Yesterday we had the day of in Brisbane, we drove into the city centre to drop some clothes of at our hosts work place.

We then headed to elite bikes where I brought a replacement rear tyre. I went for a Maxxis Overdrive elite, there was quite a good selection in the shop but not loads of choice for the width I wanted. I shall see how this tyre goes, hopefully it will last longer than the last one.

After this we drove some of the route we would be riding out of the city, this was useful as finding the way out of cities can be hard. We headed to the beach and got some chips before heading back to Brisbane and to our hosts house. The chips had this thing called chicken salt on them, I am not to sure what this is, it didn’t make them take all that chickeny, but they did taste fairly good.

On the drive back we picked up two pies from a drive in pie shop, steak and apricot that’s too separate pies not a steak and apricot pie, which might work.

We got home sorted a few things out and the pies were heated up as well as some lovely roasted vegetables. We had a look at some maps and route options, before heading to bed.

It was a good day and we got to chat a lot with our hosts which was good.

After our day off it was time for an early start. We followed the good direction of the V1 cycle route our of Brisbane to the coast it was a good route and well signed. There were a lot of road cyclist that over took us on the way, they were all friendly and said their hellos it was good.

We cover the distance to the coast fairly quickly and got to Surfer Paradise in time for lunch, on the beach. The city was fairly built up with a lot of high rises, that put the beech into shade fairly early on in the day. It seemed like a very expensive fashion town, seemed a little out of place in our cycling gear and with our bikes.

After a fairly long lunch we headed on to Coolengatta, where we met our hosts. They had done a lot of cycle touring all over the world and it was very interesting to chat to them, they had some good ideas about america. We had a good dinner before preparing our route down to Sydney only about 900kms to go!

I fear this blog may not make much sense as I am fairly tired and we have been doing lots of route planing on lots of different maps that we have collected.

It was a little warmer last night so we headed of past Steve Irwin’s Australian Zoo, and the Glass House Mountains, name by Cook around 1770, as they look like the furnaces from his native Yorkshire (wikipedia facts).

It was a good days riding on lots of different roads, nice and varied, which I find helps the kms pass. A bit of the day was spent on Oakley Flat Road it was not flat.

We had lunch in Strathpine, on the roof of the Westfield shopping centre. My lunch stop choice and a rather good one if I may say so myself. No sand in the sandwiches today.

Strathpine was really the start of the outskirts of Brisbane, from here we headed into the city centre crossing over the river, the Brisbane river on the Story Bridge, this was an impressive structure, opened in 1940, the only facts I have about the bridge are from Wikipedia so if you would like you can read about it there.

Soon after crossing the bridge we saw another cyclist who stopped and chatted with us for a bit. He was asking a lot of questions about equipment etc which was good. At this point we also emailed our host found on warm showers let them know our estimate time of arrival. We headed to the suburb, were they lived and arrived in good time around 4pm, it was a good days cycling and I feel that I am really getting used to the bike. It feels stable despite all the weigh.

Our host kindly cooked us a lovely lasagne which was very tasty and we spend the evening talking.

Tomorrow we are having the day off. It’s nice to have a warm shower once in a while.

After a night camping in an overflow car park we awoke to very damp tents due to mist and dew.

We quickly took down our tents and headed to the park to cook breakfast hot muesli and coffee and dry out or stuff.

We hit the road, for some strange reason we seemed to think that it might be possible to cycle on the sunshine motorway, alas we couldn’t so we went on a few gravel roads and winded our way along.

After a while we hit a coastal road apart from the ups this was good. We saw people surfing, and jumping fish why do they jump? We also stocked up at Aldi, it was not as cheap as we were hoping but not too bad. I suggested lunch in Aldi car park but Cliff thought the beach would be nicer, I saw sense and headed to the beech. It was a good lunch spot, but it was hard to get the bikes out of the sand and over a little dune.

We headed on past a lot of shops that seemed to sell anything you could need, ever. The shops just seemed to line the roads for miles and miles.

We stopped at a rest stop thinking about staying there but it was fairly parked up with what seemed to be commuters. The toilets were also portaloo and not to nice.

We headed on to the rest stop in Landsborough which was much nicer. I am now enjoying a nice cup of after dinner tea before heading to bed.

This morning there were a lot of chatty campers. 1. A man with a 44 second world war army jeep who was camping with his swag, this seemed to be a big bag he slept in. 2. A man who had a caravan who also had a trucking business with 10 trucks. He was telling us about the high paying job opportunities in the west. Said they paid very well $4,000 a week, I think these were jobs in mines. He was going to do some metal detecting. 3. A man originally from Finland who had spent most of his life in Australia. He travelled around selling things at markets.

It was good to talk to these people, but they did seem very chatty and it did delay us a little but not to much.

As the road we are on turns into a motorway we have turned off the Bruce Highway.

A few kms before turning off I got our first puncture a goodbye present from the highway. It didn’t take too long to fix it, but my rear tyre is not looking that good, it has warn a lot and the rubber is coming away from the part under the rubber. I might look into getting a new tyre in Brisbane.

It was good getting off the highway and heading onto some quite back roads, some leading passed some nice residential housing. There were good views over the hills and mountains.

We cycled on to Eumundi which is a craft market historic town. It seems to be a strange place. They put knitting around the trees. But it has a nice feel to it.

We met a performing artist who chatted and told us a lot about the town and the surrounding area.

We saw a train PN005 today we have seen this one already it was good to see the train again as it had been a few days since we had seen one.

Its getting late so best to bed.

Oh I forgot to mention the ‘Golden Gaytime’ it was probably the coldest it has been on the trip so far so we decided to by an Ice Cream called ‘Golden Gaytime’ we got one each from a very small petrol station that didn’t seem to have any lights on at all it was very dark. Its hard to describe the ice cream, so you will just have to guess what it is like, for maybe google it.

Today we awoke to a bit of rain but the sky promised better things.

We packed away our wild camp and headed on to Maryborough, this was a bit off the highway and the winds and hills were increasing but the sun was out that meant we could dry out a bit.

In Maryborough we headed to the supermarket Foodworks. We went to fill up the petrol for the stove at a BP garage but the man was very insistent that we couldn’t and that he would turn off the pumps if we tried. A colleague of his looked at the container and said that it would probably be okay but that he would prefer it if we didn’t fill up, so we headed on and found the Ned Kelly filling station they were fine with the container, just a little confused at the 85 cents it cost to fill up. Its not very big and petrol is not very expensive.

We headed on brought a roadside avocado for lunch eaten in a nice park behind the tourist information in Tiaro We headed on to our rest stop, passing through some lovely scenery. The landscape seemed to open up more giving some good views. We had a woodfired BBQ to cook some kangaroo steaks which tasted pretty much like normal steaks, but were good.

I am now sitting down, with a nice cup of tea and probable the best Gingernuts in the world. They are the cheapest ones from Woolworths but they are perfect not too hard not too soft and with a touch of cinnamon which is a pleasant surprise, in each bite I cannot recommend them more.

Its getting colder so its bed time.

When it rains it pours, I think that’s something people say. Today it we were woken by the rain. Very heavy rain fall.

We quickly packed our stuff into our waterproof bags, and rushed over to the shelter, that was conveniently close to where we camped. We got into all our waterproof gear and after a bit of wishing we didn’t have to left.

Despite the rain the cycling went fairly well and we seemed to have an average speed of 40kmph. Cliff cycle computer did not confirm this, I think might have got a little wet.

We stop in Childers for a supermarket shop, Kanga Bangers for dinner tonight. A strange couple started talking to me, asking what we were going to do with the bikes when we got to Sydney. They thought it would be cheaper to chuck them away and buy new ones in Japan rather than fly over with them. They have either been stung by excess baggage charges before, or don’t know how much we spent on our bikes.

We bumped into a couple of cycle tourers who were just starting out on a world tour, they looked happy despite the rain, we also passed another who didn’t look so happy.

After Childers which seemed like a nice town with a fair bit going on we cycled on. As there were no rest areas placed within cycling distance we have chosen to wild camp outside a small village maybe town we haven’t been there yet so who knows, but it is called Howard.

I haven’t mentioned the stars here at all but when your out of the town they are lots of them and they are pretty bright, you can normally see the milky way.

Well these Kanga Bangers won’t cook and eat themselves.

Today was a fairly short ride which was good after yesterdays longer one.

A few eventful things happened on the ride, there were some roadworks were we had to stop for quite a bit of time. As we were passing the stop/slow board man said watch out for the hot bitumen which we did. But it felt like we were riding over hot coals.

We later arrived at another stop/slow board with the guy standing on the opposite side of the road. I stopped as it said stop on the board. It was for traffic on the otherside of the road, so we carried on, after a short standstill.

Our efficient riding and fairly short rest times allowed us to get to the rest area at Gin Gin around lunch time. Well mainly this was down to the fact that we didn’t have to cycle that far.

Cliff lost the heads or tails game which meant that he had the pleasure of cycling into Gin Gin for supplies. He did well finding a supermarket and getting 1kg of top quality bacon for a bargain price.

We cooked lunch which was a strange mix of rice bacon cheese and creamed corn it was good until the bacon mountain took its toll.

The nights are drawing in and when the sun goes down you can feel the chill in the air. As people have said it will get colder as you head south.

There is not much left to do today accept cook dinner and sleep.

So I shall end this here. There we lots of oversized vehicles on the roads some where ridiculously big like the back of a dumper truck they must use for coal mining. Dumper truck might not be the right word.

I had a day off writing. Yesterday we had a short days cycle ride into Gladstone we arranged through Couchsurfing to stay with somebody there. We arrived fairly early and set about cleaning ourselves and our stuff.

After this our host very kindly took us out to dinner we went to an Irish Pub which was fairly big. Although I have not be travelling that long it was fairly overwhelming to go in there. There just seemed to be a lot of people all in one place and the music was loud.

The food was excellent and I really enjoyed eating something a bit different to the rice or pasta that we normally have.

After dinner we went for a drive around Gladstone taking in the industrial sights. There is a lot of aluminium refining which goes on and also a lot of coal that gets shipped out. Tour was interesting and it was good to see quite a lot of one of the cities we normally pass through. Our host knew a lot about the industry.

The car we drove around in was a Land Cruiser, confirming that there are a lot around. Our host also had one in his garage that he was doing some work on, he said that it had done about 400,000kms.

Today was a fairly none eventful day of cycling, there were some nice downhills which almost but never quite make up for the uphills!

We got to our rest stop fairly early, which is always nice.

I have not noticed many VW camper vans on the roads at all. I always thought I would see a lot of them but there have been relatively few, maybe 4 at most.

Today was probably one of the most uneventful days so far. We cycled a fairly long way to Mount Larcom were we stopped at another rest area, this one even closer to the road and rail tracks, fairly noisy.

It is located opposite Dan Kelly’s Royal Hotel. Well I suppose that is not strictly true it is located opposite Mt Larcome Cafe and Collectables which is for sale should anyone be interested in making a purchase. And diagonally opposite to the hotel. I am not to sure what makes it royal maybe they showed the wedding on the big screen. I popped into the hotel (pub) and got two Victoria Bitters to take away. We had these with our dinner. From the brief time I was in the pub I noticed that it was very well lit, and out of the three people in there, two said hello.

Apart from this not much else has happened. We quickly passed through Rockhampton picking up a bit of shopping on the way. There were a few oversized loads with police escorts, not sure what they were carrying. I am also unsure of the requirement for a police escort or just a yellow flashing light, on top of a car driving in front, I think it is fairly random maybe the general rule of the bigger the load the more police and flashing lights you need.

As I write this I am sitting under the shelter pictured. Its about 8pm and I have noticed how there seem to be a lot more lorries on the road at night time than during the day. No scientific research has been carried out to back up that statement and interestingly there seem to be very few Automatic Traffic Counters (ATCs) on the road. So I wonder if anyone knows the real facts! Or just traffic flows.

As you can tell I am quite sleepy so this is the end of this post!

Tonight we are staying at what seems to be a very popular stop in Yaamba. There are a lot of caravans and camper vans here.

There are also a lot of birds making a lot of noise, in the trees. Despite the rest stop being very close to the highway and there being a lot of birds making a lot noise, it seems fairly peaceful, in a strange contradiction.

We had a good ride today, at the end I slowed down a bit and it was good to look at some of the landscape and see what was going on. Sometimes it is hard not to just see Sydney as the fairly destination rather than the trip as a journey as a whole, but today I enjoyed the journey.

There were a lot of over sized loads being moved, a few houses and lots of mining equipment. We also encountered a lot of road works. At one set of Stop/Slow (not Go as they would be in the UK) the guy said that we would be okay as long as we kept out of the way of the roadworks and the oncoming traffic, which we did and we were okay although it seemed very dusty going through the roadworks. The birds are still making a lot of noise, but they have quietened down a bit, not sure what they are chatting about.

On the way we stopped at a very expensive convenience store in Marlborough, which I guess was fairly convenient, but seemed to sell dusty supermarket goods at a least 2 times the price.

I am taking a lot less photos than I thought I would mainly because getting a camera out is a bit of hassle I think I will start to take some more.

Whilst I didn’t do much research into this trip I did look at one website that said that Magpies sometime attack cyclists. I didn’t think to much of this. But the solution to this was to attach cable-ties to your helmet.

We have seen a few magpies but have not witness any attacks but we did see somebody giving the birds some water cycle up with a cable tie helment, but he took it off to feed the birds.

Well bedtime now.