Hi everyone,

Sorry for a few days of silence, there is basically zero internet between Alice Springs and Darwin. Anyhow, I finally reached Darwin and I am now celebrating having successfully crossed Australia. For those of you who are not familiar with the vastness of Australia, the distance from Melbourne to Darwin (ca. 3800km by road) is actually slightly longer than Istanbul to Stockholm.

The journey through Australia:

Since my last update from Alice Springs, it has been raining pretty much the entire way. Pretty hard as well at times, so much it even made the news.

Day 6 (Christmas Eve): I had a bit of a sleep in in Alice Springs and left around lunch time when the rain stopped for a little while. Still, I got maybe an hour of no rain and then it started again. In the end I randomly decided to stop for the night at the Devils Marbles Hotel, which turned out to be an absolutely delightful decision.

Fun fact: In the Australian outback a hotel is not really what you would typically call a hotel. It is more a one stop shop for all your driving through the desert needs: pub, diner, gas station, caravan park, takeaway liquor store. They also usually have a couple of rooms or cabins. Crossing Australia from South to North these hotels will be spread along the road 2-3 hours apart, usually in the middle of nowhere with nothing else nearby (actual towns are often 6-10 hours apart).

As you can imagine, it was very charming. Especially in the rain.

Charming:

Day 7 (Christmas Day): As I was the only guest they had (Christmas is the low season in the Northern Territory) I ended up staying up quite late drinking with the staff on Christmas Eve, and because they were so nice they invited me to celebrate Christmas with them on their only day off in the entire year. I was originally supposed to leave in the morning because of the fact that they were closed.

Anyhow, I ended up having a great Christmas with the staff at this outback hotel. Hanging out in their lovely garden and having a fantastic roast for Christmas lunch. And because it was again raining all day I was quite happy not to be on the bike.

The garden:

The lovely staff at the Devils Marbles Hotel:

Day 8: So. Cause and effect. I had spent a full day eating and drinking, making no progress whatsoever towards Darwin. Which means I had to cover some 800km on Boxing day to get back onto the schedule, whilst nursing a pretty epic hangover… And having had zero internet or phone reception for a few days, I was all out of podcast documentaries.

After way too many snoozes on the alarm, I got on the bike around 9am to head towards the nearest phone reception in Tennant Creek an hour north and download myself some new documentaries from P3 Dokumentär. From there on it’s just a steady blur of straight, drizzly roads until the late afternoon. I had about an hour left to Katherine, which was my destination for the day, when the mother of all storms rolled in and it became dark as night.

Into the storm (this was late afternoon, it was supposed to be almost full daylight):

So the one hour became two hours going 60km/h through torrential rain and flooded roads. Gear and bike all held up though and except for my gloves I was fairly dry by the time I got to Katherine.

Day 9: Last day of the Australia part. Checked out Katherine Gorge quickly (it was pretty cool) and then hit the road for the last 2-3 hours to Darwin and finally got there in the afternoon around 4pm. A colleague from Darwin met me and showed me around the town during the rest of the afternoon (thanks Elisse!), beginning with the mandatory glass of celebratory sparkles 🙂

Unfortunately I never did see any crocodiles in the wild, but luckily Darwin has a city centre crocodile park called “Crocosaurus Cove” (yes, it is really called Crocosaurus Cove) so I headed there the next morning to tick that box.

Celebrations in Darwin:

A croc:

That’s it for the first part of my journey. There will be some down time now as the bike is getting a service and new tires, then getting shipped to East Timor. I’ll see you all again mid January.

Happy new year!

Magnus

Hi everyone,

As I am writing this from Alice Springs, I am officially more than half way through the Australian stint of my trip. This also means I will be treating myself to a bunch of luxuries today to celebrate:

• Changing into my second pair of socks
• Sleeping in (will hit the road at Noon instead of 7am)
• Eating a decent human breakfast

The last few days have been quite interesting and a bit challenging, making my way through the desert, from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy and from there to Alice Springs.

Map of my journey so far:

The ~1200km from Port Augusta to Alice Springs took me through what I believe will be the most desert like stretch of my entire trip. It pretty much looked like this the entire way:

Day 4: I got up early in Port Augusta and by the time I had packed up my tent and camping gear I was able to hit the road around 8am. Using my general (and completely made up) knowledge about the desert I figured it will be cool during the night and morning, really hot around early afternoon and then cool down again in the late afternoon. So I had planned to do about a three hour run to a little town called Glendambo, have lunch and rest there and then do another three hours up to Coober Pedy in the late afternoon.

Turns out my general (and made up) wisdom about the desert was quite inaccurate. It basically gets unbearably hot really quickly (around noon) and then never really cools down until late late evening. I learned this by actually looking at a weather forecast and asking a local in Glendambo. I convinced myself that my home made desert wisdom is probably still valid for most other deserts, just that this one is different. Then I decided to fill up all my water containers and make a run for Coober Pedy straight away.

About an hour into the 3 hour ride the temperature stabilised at 38-39 degrees. Great. Very pleasant. My GoPro overheated and died (although I didn’t realise until I got to Coober Pedy) so I unfortunately don’t have many photos. It was all very warm. Luckily Coober Pedy turned out to be a bit of a desert metropolis, with all kinds of luxuries such as a supermarket, a pizza joint and a hair salon. And opals, but that wasn’t really my top priority. Plus the camping ground I stayed at had a swimming pool. Totally worth it.

Downtown Coober Pedy:

Day 5: Having learned a thing or two about the desert, I got up even earlier and hit the road well before 7am to make it to Alice Springs about 700km north. The day went super smooth and the temperature stayed at or below 34 degrees the whole way. I hit the Northern Territories border a bit after noon and had a stranger take this really awkward photo for me.

Then when I was about an hour from Alice Springs and this happened:

Well, great opportunity to try all my rain gear so I put some covers over my luggage and shivered through the last hour to Alice Springs where I decided the Hilton was probably a better choice than the tent…

Peace,
Magnus

 

Finally the trip has begun, and I am now three days in when I am writing this from Port Augusta in South Australia. Firstly, there is now an instagram account! Please follow 🙂 @on_the_scenic_route

Monday was the first day, although I didn’t leave Melbourne until a little bit past lunch. Either way, I decided I had plenty of time so I might as well take the scenic route. Said and done, rather than go inland towards Adelaide I went onto the Great Ocean Road.

Fueling up on the way out of Melbourne:

Turns out Monday was a great day to test some of the limitations that will be important as I cross the centre of Australia, particularly temperature. It was 32 degrees for most of the day, which was death in Melbourne traffic but bearable once I had some steady speed along the coast. I reckon 32-34 degrees is the maximum sustainable temperature. Then it started raining and I no longer felt like testing any limitations so I huddled up in a Motel in Apollo Bay for the night.

Kicked Tuesday off with a little mapping and planning session with myself. The plan was basically to drive 5h per day to do the 40h to Darwin in 8 days. So all in all, I was pretty happy with the 4h on the first day, only one hour to catch up would not be a problem. Although it turns out that the 5h/day only counts if you are actually driving towards Darwin on the optimal route (the one that takes 40h), and I now realised that I had in fact made a few minutes of negative progress by taking the Great Ocean Road.

So, Tuesday was a day of endless riding through the plains of Victoria and South Australia until I finally put my tent up by Lake Albert some 90 minutes from Adelaide.

Today has been another day of endless straight roads, but I am now somewhat back on track with 13h left to Alice Springs which I will have to cover over the next two days.

In summary, I feel like I have now figured the basics out after 15h on the bike and I really look forward to blasting through the desert over the next few days.

Peace.

Magnus