Our trek this year covered over 4000 kilometers, including about 1000 kilometres on the last day.  Along the way we covered country and city, desert and dune, sea and sand.  And we had no troubles at all.  No stacks, no breakdowns, no trouble with other drivers.  And no trouble with the law.  However, they say that the law will catch up with you in the end, and as our Wang crew found out, they did catch up.

After all the kilometres and countryside we covered, the Wang guys were nearly home.  Two kilometres from home in fact, on the dirt back road from Oxley to Oxley Flats, after just finishing a celebratory beer, the law struck, pulling the boys over.  No lights on chuck wagon, blow into this please river, going a little bit fast weren't we lads!

Luckily the policeman was a local, and after the boys gave him their story of covering the countryside, coming 100 kilometres, having problems with the trailer electrics in the bush, the boys were let off with get home and a warning.

Day 11 Burra to Home.

 I’m coming home, I’m coming home.

Picture shows the road out of Burra and on to home.

Final day on the trek and everybody is ready to go home.  Thoughts of next week come drifting in at the edges of our minds; we push them away, still swimming in the memories of our past 10 days. 
A quick fuel up and brekkie in Burra, then out on to the Road Kill
Highway.  It was still early so the kangas were thick, making life very difficult for the bikes. Many kangas littered the road, lost overnight.

We said goodbye to Rohan at Morgan as we waited for the ferry over the Murray.  He had a short two hour drive back to Mildura.  We then continued on down the river a ways before turning south at Loxton.  Down to Pinaroo, east to Ouyen and on tho Bendigo.   With around 1000kms to travel today we kept pressing.

At Bendigo we split again, some going to Wang, some to Melbourne.  Although we have all enjoyed each other’s company and support over the past 11 days, we all miss our family and friends at home.  In the end, without the support and love of the people at home we could not have great adventures like this, and could not get the fulfilment that a  trip likes this brings.  We sincerely appreciate their support and love the most of all. 
To all the people at home,  thank-you.

Oh, and Ferg’s finger was much better today thank-you.

Day 10 - Gawler Ranges National Park - Chillunie Campground to Burra

 Back to the Burra

The sad thing about any trip is that there is a time to head home, And today was the start of a two day trek from the Gawler Ranges in South Australia to our respective homes scattered across
Victoria.

Our aim for the day was to get to Loxton, stopping on the way at Burra where we had left Rohman’s Navara and Leighto’s bike trailer.  However, these plans got fingered early as Ferg’s bee stung finger had swollen further overnight and needed some medical attention; the team made this the first priority of the day.

We came out of the Park and went down to Kimba (click here), going across the Pinkawillinie Conservation Park, on the Buckleboo Road.  Buckleboo is a sister city with Buckrabunyule, the hom town of our Rohan.  At Kimba (actually aboriginal for fire! click here) we went up to the local hospital and surprised the
Emergency Department.  As a town of 700 people they don’t get many clients, and we were surprised that they had an ED.  After a check by the nurse who hadn’t seen anything like this before the local doctor was called in.  He hadn’t seen any like it either, but in true country doctor style he dealt with it,  prescribing some antibiotics and a visit to the surgeon at Port Augusta in case it needed a clean-up.  It was looking pretty ugly at this point (both finger and travel plans)

Out of Kimba e turned left on old mate Eddie Eyre’s Highway, going back past Iron Knob and into Port Augusta. 
A longish wait at Port Augusta eventually saw us on our way again.  Old mate surgeon’s theories were more
antibiotics, either intravenously with an overnight stay in the hospital, or on  your way with lots of tablets and see how it goes.   We took the second option.

 Time was running out and accommodation options  were getting low also; being the start of the weekend, weddings and festivals were filling up the riverland towns.  Burra was still strategic to our plans and had seemed like a nice town,  so we tried the tourist info centre.  They hooked us up in some nice historic cottages (Paxton Square Cottages) near the centre of town. We all had a good shower, shave (most of us shaved) and clean-up after three nights camping out in various parks. The water was great, although we all think we still had some dirt somewhere on us (yes ladies, we washed behind our ears!).

Our final dinner together was held at the Burra Hotel, were we looked back on our time and travels together and the experiences that have made us must richer.  We had seen the salt of Lake Gairdner, and the orange sand at Goog’s Track had taken our sweat and blood.  The white coastal sand around Streaky Bay had been blowing freely in the wind as we do on our rides, and the red iron rock and dust of the Gawler’s Ranges
symbolised the strength of our group.

Finally bed, although many reported funny dreams overnight, all involving Mr Incredible.  West End
Draught sure does funny things.

Gawler Park Gossip - the news amongst the roos as TTT visited Gawler Ranges National Park

 The birthday boy had a cake, specially purchased in Streaky Bay and transported with love and care. Leighto provided a very special candle (wait til the DVD comes out!)

 It had been a pretty hot day so everyone’s fluids were down.  So for the evening we got through 8 litres of Brown Brothers quality goon, a bottle of Chivas Regal (thanks Hooch), and god knows how many cans of West End and Carlton. Suffice to say we had thought we had bought enough to last our three nights camping, but there were only 7 left in the Engel Fridge in the morning.  The fridge holds 120, and it was full before we kicked off.  AFD anyone?

The birthday boy played it pretty smart, being the first to hit the swag.  The rest popped off in dribs and drabs; there was no recollection of the final bed time, but we think it may have been two-thirty.  Our apologies to the happy campers who had pulled in just up the road that evening.

Special birthday tea was supplied, with a healthy meal of Cynthia’s chili con carne  and rice washed down by the boys.  There was even some sour cream with a little note for Carl that was nice.

Up at Organ Pipes Hetor played up a storm in the  rocky gully.  Everyone was greatly  moved, including the 5 or 6 other people who were there at the time.  We feel sure that they will remember the TTT Team.

Sharing the park with us were some ‘peletons’ of bike riders.  On day two we discovered that they were waiting at the Shearer’s quarters, and trundling around the park.  They looked even more hot and dusty than us!

Gary's special bamboo socks have stood up well.  After 7 days of wearing them they stood up in the corner!  He also has a bamboo good luck charm that Kerrie put on his bike.  So far his luck has been in.

Day 9 Gawler Ranges National Park. 
Yandinga Campground to Chillunie Campground.
 
Old Mate Johnny Cash sings a great song that goes something like
this:
Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt. 
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert. 

Thursday was like a Tuesday in downtown sunny Warrnambool – real slow.  The birthday party turned into a rip-roaring affair, with full participation from all.  Highlights for the boys included party hats, poppers and some nice beads for the birthday boy Carl.  We wnt long and hard, a local sponsor jumping on board to supply the tunes, Gawler Rock FM. Thanks to their DJ.

Awards went off with Mitch getting a teddy bear to put with his nice teaddy bear blanie that he has next to his swag.  The Time Lord, Dr Hooch had a moment the previous day when he hit the swag eject button in the Tardis while diving along, and he ejected his own swag from the trailer.  It survived, but he got an extra bit of rope to tie it down; it was left at the Park by Goog Denton just for this purpose.  Rohan got the spring for showing great resilience on the trip,putting up with us old blokes and to encourage him to pull through the day and spring back into action as he was feeling pretty rough.  

We slowly rolled around the bottom of the park, checking out Paney Station (old mate and missus lived there in the 1850’s with 11 kids), a shearing shed and finally settling at Chillunie Campground on the
northwest side of the park.  Lunch of sausages and two minute noodles, then just about everyone had a chillax
(several even nodding off).  Various tour parties then struck out from the camp, with Dr Hooch taking  one crew in the Paj, and Brocky leading a party on foot up and around the rim of
the gorge we were in.

All were back in time for tea and swapping stories of the day, and al in bed earl

 

Beer of No Choice.
 
Keen observers of the TTT team will know that the beer of choice
for us is Carlton Draught. However, if you look closely at the photos you will see lots of West End Draught.  Note that West End is now not the beer of choice: t is the beer of no choice. 
For some reason Streaky Bay doesn’t stock a lot of Carlton, so with no other choice we went with the local draught. This may well be the reason that most
heads were pretty sore on Thursday morning.  It was the Croweater’s
revenge!

Rock rock til you drop, rock rock never stop!

Carl finds a g-spot on his birthday!


 A big day on TTT3. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll, and at 48, our Chief Executive Officer Carl Andrew Michael (good mick boy) Stibilj is at the top. Like a rock, Carl has been a great friend over the years, providing friendship and support and being a solid rock to everyone who he meets.

We felt like rock stars when the awards were handed out; Brocky as our ‘smooth operator’ got a nice pair of silky boxer shorts, and Ferg got the Spring for picking up late in the previous evening when he was pretty tired and washed out form the previous evening, where he spent a lot of time updating the website.  There was also some piping from Hector, who belted out happy birthday and the Sainter’s theme song for Carl.

We had a Rocky Burnett night and morning; where we camped turned out to be pretty rocked out, with rock strewn everywhere.  We also had quite a burn in the morning as one of the plastic tubs got sacrificed in the interest of space. Caught between a rock and a hard place was a shingleback, who got squished under the
Pajero wheels.  A few words were said and a humane dispatch was administered.

Out we went to Murphy’s Haystacks, essentially big rocks out in a paddock that Murphy had seen first. Off then to Poocheera; on the way a snake was found who had copped a Detroit Rock City early in the morning. Poor little brown snake.

We stopped at Poocheera but only for a minute; we scared off some Outlaw Bikie Gang boys who had been filling up at the gas station.  Nice boys don’t play rock n’ roll.  On then to Minippa, where we checked in with family and friends so that our love didn’t go on the rocks and bought some last minute supplies, then up to Pildappa Rocks, where we lunched on chicken.  A big monolith rock thing sticking out of the ground, we ate up, checked it out and as some old time rock n rollers turned up, we rocked out to the Gawler Ranges.

The Gawler Ranges are named after Old Mate Gawler, a Governor of South Australia, who rocked with the best of them.  He would often salute those who were about to rock, and felt that rock n roll ain’t noise pollution.  So he had some rockin’ ranges named after him.   We sniffed around and went up into the Organ Pipes, a very nice rock gully. Hector serenaded us there with the pipes which was quite a special and unique experience. 
Ferg did a bit of mountain goat work as well, to check out the view.

Back around to the campground of choice, Yandinga.  A great campsite and as it was getting late in the day we spread out…only to find pretty shortly that it was a site that was also inhabited by bees – lots of thirsty bees. 
They went for every available drop of moisture and annoyed the hell out of us, giving us some rock n’ roll damnation.  Ferg the wordsmith incurred a bite on the end of his right-hand index finger, which slowed the flow of words a bit.

In the end we took a few measures to distract them, and as the smoke billowed from the fire and the sun went down the bees subsided somewhat.  We cranked up the old time rock n' roll with some help from the Hilux and an assortment of  ipods.
 
Rock and roll all night and party every
day!

Didn't go far, but a quality day.

The rain wizard did his thing over night in Streaky Bay, with wet bikes and swags on the trailers in the morning when we got up.  We coldn't really get a theme for the day or get moving real fast: continental brekky at the hotel, coffee, shopping, fuel, team meetings, water, awards...  Yep, awards.  Scotty got an original Goog's Beer Bottle for being th only guy who didn't fal down over the two days on The Track.  Carl got the spring award for his all round efforts in picking himself up after being floored on the first day at Goog's.

Being restless and waiting around didn't help the boys.  The previous night there had been a bit of talk about getting our heads shaved.  Low and behold, just across the road as we were stooging around there was a hairresser cleanin her windows.  Obviously not much to do, so a couple of us went in and got the no comb.  Well Brocky didn't, because his hair was pretty short anyway.  In the end all the boys except for Gary and Mitch got the trim - the theme for the day, Nude Nut Tuesday.

Shingleback Lizards have been a theme for the previous few days; we first named the Flinders Highway from Ceduna to Streaky Bay the Dead Lizard Highway.  Today again they were out in force, sometimes in twos and threes, sneaking across the road.  As with the above picture taken by Hector they are

About 11.30 we finally got out and away, going around the coast looking at beaches and blowholes, cutting up some wide dirt roads and lunching at Sceale Bay.  We then went on and checked out a sea lion colony, a tiny fishing village with lots of pelicans and finally, late in the day, we turned up at Caltapanna Waterhole Conservation Park (click here).
As always our plans change from day to day; we changed about three times today.  The plan as it stands now is to push into the Gawler Ranges for the next two nights, camping out, then go on from there to stay in the Mt Lofty Ranges area on Friday night.  Then again...

Day Six - From the shores of Googs Lakes to the shores of Streaky Bay.

Today we finished off Goog's track and hit the coast in a day of transition.  Goog's Lake was salty, the sea at Streaky Bay is salty, and so were we after three nights out camping and some hard graft in the hot sun.
The day started well with everyone in good spirits and no injuries or hangovers from the day before.  The morning rituals of fixing things (the BBQ) and awards were held.  Carl got an award for hanging in and finishing when all looked lost (he got a handle that we found on the side of the trak that was carbon dated and confirmed to have come from Goog's original dozer when he built the track), and Uncle Gary got the spring award for sheer brilliance in his demeanour and effort when he was being flogged by the track and the sand and the heat but he kept on going with a smile on his face.
We broke camp and stopped breifly at the memorials where Goog and his son Dinger are buried; we spoke a few words and Hector played a moving version of Waltzing Matilda on the pipes.  A moving moment; Dinger preceded his fther by a year or two in a car accident.  We then went on, finding the track much easier today, with some runs along the swales and easier dunes, despite there appearing to be more lose and soft sand at the tops.  We made the dog fence in good time, stopping there for a drink and a good onya boys, and to pump up tyres.
We continued on to Ceduna where we had a date with Amanda at the Parks Office and lunch at the foreshore.  Scotty and Hector braved to water for a dip while the rest of us looked on keenly.
After luch we shot down the coast, weading estwards now to our 'camp' for the night at the Streaky Bay Hotel-Motel (nice place, click here).
All in bed relatively early after a thrilling two days of sand riding, and challenging ourselves.  More adventures tomorrow.

Some of the extra detail from a day on the track.

Goog's or Goog's?  How do you pronounce Goog's?  We had wrestled with this for days; is it Goo-g as in goo, g or Goog as in Googie Egg?  We only got the answer in the bakery in Ceduna.  The boys went in, were asked where they had been and said 'Goog's Track'.  Well, they pronounced it wrong; Goog's sister actually worked at the bakery (was not there on the day), and the correct pronounciation is Goog as in Googie Egg.  There you go.  A quick straw poll held previously had Scotty and Mitch as the voters for the correct answer.

How long?  On day five, we did 100kms from campsite to the memorial site, where Goog and son Dinger are buried.  It was another couple of kms to Goog Lake, where we camped.  Next morning we were out of the park by 11.30, with a short trip on 50 kms.

Who dropped it?  Every bike but one and every rider but one had a little lie down or a rest or a complete howdy doody (or a few of each!).  In the two days that we were on the Track, Big Scotty was the only man to stay upright all day.  Rohman did good until going a little fast into a corner on the second track day.

Snakes?  Mitch and Ferg travelling together had one fauna mission, and that was to see a snake...fail.  No snakes for them.  Scotty and Brock saw the only snake (of the day and the trip, other than the sneaky one in Mitch's ute), when a long skinny snake went across the track in front of them...and turned around and went back.

Countryside.  Covering the dunes and the swales was a standard cover of spinifex, stunted mulga, sheoak and bulloak, and various shrubs and succulents.  In parts there was change, such as the claypan where we stopped for a bit, and the odd outcrop of rock, but in all the fauna was similar to mallee scrub.

The Track goes through the Yumburra Conservation Park (click here) and the Yellabinna Regional Reserve and Protection Area (click here).  The parks were well kept with new signs, and mostly a lot of respect by the travellers.  Old Mate Quarantine Man at Ceduna did towel up a 4wd drive club who went through the park trying different driving methods and backing up and down, generally stuffing the south side of many dunes.

The track was Ok.  The warnings to us were no trailers and run from south to north...so we ran north to south and took two trailers.  We met two cars going north.  One was young mate with missus and two kids under 3 in a Nissan Patrol witha a 6 by 4, and then old mate with his missus (both had seen a lot of sun) in a Toyaota Landcruiser.  UHF radio allowed us to e in touch with them and not crash on the single-lane track.  The blow-outs on the norht faces of the dunes were not as much  problem for us as the bumpy and chopped out surface on the downsides, being the south faces for us.  Interestingly, as you topped the bigger dunes, they all looked to be the highest ones...until you topped the next one, which then looked the biggest.

Fluid consumption was high.  Carl emptied his two litre camelbak (water pack on his back) three times, as well as drinking hydrate and some coke.  The temperaure was in the thirties, with a strongish wind blowing into our backs from the north.  As the sun went down to the west it beat in hard on that side.