Alan and Lyn Munday’s trip around Australia.
 

We left Canberra on Saturday 20th February to travel around Australia on our Kawasaki GTR1000, with trailer in tow. We arrived home on Thursday 20th May. The object of the trip was to attend the AGM in Albany, along with 3,220 other Ulysseans, but we decided that we didn’t want to come back across the Nullarbor, so the only way to avoid backtracking was to head north. 

We covered a total of 19,980 km in 89 days. The greatest distance we travelled in one day was 700km when we rode from Broome W.A., leaving at 6.50 am, and arriving at Halls Creek at 4pm.  We had several stops in between to rest the butt and to rehydrate. After unpacking our gear into a very compact motel room, we headed straight to the pool. The most we paid for petrol was 197.5c per litre at a Roadhouse called Renner Springs in NT. 

We met a lot of interesting people and visited some amazing places.  Australia is a remarkable country and it was great to experience it the way we did. We started our trip by heading south to Lorne where we met up with some other Canberra members for one night. We then travelled along the Great Ocean Road, and followed the coast virtually all the way around South Australia, including stops at Mt Gambier, Mannum (on the Murray River), Port Augusta and Port Lincoln before joining many more Ulysseans at Ceduna, to travel across the Nullarbor and down to Albany.  

After the AGM was over, we spent a couple of nights in a cabin in the forest near Pemberton, with Ian and Sally Paterson. We then headed further west, ending up at Cape Leeuwin where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet, then north to Perth, back across to Kalgoorlie, north to Leinster, and west again to Geraldton, where we met up with Maurie Lonnie and his partner, Doris and spent a couple of days with them. From there we travelled up the west coast to Broome, then east to Darwin. We didn’t want to go into Queensland as we had spent a month travelling around there two years ago when we went to Townsville AGM, so we headed due south from Darwin, completing our circumnavigation when we arrived at Port Augusta again. We still had a bit of time to spare, so we then headed to Broken Hill, then, via Cobar, Moree and Tenterfield, ended up in Ballina then Yamba, on the northern NSW coast, before heading south again. 

Some of the highlights of our trip included a tour of the Super Pit open cut mine at Kalgoorlie. This is 600m deep and spans 1.5 km across the top. The intention is to keep digging until it is 1km deep. We went on a camel ride along Cable Beach in Broome, a boat trip down the Ord River from Lake Argyle Dam and saw some magic cliffs and scenery. 

We decided to go to Uluru by bus from Alice Springs. This was an 1100km round trip which was completed in one day, which is reportedly the longest one day tour in the world. 

We stayed in an underground motel in Coober Pedy which was different and enjoyable. We survived the massive storm that hit Perth in March – their worst in 50 years. We happened to be on the ferry, returning from Rottnest Island at the time. Our tent was flattened by a fallen tree branch and most of our belongings got wet, but no permanent damage was done and everything dried out the next day. Overall, we were very lucky with the weather. 

It was actually quite cool when we crossed the Nullarbor, we missed the rain wherever we went (except Perth) and managed to survive the heat of north west WA and Northern Territory (all the caravan parks have great swimming pools). A lot of these places had received more than their share of rainfall during February, especially Alice Springs, which meant that instead of seeing the “red” centre, we were graced with a very lush green centre – truly a rare occurrence. 

It was a great trip and we have lots of memories of our travels around this great country of ours. it was good to get home again.