Made it to Aus!

Yup, we made it. It’s been a lot of years (as 25 or more type of lot) since Anita or I were in Oz, and like with childbirth I suppose, the mind tends to forget the pain. If it didn’t you’d never do it again.

We’d heard from the ever-efficient guys at Harnwick Freighting Agents that the bike had gone a day early, having cleared Customs with no problems, so we weren’t on the look-out for the crate being loaded onto our plane. Just as well really, as Birmingham airport was a scene of total bedlam. A flight to Dubai the previous day had failed to leave, doubling the crowd at the Emirates Check-in and halving the good will of all that were there.

Our Dubai flight left just an hour late and without any empty seats. It was a good flight with excellent food and no screaming babies, and the 7 Hrs was soon over. Dubai arport was absolutely something else. It’s huge. There are hundreds of gates and probably as many shops, and the building is just stunning. As it was around 2 in the morning, this is about all that we could manage to illustrate the architecture and grandure of the place.



Sorry.

The flight to Perth was on time almost and with a fairly long flight already under our belts, the 10½ Hrs wasn’t much fun. We got glimpses of the first class seats on the way on and off the flight, and it was all quite surreal. Having been bunched up together at the back tighter than on a No. 35 bus, the first class passengers had these strange wood-veneered pods that I could only compare to oversize baby’s prams without the undercarriage. When they leant their seats back they must have almost disappeared inside them. Who the hell can afford to pay £5000 for a flight anyway?

Well, we got to Perth after a night of almost no sleep and decided to pay the extra $10 for a taxi rather than wait an hour for the shuttle bus. The taxi driver was a lovely character - Voyo - from Serbia and loved his adopted country but was heading home at Christmas to see family and ski near Sarayevo.

The backpacker’s hostel that we’d booked into was at one time probably a lovely old hotel. Nowadays it’s quite run down, but cheap.



We plumped for a quick bite over the road at ‘Munchies’ and while munchieing the toast and jam, chatted to Dean and Graham, a couple of local bikers.

Back to bed for another night of nearly no sleep - our bodies were telling us that it was only 2 in the afternoon. Tomorrow was a big day.

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and with a mouthful of hot chocolate for breakfast we jumped into a taxi at 7.30 the next morning to get to the customs agents when they opened. They were still closed, but it gave us a chance to wake up a little.



Aurelio (Rel) and his brother Emilio (Mil) were fantastic and by 11.30 they’d got us an appointment with the Quarrantine Inspector whose job it was make sure that we’d not brought anything nasty into the country. Like spiders or snakes maybe?





He was a very very nice man and poked about in our bags and shone his torch on the bike until he was happy that we’d ‘done the right thing’. A very Australian expression.

So then it was down to Anita and I to break it right out of the crate.

And try to remember how to put it all back together.




Bearing in mind that we were both doing a good impression of zombies by this time, it was a miracle that the only thing forgotten was a brake light switch cable, and it only fell over once.



So on the road we go. No, not so simple. First we needed a 48 Hr temporary driving permit (quick call to Rel) and a trip to the very very nice man at the Vehicle Inspection Station.



He was happy that the lights worked and that it had 2 wheels. So were we.

So on the road we go. Woaah, not so fast! Next was a trip up the road to the Vehicle Registration Centre.

This is where it all fell apart irredeemably. The not so cooperative ladies there couldn’t do anything apart from follow the ‘system’, and whoever had written the computer program was a twit. It turned out that though we had gone there to ‘do the right thing’ and buy tax and insurance, they couldn’t give us tax and insurance past the point that our UK tax ran out. I think it was all in the translation, as ‘vehicle registration’ or ‘reggo’ in Australia covers tax and insurance. As it stands, we have to leave Oz by mid Feb next year unless a ‘reggo’ office in another state looks upon us more kindly, or has employed a more sensible computer programmer.

Enough whingeing. The bike was on the road finally.

Having crashed out at 9 on Friday evening we woke up at 3 on Saturday afternoon in a panic. 18 hours solid. We’d planned to buy maps and campsite books and the shops were about to shut for the weekend. We stumbled off in a hurry trying to put the booksop address into the satnav while walking and made it just in time. Apologies to the bookshop staff for the state of the 2 poms that were in your shops. We’re nomally quite ok.

Books and food are bought, we’ve mooched around beautiful Fremantle and I’m sitting writing ths in our room listening to the rain outside. It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. We’ve decided to stay here another couple of days before heading up the coast to not only give the weather a chance to improve, but also sort out our sleep patterns.

‘Night all.