Australia - Waterfalls and Rainforests Day 89 (8070 miles)

Aussie Alan, one of the many ‘Grey Nomads’ we met on our way up to the Daintree Rainforest National Park. He’s been travelling around and across Oz for a couple of years now.


Sugar Cane fields are a common feature in north Queensland, many of the Cane Cutters work the season up here and then when they have finished go travelling around Australia until the season starts again.




The cane is transported out of the fields to the trucks using these little Cane Trains.


We passed lots of sugar cane refining plants, as you would expect there is a strong sweet smell in the surrounding areas.

On the boat after we had snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef. Beautiful coloured coral and lots of amazing fish. It’s the start of stinger season and out here they can be deadly so we had to wear very fetching lycra babygro’s

The ‘Ocean Safari’ boat that took us out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was a great trip a small fast boat and only a small group, some of the the other boats take can out 400 hundred people.




A couple of nice sunrise pictures at our Cape Tribulation campsite, for those of you heading into winter we are not trying to make you jealous (honestly).


This is the rainforest that bordered the beach in the previous pictures. We should have worn wetsuits and wellies whilst exploring, that may have reduced the huge range of insect bites we are now sporting.

Strange swampy tree roots.

Our first snake encounter (quite happy if it‘s our last).




This is the Curtain Fig Tree, an amazing mass of hanging roots that started life as a seedling living as a parasite on another tree until the original tree died and the fig carried on growing.


Our first spider, this is the apparently harmless Golden Orb spider. It was about the size of John‘s hand.

This type of scenery is typical of the Atherton Tablelands area of Queensland. Sometimes it reminded us very much of Cornwall or Wales (but with palm trees!).

The ‘Dinner Falls’

The ‘Zillie falls’

The ‘Ellinjaa Falls’

Ravenshoe, the highest town in Queensland where we found a general store that really did sell a broad range of items.

Paronella Park, a strange collection of buildings built by a Spaniard in the 1930’s. His dream was to build a European style castle in Queensland unfortunately he only had concrete rather than stone! The overall effect is quite interesting and it was an amazing feat as most of it was built by one man.

Fruit Bats at Paronella Park

Micro or Bentwing Bats at Paronella Park, these are very cute and tiny, each adult is about the size of a golf ball.

This is ‘Tillie the tree frog’ who made a dubious decision to take up residence on the Tenere just as we were about to set off. Following Mr Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory we are not sure whether Tillie made it through the journey to tell the tale to her tree frog friends.

Australia - G'day Mates! Day 80 (7281 miles)

Waiting for our first mode of transport in Oz.

We arrived late on a Friday and although the Tenere was due in the same evening we would not be able to process through Customs until the following Monday so had pre-booked a Greyhound bus from Brissie to Toowoomba where Dennis and Dell (a couple we met at the Horizons Unlimited meeting at Silverton) lived and had kindly offered to look after us for the weekend. It was a perfect mix of chilling out (just what we needed after a long flight) and seeing the local area (including a few bike shops!)


By Sunday we were a bit more lively so Dennis and Dell (pictured) took us for a walk to a lovely spot called Crows Nest Falls then on to our first Aussie pub.

John with the AQIS inspector during the quarantine inspection, the bike was so clean that the inspector wanted to know if we had ever used it! He watched the whole unpacking process which took a while. By the end of it he had given us his name and number and offered us a bed in Brisbane if we were passing through!

The flattened crate after we had removed the bike. The crate was very substantial thanks to Warren and Steve of the LA shippers, Schumacher Logistics, for their service and work on the crate. All passed and cleared through Customs we are ready to go late that Monday afternoon but we are too late to make our planned destination for that day, especially as there is a wild storm blowing in over Brissie. So we returned to Dennis and Dell’s (well they said to come back anytime but possibly didn’t expect to see us quite so soon!) So our first taste of riding in Oz was through a monsoon like downpour quite typical of Queensland in the rainy season.

Our first main destination was the Carnarvon Gorge 250 miles north of Toowoomba. Another first for John in Oz and first for Jane ever was the 16km of dirt road into the gorge. In sections it was very rough and slippery and there were four river crossings which are probably ok in a 4x4 but the Tenere was a touch overloaded for comfort so we closed our eyes and hoped for the best! It did ok.

This Rufus Bettong joined us at our tent for dinner late one night, unfortunately what Jane and I had chosen for our meal did not appeal to the Bettong, and we were not going to try what he was digging from the ground so we all sat looking at each other like a couple on a unsuccessful blind date. He was very cute!

We got used to waking up and seeing new neighbours each day. Meet the Wallabies.







Various areas of this spectacular gorge that we saw on our 2 fairly leisurely 10k hikes. For hardier souls this plus more of the gorge can be combined in a 7 day hiking/camping trip.

This is John a nice Aussie bloke travelling on a Vstrom from Melbourne to Queensland and back again, he was our neighbour at the campsite.

Camp McComb



Pretty flowers in the gorge (we could make up some Latin names but some of you may do the research and catch us out!)

Ward Canyon in the is home to the King Ferns the biggest type of fern in the World, these are not the only ones in existence but they are very rare.

A fine example of the Knobblius Kneeus tree.



The Art Gallery. A sacred place within the gorge where there are over 2,000 examples of Aboriginal art estimated to be thousands of years old. Some are carvings but this example is called blow stencil art because they blow paint over objects to create the picture. There was something magical about this place, it was very peaceful.

A river crossing in the gorge

Pretty Face Wallabies (you could tell we are tourists we took hundreds of pictures of these!).

We don’t what this bird is called (Dennis or Dell may know) but it’s Mohican was pretty impressive!

California to Australia - Quick update

Long time no blog I hear you say, just to let you know that we are in Australia and have travelled north from Brisbane to Charters Towers on our way up to the Daintree Rain Forest Area. This is a wild country with its unique beauty, you definitely need 4x4 in some of the national parks including the campsites!

However, the reason that we have not posted a blog is because we are unable to find a fast enough internet connection in this part of Oz that we can use to upload the pictures. (the Google Blogger account appears to time out each time we try) We are not optimistic that this will improve in the next few days or at least until we get to the Cairns area, so more to follow then.

Sorry for this, missing all our friends and family. John and Jane.

Californian Camping Day 70 (6144 miles)

Our last week in the US was without the bike as we had delivered it to the shippers and it was on its way to Australia by air via Singapore Airways. In place of the Tenere we hired the mighty ‘Hyundai Elantra’ which turned out to be a good all terrain vehicle, although we don’t think the hire car company would agree.


We stayed at 3 campsites dotted along Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). This beautiful sunset was at Pismo Beach, a great campsite directly behind the beach and a 20 minute walk from a nice little seaside town.


The Blue Whales are migrating south this time of year so we were always on the lookout for them as we drove along the highway. Whilst at Pismo one of them had made its way into town and was happy to pose for a photo!


Even though it’s the end of September the Big Sur area was still busy at the weekends and popular with surfers and hikers. We couldn’t get a camping pitch so stayed in this Tent Cabin amongst the Redwood forest area, the extra space was a bit of luxury after our 2 man tent.


We enjoyed using the fire pits that most US campsites have, nice to sit around in the evening with a glass of wine. Certainly didn’t need the fire for heat as our last week in California the temperature was 90 degrees plus everyday. This is John creating one of the many rice surprise meals we had whilst camping.


The huge Redwoods.






Three views from the PCH, the road and scenery are stunning:


We had lunch at the ‘Old Village Grill’ in Arroyo Grande, where according to the story board in the café, Steve McQueen ate during the Poly Enduro meeting in 1964.

Surfers (not John) at Pismo Beach.




Long Beach north of LA, aptly named and very well known but not a particularly nice beach compared to many in California.

So that’s the end of our time in the US, over 6,000 miles covered and 15 states visited. Our last night we spent with Chris, a fine chap we met at the Horizon’s Unlimited Silverton event who kindly offered us a place to stay before we headed back to LA for our flight to Australia. Thanks Chris, we really appreciated your hospitality and enjoyed your company.