With no set plans a mate and I set out to see some of our state's towns we hadn't been to. As it was very cold & very wet we planned our rides around fuel range and motel/hotel accommodation. Soft? You bet! 11 days and 3500km. I travelled down the south coast to Busselton to meet my mate. From there is was through the tall timber along the coast to Albany then Esperance. Across to the start of the Great Australian Bight & Nullabor Plain. Back and up to the rich gold mining areas of Coolgardie & Kalgoorlie then completing the loop by passing through the wheat belt and "Wave Rock" at Hyden to finish in my home city of Perth. If you haven't been here. This is what it looks like in winter.
Very nice mate. Well put together. I grew up down there, it nearly makes me homesick, but the cold kills me. Brrrrr
There are over 1,000,000 feral camels in arid regions of Australia & we stumbled across this small group. The track we were on is a 4x4 track for the most part and generally the scrub beside the track was very muddy and thick with downed trees, stumps etc. If we were going to get around it was going to be on the track & just about every time an opportunity arose a deep bog hole or felled tree across the track would block our path. There seemed to be a young camel in the group that the larger ones were protecting. Sometimes they would all move in single file so we would move to the other wheel track & look to go past. Every time we did that, the largest beast would move to block our path. Now I must admit to knowing bugger all about camels and what they are capable of. My riding buddy had no idea too. But it seemed to us that they were perfectly capable of biting and kicking let alone being large enough to do some damage if you rode into them. So we have quite large animals behaving in a protective manner - great!. We followed these damn camels for about 15km at roughly 25km/h. While we were very impressed with their endurance capability, we were pretty keen to get around them. BTW they stink, like really really bad stink, and had diarrhoea. Nasty! We were also miles from the nearest town and with no alternative tracks to take. We tried the softly softly approach. The stop & let them wander off approach. The make lots of noise approach. All to no effect - they just stayed on the track. So when we saw the track widen uphill and the camels move into single file I urged my buddy to take the chance. Now the camera lens on the contour distorts distances and I can tell you we were closer than the video would suggest. It added quite a lot of spice to what was already a great ride.
Lake Ballard sculptures... "In 2003, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Perth International Arts Festival the Inside Australia exhibition was commissioned. The artist and Turner Prize winner Antony Gormley installed 51 sculptures over an area of 10 square kilometres (4 sq mi) on the bed of the lake.[3] The statues were to be removed at the conclusion of the festival but remain as a tourist exhibition." The statues are mutated forms of the locals, obtained by laser scans then mutated by the artist. So the stick man is actually a lady & those things sticking out are called boobs. http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attra...5-Reviews-Lake_Ballard-Western_Australia.html
I am laughing...Thanks Chuffa.. I watched it twice and I definitely did not see boobs, but I will look up the link.. Maybe you should film in HD! I was thinking something more morbid like a bent arrow or knife. Great story.
Loved it. For our American friends it is not cold at all by your standards and Chuffa's State is about 4 times the size of Texas. Chuffa, cant wait for your next trip that was very entertaining.
