From Whence the Idea?

Beginning and End: Townesville

The first adventure is a circumnavigation by bicycle of Australia, starting in Townesville (Queensland) and riding clockwise, generally around the coast.  I'll be riding an average of 50 miles a day - taking a few days here and there to see the sights and talk to locals, but mostly pushing on each day.  Most nights I'll camp by the side of the road and eat out of a canteen cup; I'm gonna try to keep expenses at less than $50/day, so i'll only be renting a bed perhaps every 4th night.  Or at least that's the plan.

I should hit Perth in late January 2015 for my first extended break.  I'll spend ten days or so there, then push northward once I'm pretty sure The Wet is tapering off.  If I have time I'll make a detour south of Darwin to go see Ayer's Rock, and then it's back to Townesville to depart the country by the end of April 2015.

So ... where did all this come from?  Pretty simple, really.  Back in 1995, a guy by the name of Roff Smith rode counterclockwise around Australia from Sydney, and he wrote about it in the National Geographic, as well as in his own book, Cold Beer and Crocodiles.  I distinctly remember reading those articles and being fascinated and energized.  I've done some long distance biking since then - I spent 7 weeks in Spain in the summer of 2001 and 5 weeks in England and Ireland in the summer of 2002 - but the idea of the Big Australia Trip has never left me.

So in the fall of 2013, I contacted Mr Smith and asked him if I could ask him questions about his trip.  He graciously agreed, and he has been a huge help in my planning.  In fact, it was Roff that clued me into The Wet and motivated me to avoid it!

I of course am not the first to have done this trip.  A couple of intrepid young ladies travelled around Australia by bicycle just after WWII;   Wendy Suart was one of them, and she wrote about it later in her book With Bags and Swags.  Their trip was all about tourism tho - the bicycling was just a way to get around.  My trip is mildly different.

And so.  My house is almost empty and what stuff I'm keeping (which, despite my best intentions, seems to be a lot of stuff) is crammed into an 8x10 storage unit.  My bike is ready and my bags are almost packed.  Here we go....