Coober Pedy to Wagga Wagga (almost home!)

Moon and I began the day riding up and down a Coober Pedy street, followed by Dean’s drone (scroll down for video), before hitting the road — heading south to Port Augusta. The bike was sounding better and I had high hopes our performance issues were over. The trip meter hit 250km, then 280km — better than we’d managed in days — then suddenly (splutter, cough… silence) we ran out of fuel. Again.

It’s remarkable how many swear words, in different languages, you remember at a time like that.

Thankfully there’s fuel every few hundred kms after Coober Pedy so, with our increased range, at least we weren’t in danger of getting stranded. We made it to Port Augusta and found a dog friendly caravan park for the night.

Once camped, I took the bike apart trying to find anything we had missed in Coober Pedy. Ben emailed with a list of things to check — stuck choke (nope), blocked carby filter (nope). Port August is only 1500km from home, so I told myself I could just buy twice the fuel and hope for the best…

Next morning Moon was in a great mood. It wasn’t raining, we weren’t sliding through mud, or baking in a heat wave, or rattling our way over corrugations, and he just wanted to get on the bike and ride!

But on the highway to Mildura the bike just got worse and worse. It started missing, then backfiring and stalling. By the time we got to Burra we stank of fuel. I booked us an airbnb bungalow in Ouyen and got off the highway. If we broke down, I figured I’d rather be near a country town than by the side of a highway. It took six more hours but we arrived in Ouyen with the bike still running.

The Ouyen bungalow was lovely —it belonged to a lady named Marie, and she’d furnished it with her Grandmother’s antiques. These included a french polished table, made from wooden packing crates, that her Grandfather had made for her Grandmother when he asked her to marry him. Moon thought that was pretty romantic (dogs are so stupid like that…)

We left the bike and walked to the nearest pub for dinner. And, of course, the pub manager was a motorcycle enthusiast… and so were most of the patrons! A round table discussion shed a little more light on my motorcycle problems and we walked back with a list of things to check in the morning.

Next day, in Mildura, I discovered the cause of my most recent woes. A random electrical plug had fallen into the air filter snorkel (I know you told me to check that ages ago Vince!!) and the engine was only getting half the air it needed. And to make matters worse, I’d obviously put in some dodgy fuel in the desert because there was a clump of fuel debris — and a WASP —an actual petrol-soaked wasp — in the fuel line. As soon as these interlopers were removed, the bike ran beautifully!

In Mildura I caught up with Donata, the new artistic director of the writers’ festival — and that evening Moon and I were treated to dinner at my friend Stefano’s restaurant. When Stefano told me he owned a ‘cafe’ in Mildura I had pictured the kind of place that sells vanilla slices and lamingtons…with a framed print of that tennis girl scratching her arse on the wall… not this Euopean-styled underground gourmet restaurant! Needless to say it was amazing.

Moon hid under the table, while the waitresses slipped him pieces of veal. After dinner, we rode down to the edge of the river and camped among reflected fairy-lights.

Today we made a beeline for Wagga Wagga — and it was easy because the bike was perfect, for the first time since we left! No wobbles or flat tyres, no twisted forks, no snapped off headlights, precarious fuel tank, air-fuel issues . . . no running out of petrol.

Tonight we are in Australia’s most dodgy van park, just three or four hours from home!

After 34 days, 10,357km, two sets of tyres, a truck ride, a snake bite, a heat wave and a flood, our adventure is almost at an end. Some mates from the ACT Adventure Riders Facebook group are meeting me at Murrumbateman tomorow, to ride the last 100km with me. I’ll post again tomorrow with a photo of that!

I’ll be heading back up to the desert in June to watch the Finke race, then again in September to tackle the Great Sandy Desert… but until then, here is Dean’s little drone movie, starring Moon and a DR650, that he made to promote the beautiful town of Coober Pedy (Dean’s music!).

Thanks to everyone who has shared this journey with me!