. It was about 36 degrees, I decided to have a slow third day. I wasn’t really stopping much or taking it easy, it didn’t feel like a holiday just yet. It was my own fault, I’d wanted to get out of the parts of Queensland I’d seen so many time quickly. At one point I decided to pull over and have a drink in Cardwell, heres some photos of the beach. Last time I’d come to Cardwell it was wiped out by a cyclone a couple of weeks earlier

Its been a couple of months since my trip, and although I’ve been through my pics a couple of times with some friends and family I have been lagging on posting them, well I’ve been dreading uploading all those pictures. I’ve decided to upload a couple of the highlights for each day and maybe post the rest on flickr at some point. So here goes…

I didn’t take as many photos on the first couple of days, but heres some pictures on the bike about 400 kms up the coast, look how nice and clean it looks. I seem to have a knack for finding dirt and puddles as you’ll soon find out…

Look how much stuff I’m carrying, I’d like to get my load a little better evenly distributed next time. Get the extra fuel up the front in a bigger tank and fit everything into the boxes.

I completed my trip around the country at about 1pm on Sunday the 23rd. I’ve ridden approximately 17,000 kms around Australia anti-clockwise from Brisbane following the coast all the way home. I passed through each mainland capital city, although I did not seek many of them out, too much traffic and speed cameras, and not enough things I went riding to find. I’ve seen most of Australia’s big cities so some I passed by very quickly. I was after all going to see the things I hadn’t seen.

During the trip I used up a set of tires, an air filter and my pre filter is filthy. The bike had its 10,000 km service at 13,500 kms at Perth; another service is now also overdue, the bikes 6 months old and has about 20,000 kms on it, probably close to 21 by the time I get it to the shop. I told my local dealer I was just going for a short trip up the NT. I dropped the bike in the Northern Territory and flooded and fixed the bike in the middle of nowhere in Western Australia. I’ve met a bunch of nice bikers and some wackos too. Most people I came across are pretty nice. I found the folks up in NT pretty similar to QLD. There are a heap of people touring the northern areas of Australia; so if you do have trouble its only a matter of time before help comes along. I didn’t take too many tracks, I suspect getting help would be harder to find the deeper you go into the center, still there are places there I’d still like to see. Having been the places I have and the things I’ve done, it does make you realise you can get out of anything provided to stay calm and prepare as much as you can, also you do need to rely on others and be prepared to do the same for others too.

The one thing that I expected to happen, a flat tire, never even got close to happening. Well maybe if I didn’t let my tires down on all those tracks, I could have nicely sliced them up. I’ll still carry my extras tho (well on long trips), seeing people without backup fuel or the ability to fix there own tires or only having the token toolkit that came with the bike really does make me cringe. I saw a bunch of really poorly maintained bikes, oil everywhere. Sure chains spit oil, a problem I don’t have but I saw a couple of bikes that didn’t look washed before the trip. If you don’t wash your own bike, you don’t know what parts are lost or need tightening up. I was really careful with fuel on this trip, once or twice I almost ran out, other times the stations were burnt to the ground of abandoned, it does pay to plan fuel stops and fill up often, even if you have a range of 150 kms left in the tank. The reserve tanks I did have to use a couple of times. I was a bit sad to see fuel stations more often it took something away from the trip, anyone could get there without planning, the same with greenery. I preferred to ride in the middle of nowhere, the scenery was good and it felt more alien than home which was nice, plus red tracks and mud are just cool.

I stayed in a cabin the last night in Yamba, pretty good after all the other places I’d stayed. Yamba is a small beachside town near Byron. I decided to have a big ride the previous day so Sunday could be an easier day. When you ride a bike on a long trip its often the last couple of hundreds kms are the most dangerous, you start to relax and your mind starts to drift. After 30 days on a bike I was pretty focused even on the last day. I was really happy to cross the Queensland border for the first time in 20 odd days, and it did make me feel more relaxed. I guess everyone prefers and has more confidence in the other drivers in their state and town. And I did notice all the average speed signs and cameras disappear once I crossed the border. After riding around in the Northern Territory where small roads have large speeds it did make me think that many of the limits imposed by the state governments are less about an extra 10 kms per hour creating a massive safety risk and more about having a modest speed limit that will allow the maximum amount of vehicles to easily generate speeding revenue.

So whats next, well I’ll have to think about that, I’ve got a couple of ideas. One thought that did enter my head after I crossed a tropic marker or a noteworthy parallel, was that I’d been one of the few to have ridden around an entire continent. And there are other perfectly good continents out there that are plenty interesting. Apart from a couple of days I’d managed camping and roughing it pretty well, I’d not missed work and was enjoying riding and seeing and meeting people. I’d so learnt a couple of new tricks and had a lot more confidence in the bike and my ability to just find a way to get through. I liked the remote places the most, it seemed more real. I took Monday to recover a little and do a couple of things around the house, I had a massive case of not wanting to go back to work. On que I started coming down with a cold on the Monday after all the riding was done, I think it was a combination of not drinking enough water a lack of sleep on the last couple of nights.

At the beginning of the trip, at about 6am on the first day while riding I remember thinking shit its a long way to Cairns, and a lot longer all the way around the country. When I got to Cairns my doubts did disappear, after all I’d completed a massive leg of the trip. I did have doubts again near Darwin, I was concerned about timeframe and for a couple of days was thinking about cutting down the Stuart Highway (after visiting the NT) to pop down to SA. After a couple of days I decided to stuff that idea, the plan was to ride around the country, even if I missed a couple of things in the middle I’d much prefer to remember my trip as doing a loop of the country rather than half the country and a few more rocks. A lot of people told me it wasn’t enough time to ride around the country, both before and during the trip. I stopped telling people too much about my timeframes, I got tired of defending my plans to people. These were also the people tho that would spend 2-3 days in the same place. And usually not have done anything more than find a coffee by 9am in the morning, a couple of them tried to talk to me while I was packing up. I tried to be polite a couple of times, but a wasted hour is a wasted hour, daylight and riding time was burning and on hot days you want to be packed up early, its nice to be on the bike before its 30 degrees. It wasn’t until I got down near Perth that people stopped lecturing me on timeframes. Yes I had chosen a pretty agressive timeframe and a big task, but thats also what makes it special. On top of that I think its important to travel your own country and even try and understand some of the problems we don’t like to talk about. Most of the people I know haven’t travelled their own country to this extent, sure I’ve not seen everything but I lived 30 days in places all round the country. A lot not holiday destinations but yeah there were some postcard worthy places, heaps. I’ve always thought that you shouldn’t wait until your almost dead to see the country. If you have dreams you’ve got to complete it to grow and make way for other challenges, otherwise in many years from now you’ll be telling some guy on a motorcycle you wished you did it when you where younger.

There are a couple of people I owe thanks to for places to sleep and offers of places to sleep I didn’t get too. People helped me with tools when I got stuck and water when I’d ran out. I’d got a set of tires after the bike shop had closed and a pretty speedy service on short notice. I got a lot of free food and another camper gave me his last beer, given to him by the guy that runs a well known brewery (we were a couple of days from beer supplies too). Thanks peoples. I’ll repay some over travellers in trouble when I can. I have a couple of other posts to put up, its not going to happen tonight, but I have managed to upload all the missed cords from my trip. If you look at the days you might be able to see when the Spot device got heat stroke and went bonkers. I’ve got about 2000 photos or so, so I will sort through some of them and post some highlights when I can.

During the work I had a couple of times thought of suggesting that instead of boring work shit how about we ride a couple of hundred kms and then camp in a dodgy but interesting town, it felt more important. I also thought I should have taken two months and would happily get back on the bike and do it all again for another month.