ROAM Australia - heading into the outback on a solo motorbike camping adventure S2 Episode 1

Well, I'm back on the bike again. I'm in the outback. Well, a mountain range in the outback. Last time I had a rough idea what I was doing. This time I'm just going to roam. How do I end up here? Well, I'll catch up to speed. I headed south from the New South Wales Queensland border. This is where I turn off the Pacific Highway and start heading towards the west. Look at this big old fella. I've passed it many times when the Pacific Highway used to run along here. Just pulled over just past Grafton to make sure everything's not rattling or everything's tied down. Slightly different setup this time. And also last time was summer and this time it's winter and I'm just working out what's working and what's not. One thing I've got is something for my neck and I didn't put it on. I'm going to put it on now because it's a bit chilly there. So yesterday afternoon when I started to plan the trip I knew I was going west but I hadn't really picked which direction I was going to go. I basically thought I was going to go up through Birdsville down the Birdsville track and head to Lake Eyre first. That would be a great spot to start. So one of the things in the outback is always checking road conditions and there had been a lot of rain in Queensland and it was heading through the Birdsville track area. It seemed by the maps online that everything was still open and passable and with any national park you've got to check if there's a fee to get in and Lake Eyre actually had one. So I went online to get a vehicle pass but it wouldn't let me. So I looked around a bit and then ended up just calling South Australia's Parks and Wildlife and the lady there said the two tracks into Lake Eyre were closed. So that's a bit of a spanner in the works. So and also that the Birdsville track was still closed from their information although online it said it wasn't and so I didn't really want to risk it. So I decided okay I'll head south through New South Wales and I guess the first thing to head towards would be the Flinders Ranges. So a lot of really good four wheel drive tracks through there and obviously adventure bike tracks and dirt bike tracks just tracks. So that's probably going to be the first place I end up going. I think Broken Hill is sort of the rough direction I'm heading before I get into South Australia. The first mountain range moved ahead. This river was absolutely gorgeous. So much so I had to pull over and get a proper look. It looks like there'd be some pretty epic camping spots along this river. I think I'm gonna have to detour on another trip that I was thinking of coming through here because that it's just a pretty looking river. Definitely one to check out. From the map it looked like I was going to get a fun winding road ahead in the Gibraltar Range National Park. A bit of roadworks going on. It seems they're plugging one big hole. With all these palm trees I gather it's a subtropical rainforest I'm riding through. So my question is how bad must people have driven for them to need a pilot vehicle for people to follow on a road that's only cut down to one lane with no obstacles and nothing tricky to pass? Maybe the easiest solution is making getting a driving license a little harder. The western side of the range landscape was a lot drier. But love a country town where you can pull over in the middle of a roundabout and drop someone off and nobody minds. I gather I'm about to come across some pretty large wind turbines soon. Then I hit my first dirt road of the trip. I'm not sure what it is about dirt roads that I enjoy. Maybe it's that less people travel down them and you don't know where they'll take you. Oh that's so hard to resist. I just want to ride under it between the wheels. Someone definitely misjudged that corner. With the sun starting to set and me well short of where I thought I might get to by the end of the day, it was time to create a plan B. Small towns normally allow camping at their show grounds so if you're in a pinch it's worth checking out. So this morning when I left I thought well a couple of days get to Brogan Hill so halfway I picked a spot but I didn't consider it's winter so there's a lot less light. It's like 5 30 and it's basically dark whereas obviously summer you get to 8 8 30. So I had to sort of scramble, got into Narrabri I think this is and just wiki camped it. It was basically nothing except the show grounds so the show grounds it is and Narrabri. So that'll be the first stop. I'm probably just going to pass out and it's probably another bigger day tomorrow than I thought today. So I don't actually know if I'll make it to Brogan Hill by tomorrow night but it doesn't really matter. We're just trying to get to Flinders Ranges. Morning. It is cold. It's not too bad but it is cold. I was going to get up earlier but decided to utilize the sleep time. I'm not sure if I did get up I'd be able to ride with it this cold. I will eventually try that but right now I'm making that the excuse. So packing up getting on with it. Today might take it a little. I've had a reassessment probably not going to be able to get as many kilometers in per day as I thought to get across to South Australia. So I'm going to cruise it this time. Probably only 500 kilometers instead of 750. It was time to bring out the big guns when it comes to gloves. My first location to head to this morning would be Coonabarabra. I pulled over to have a look at Saturn. Not really Saturn but out here in western New South Wales I have a series of these signs that basically indicate the distance between each planet. I did pass Jupiter on the way past Coonab... before Coonabarabarra. Coonabarabarra? Yeah Coonabarabarra. And we're at Saturn. Uh Uranus is next. Neptune. They've got... they've got Pluto still on here. Technically it's not a planet anymore. Do they... I wonder if it's still there. We'll find out maybe. Another thing I found out is I brought enough on gear. It was around nine or ten this morning and I was quite comfortable. Toasty. So I think I could get down to about minus, not minus, about five and I'd start to struggle. So that was good. So this worked well. The gloves really well although it's really hard to do anything in the gloves even turning on the indicator. But they keep me warm. I do have thermals left to put on so I do have a little bit of a backup plan and if it gets really bad I have the rain suit onesie. I'm sure you want to see me in all onesie. Rubbery plastic onesie. So hopefully you won't have to see me in that. But it is my backup backup plan. Yesterday felt a bit rushed. Today I was going to just focus on enjoying being on the road and not concerned about how far I got. It looked like there was cotton either side of the road for kilometers. I had to check it out. Yep it was cotton. Now I had to figure out why. I gather the cotton is falling off trucks when they're taking it away from the cotton fields. There was my answer. A cotton processing facility. That is a lot of cotton bales. So definitely confirm my answer why there's cotton on the side of all the roads. The trucks when they pull them in. I've never seen them baled up like this before and they're massive bales. Obviously close to harvesting season now as there's still cotton on the bushes and some in bales. I then came across a massive solar facility which had panels that are road past for kilometers. The roads from now on were mainly going to be straight. I pulled over into the local IGA to get some supplies. Some bananas, some bars and a piece of chicken. Continued straight until I got to Cobar. So I just took a quick detour off the road to Broken Hill. There's an open cut mine that you can actually look down into so I thought I'd check it out. From the Fort Brook hill you can see the open pit and entrance into the underground mine which they mine for gold. I continued straight then goats started appearing on either side of the road. They seemed to be better at staying off the I was running out of light so I pulled off the side of the road to find a tree to camp under. I eventually found this spot as I was riding along. It's just off the road so I'll probably hear some trucks tonight. That's okay. Hopefully the goats don't come and nibble at my tent. But yeah there's a clearing. It's under a tree. It's not a gum tree so it's okay to camp under and yeah it should do the trick for tonight. After another full day on the bike it wasn't long before I passed out. Morning. Looks like there should be enough sun for most of the animals to be off the road. Might wait a little longer and then heading west still. I've just pulled over at this rest area because all of a sudden it dropped like 10 degrees. This morning was a lot warmer. I didn't have a puffer on. No my normal gloves. Just yeah. So I'm gonna put some more gear on. So this is what I'm going with is a running shirt. Winter running shirt. Long sleeve t-shirt. Hoodie. Puffer jacket and my riding jacket with the rainproof layer which helps the wind. So if I go north I can just go down the t-shirt or down here south it's yeah everything and I do have that one other layer. The jumpsuit. The waterproof jumpsuit. We're not going to bring that out at all and I'll put gloves back on and then also the neck thing. All right back on the road. Just pulled over for a quick break and stretch your legs. I'm halfway between Wilcannia and Broken Hill and we're really starting to get into the ochre red dirt. It's more orange now. We'll get redder as we go further into the center. It's what's on the state flag of where I grew up. The Northern Territory. I have made a few changes upgrades to the bike for this trip since last one. One of them being the double take mirrors. The stock ones get the job done but these ones I just like the width. I can see further back. I can actually put one for distance and the other one closer up so tilted a bit further in and I can actually see my gear on the back so that just makes sure everything's still on there and where the high and low point are is actually sits basically where you're looking behind you so down the road so there's actually some design thought into the shape and you get that width because we are humans and we have eyes horizontally. A couple of things I could go on about that with vertical content but we won't. We'll leave that for another day. Eyes are horizontal not up and down. They're easy to adjust which is another good thing. It's a good upgrade. Okay now Broken Hill. Here we come. In 1844 the explorer Charles Sturt saw and named the Barrier Range and at the same time referred to a Broken Hill in his diary. Broken Hill is Australia's longest living mining city. The town was established after the discovery of silver ore and lead in 1883 on this Broken Hill. Ah they must have known I was coming. Dinner. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't see an actual Broken Hill but I found out that the Broken Hill the place was named after no longer existed having been mined away. Given its extensive daylight hours of sunshine the Broken Hill solar plant which was completed in 2015 is one of the largest in the southern hemisphere. I'd made it to the border which seemed to be abandoned. Now this feels like the outback. I was running out of light so I'd soon have to find another tree to camp under on the side of the road. I had to pull up at the inspection point. I found what looked like a decent spot to camp. Well this is me for the night just past the quarantine station. I actually had to scoff my dinner there my banana because no fruit through so it was a bit of a rushed dinner. So just made it before the sun's down and I'm gonna have to be quick setting this tent up. Another change I've made since last time is bags. Last time I had one big one all in this time too. It was hard getting in and diving and trying to find stuff. Let's get that out of the way. So camping gear in one plus the onesie rain suit and spare pair of shoes and the rest has just got clothing and a couple of charges. One's a higher end quality one and the other's a low budget one. It's down 80 bucks so by the end of the trip I'll see if there's much difference between the two. All set up with just a little light to spare. Just getting up to pack up and go and it's starting to spit with rain. Should be fun. One of the other upgrades I've made is adding a tank bag. One to not have to dive into the back so much so drinks and anything to snack on in there. But the other main thing that's come in really handy is I get to charge stuff. Most stuff is on USB charging now. I don't think I've mentioned it before but I've got a USB charger I added on as soon as I got the bike and it's got two sockets. So one for a phone and navigation and the other to charge stuff. It is a say cheaper brand which is fine. It's doing the job. The only thing is it has six buckles to get it off. Well four to hold it down, two to close it and one safety one on top. So yeah not in a rush apparently. It looked like I was going to dodge a storm or get really wet. Okay I think the onesie is going to have to make an appearance.