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