I think the first thing that people wonder is why did he do it, but then people often say I wish I had done something like that.

I carried on along the coast crossed the border into South Australia, then onto Mount Gambier. After that I arrived at a place called Kingston, which is where I saw a sea food shop with a huge lobster outside. I took a picture of it and it looked as though it was going to eat the Norton, as the bike looked so small against it.

As I carried on along the Princes Highway I rode past a lake that looked pink - quite an unusual sight. At this point the old Norton was running really well and the King and Queen seat was the right kit for the job. I ended up at Tailem Bend that afternoon and had clocked a bit over 400 miles without a sore behind, which was first class comfort!

I was a fair distance into South Australia and only had about an hours ride the next day to reach Adelaide so the next day I got up, packed away my things and set off fairly early, before 7 am, to do the hours ride to Adelaide. All this part of the trip was fairly familiar and nothing really interesting or remarkable happened.

I continued north up through Crystal Brook and had a look where the pipeline huts had been but there was no longer any trace that they had ever been there.

While traveling up the Spencer Gulf, just after I had passed Port Pirie, I had a Yamaha XJ 650 overtake me and the riders gave me a wave as they went by. Right at the top of the Spencer Gulf I stopped at Port Augusta and, as I was looking around, a local Police car came over to where I was. The officer could see the NSW plates and asked what I was doing so I told him I was intending to do a round trip of Australia and he became quite interested. He then went on to tell me where the best place was to take photos, wished me all the best and I moved on.

I continued on to Iron Knob which was a place where I had worked in 1974/75 on an iron ore mine. I took a few photos of the place, noticing that it did not look much different to when I was there 7 years before.

I got back on the bike heading to the next town as that was where I intended to stop that day. Of course the first place to stop was the pub and parked outside was the XJ 650 so I went over to talk to the rider and his pillion. They told me they were heading west and when I said I was going that way also, we agreed to look out for each other on the road.

I got up fairly early the next morning and carried on to the other side of the Spencer Gulf to Ceduna where the bike picked up an oil leak. It came from a cable - the one that drives the tacho - and only needed tightening. It was OK for now. I later met up with the people with the XJ 650 and we travelled together for a couple of days.

This next part of the trip on the last adventure was when I went through the plague of locusts. This time it was not as bad as that as the weather was warm and riding was quite pleasant. The ride across the Nullabor was quite windy as the cross winds made riding a bit harder so I stepped the speed up but still within the correct limits and dealt with it that way.

I had now been riding a week and stopped at Esperance for a couple of days to get some washing done. Up to now I had clocked just over 2500 miles over this last week with just a small oil leak to deal with. I was working on 10,000 miles being the total distance around Australia so I had done a quarter of that so far. However there was still a long way to go and the bike still had lots to deal with.

The Norton In Australia Archive

NVQAssessor

27.07.06 Front Page

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