Checking the Boundary Fence

The day kicked off nice and early Saturday morning. The first hour was spent finishing off a few last touches to the BMW after spending the weekend before wiring up the Autocom system.

Nothing like last minute fixes! Not to worry tho, besides some minor swear words at the stupid bolts holding the Beemer together it was all easy. Probably not the last time we will spend time fixing bikes before the day ahead!

By 9am we were on our way, weaving our way out through Samford to Dayboro for a breakfast pie. Pie Rating = 6.5/10

We stopped off at the Mt Mee lookout for a quick "lookout." So far it had been a bit cool but un-eventful. KC is seen here asking Greg why his toilet drain clockwise.

Minutes later we were back on the bikes and heading towards the 1km or so of brilliant curves just past the Mt Mee lookout. It was a fairly clean run through the sweepers, except for some crazed bicycle riders that thought they were quick on the downhill.

JC brushed one with a pannier on the way past (the twit was riding down the middle of the road) while KC and Greg found them a little less co-operative. Maybe the pannier bag had something to do with it...

Another set of awesome roads were dispatched of over the next couple of hours until we hit Imbil for lunch. We passed by a not so lucky motorcyclist who looked like he lost a race with a car over a one lane bridge. We noticed the rescue chopper heading in his direction a few kilometres later.

Let's hope he has a speedy recovery.

It was at lunch that JC noticed that he was down one thong after a fairly poor attempt at strapping them on. A replacement set was obtained during lunch at the local IGA. Gota love the pluggers!

The end of lunch signalled our first real dirt section from Imbil to Goomeri via Lake Borumba.

We took in some great dirt roads twisting through the Yabba state forest west of Imbil. KC and Greg got their first chance to wet their feet after a few water crossings.

We caught up with some dirt bikes just before we hit Goomeri. We're not sure if they didn't see us range up behind them or whether they were plain stupid, but we each came close to taking some of them out. A few of them decided to indicate with their right blinker, then swerve off the left hand side of the road just as we tried to pass them...

We found more crazy in Goomeri at the service station with a friendly (but drunk) lad driving up to say g'day. Gota love country towns, this bloke was 3/4's drunk, driving home with a fresh stubby in his cup holder...

Camp that night was at Barambah Caravan Park. A top spot with top facilities. The night was spent trying out our cooking gear and various types of food. The Spam was a stand out favourite amongst the boys (as long as you like the smell of dog food!).

We were in bed by around 8pm with the rain tumbling down throughout the night... Ahhh rain, our favourite!

The weather hadn't improved much by morning, although it had abated slightly. We leisurely packed up hoping to let things dry out, until we noticed a nice storm rolling our way. The pack up finished in a more hastily mode, at which point we saddled up and took off north, trying to ride around the storm.

An hour or so later we had success, we had managed to skirt around the top of the storm. Gayndah was our next stop for a photo op with the orange bikes and the orange, orange. The beemer was nowhere to be seen.

We took a dirt road from Gayndah through to Proston after laughing at KC "losing" his keys during a refuel. The road was brilliant, but was later to be the downfall of fuel economy for JC. He probably needs to learn some constraint with his throttle if he is to make some of the distances on the real trip!

The Golden Spur in Proston was our destination for a lunch pie (which was lucky to rate a 3.5/10). Greg made friends with a local who was rather proud of his town.

He was a strange one, you can see him in the pic on the left, checking Greg out while he got ready (Greg always knew how to pull the old ones).

The next 3hrs explained why Proston was such an exciting town, the land we passed through was remarkable for its unremarkable-ness. The only excitement was JC's bike almost running out of fuel .

We arrived in Jandowae around 3:30pm and decided to call it a day. The local caravan park was a top spot, complete with camp kitchen, firepit and grass to camp on. We recommend it to anyone passing through that area.

The night was spent knocking back the bourbons and beers from the local pub while talking trash until around 8:30pm, when we decided to call it a night.

We woke to a rather fresh morning with not a cloud in the sky. Time to head home. KC was heading back home to Narrabri while Greg and JC were off home to the coast.

We found a dirt road on the map that looked like a great last blast together before going our separate ways.

Unfortunately the dirt road turned out to be a bit of a dud. While we were sure it would go through to where we had planned, the rain of the last few days made the roads just a little bit too wet for the bikes. We pushed on until JC went out on reconnaissance down a slightly wet track, only to find out it was pure greased clay and he almost stacked it. We bailed out at that point as we knew there was a fair ride in front of everyone before we got home.

KC took off towards home at this point, while Greg and JC worked their way back to Dalby to re-consult the map for the ride home.

A few hours later we found ourselves at Clifton enjoying a top lunch at the local pub. It was now time to concede that the trip was all but done.

Four hours after leaving Clifton we had made our way home, negotiating crazy "L" platers across Cunninghams Gap, crazy "L" platers heading through to the Gold Coast (for Greg) and a 6 car pile up forcing JC onto the Moggill ferry to get home.

So what did we learn? Not a lot really. Spam (the "meat") is crap, rain isn't much fun (although we knew that from the Easter run), JC needs to stop letting it all hang out so much on the dirt (for the sake of fuel economy and the rear tyre) and "L" platers really are nuts!