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Pre-trip:
Here's a
picture from the sendoff party for all the Seattle folks... (everyone but
Matt).
June 15 am:
The group of us ready to set off from the
fishery center at Narrandera. From left, we have
Peter, Matt, Kim, Karl, Dexter and Dave (Peter
and Dexter being two of our hosts here).
A look at the view from the fishery center...
Open fields and trees. Pretty now, but you
should have seen it at sunrise!
Matt updating the web page in Narrandera
-- thanks to Craig for the computer equipment!
Yes, that's my ski hat -- it's cold here!
June 15 pm:
Bikes lined up on highway from Narrandera to
Mildura.
Making camp in Mildura.
Opossums in Mildura.
June 16
Sunrise leaving Mildura.
Dunlop tire arch over border from Victoria into South Australia.
Aged sign.
Cooking dinner in Port Augusta, just before meeting Lyn and Ann.
June 17
Parking lot on highway north from Port Augusta toward Alice Springs; note
barren landscape.
June 18 (Saturday)
This picture, taken along the highway to Uluru (and showing the mileage to various points along the way) is typical of the desert landscape we've been riding through for the past 3 days.
About 100 km before Yulara, we came around a corner and saw this... at first we thought it was Uluru (Ayers Rock), but Karl pointed out that firstly we were way too far still, and secondly there was a sign in the turnout saying it was Mt. Connor. Oh well, it still looked neat.
And no, we don't know this guy in the corner behaving nefariously.
After we got to Ayers Rock Resort and made camp, a couple of us hurried out to try to get a view of Uluru before the sun set... the resulting picture is almost too dark to see (although you can look at it anyway) but this silhouette, in the opposite direction, fared better.
And there are more photos from today in the extras section.
June 19 (Sunday) am -- sunrise over Uluru
Here's Uluru, right after sunset, with a view of the Olgas to the right (the purple domes in the distance).
And here's Uluru through the windshield of Lyn's BMW.
After standing out in the cold taking pictures for an hour, then riding 20 km home, we were willing to do anything to warm their hands... including grilling them.
Kim has this to say to her stepdad... and we all wish a happy Father's Day to our dads back home; she's just the one who thought of making a sign.
June 19 pm
Ayers Rock is so remarkable because this is what the landscape around it
looks like.
You can watch the sun set over Uluru in these shots:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
At some point I'll try to make a movie out of this. Any volunteers?
June 20
The campground where we're staying in Alice Springs (Heavitree Gap Resort)
has rock wallabies in the cliffs nearby -- the rock wallabies look like
miniature kangaroos, a foot or two tall. Here are Kim and Ann feeding one.
A mother rock wallaby, with joey in her pocket. The mother was
the boldest of all the wallabies we saw, but the joey was the most shy.
After a few days of riding, Ann needed a massage -- lucky for her,
both Kim and Dave have massage training.
June 21
Spotted in the parking lot of Heavitree Gap, what is this -- the Outback
version of a Winnebago?
Check out the fuel tank on this sucker (and there's another one on the
other side), not to mention the
tires, exhaust pipe... well, everything.
Karl, Dave and Lyn in their new Driza-Bone hats, outside a cafe in the
pedestrian mall in Alice.
June 21, late
Peaceful lake in the Desert Park, Alice Springs. Lyn and Ann visited this
nature park while the rest of us were at the natural history museum
looking at emu skeletons.
Thorny devils (who, previous to this picture, were engaged in some
activities that earned them the nickname "horny devils") in the Desert
Park.
Dave and Ann among a group of other tourists, taking didgeridoo lessons
from the master at Heavitree Resort in Alice Springs.
June 22
Visitors who've come even farther than we have eye our bikes longingly, as
we stop for gas at Wycliff Well, the UFO capital of Australia.
A couple of the Devil's Marbles.
Kim striking a peaceful pose and hiding from the heat in the shadow of one
of the Devil's Marbles.
June 23
Termite mound off of the Barkly Highway. Also note the angle of the grass;
that's the wind we were riding in all day.
Mac users taking on the Windows users in a mural on the wall of a computer
store in Mt. Isa.
June 24
Karl and Lyn repairing Matt's mirror after the Funduro fell off its
kickstand.
Dave's instrument panel on his Aprilia bike. He came up with the following
translations for the labels: R/Min is 'Roos per Minute (watch out for the
red zone, when the needle hits 72 you're in trouble), and KM is the
Kangaroo Meter, keeping track of how many of them we've passed.
Dave taking a picture of the sunset at our caravan park in Hughenden
(which everyone who's not Scottish, i.e. everyone but Ann, likes to
pronounce Huggenden).
The group gathered around a picnic table for dinner (takeout Chinese; we
were planning to cook, but when we got into town at 4 pm we found that all
the grocery stores had closed at noon).
Thurs July 6:
I haven't had time to organize them yet, but I've posted a ton more pictures including everything we took the whole trip with Karl's camera (since those pictures are smaller and less unwieldy) -- again, there's no organization or description, and I'll get to that later, but if you click around enough you might just find something interesting!
Sun July 9:
I'm still planning, at some point, to pull out the best pictures that tell a story and bring them here, but I've somewhat organized and annotated all the pictures from Karl's camera, which you can find here, here, here, and here.