Hello all. I just got back from a motorbike trip a couple days ago. It was a whirlwind trip, 7105kms in 14 days, of that 2050kms was either dirt or unsealed roads. It wasn't my ideal type of trip in regards to time off and Kms travelled, but that s life.
It went from
Perth, to Kalgoorlie, up to
Laverton, across the
great central road to Uluru,
kings canyon area, McDonnell ranges,
Alice Springs down to Glendambo, across the
Kingoonya track to
Wirrulla, across the Eyre highway to Balladonia, down the Balladonia track to Cape Arid, Cape Le Grande,
Esperance,
Albany, Pemberton,
Perth.
I guess i didn't really plan it out that
well, there were really only two areas that I visited, Uluru/
Alice Springs area and around
Esperance, and they re along way apart!. slept in the bush on occasion , slept on the beautiful beaches of the
Esperance area, they were amazing.
After a lot of study on whether I should be doing this sort of trip on a bike through the great cental road in the middle of summer, and a lot of positive and negative reasons from users on a number of forums, Im glad that I did it. It was warm heading to
Laverton and onto the
great central road, but not hot, mid 30s at most, which was pleasant. Apparently the weather was unseasonable cool as temperatures can soar a lot higher. I had also heard about possible rain at that time of year but I didn't encounter any, no one had seen any out there for a couple of weeks.
The
great central road itself was relatively easy to get across . I took it easy the first day as I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but after some problems with tyre pressures early on I found the road to be relatively easy . In saying that, I had to keep my attention on the road at all times as if I got into any slightly soft stuff it was easy to lose a little bit of control. Right through to Docker River the road was quite consistent. For 100 Kms past Docker the road was at its worst, rough, dips, holes. The last 240 Kms to to Uluru was sand, heavy at times, but with enough speed I was able to maintain control quite
well. I had planned on taking 3 or 4 days to get across the GCR but did it 2, about 310 Kms on day one then about 840 on day 2. The rest of the trip was relatively straight forward, apart from trying to navigate Balladonia tack to Cape Arid at night, that was interesting.
I ride a BMW f800 gs, dual sport. I pushed the bike quite hard I think. had to have rear wheel bearings replaced in Alice, they were shot, a couple of gears are a little bit dodgy now also, but that can get sorted out at the next service. all in all I'm happy with the way it performed.