TransOceania, the Australia leg. A preamble.

To paraphrase the TDA blurb:

“Pedaling across southeastern Australia, Tasmania…..the multitude of experiences will be hard to fathom: pleasant wine regions, limestone coast of the Great Ocean Road, fascinating cities of Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney.

From Adelaide the cyclists will cruise along the coast on the gorgeous Great Ocean Road, stopping in Melbourne and its arts and coffee scenes. A ferry will bring the riders to Tasmania, where they will experience white sand beaches, rocky headlands, alpine lakes, and misty mountains. Back on the mainland, they will now climb up into the ‘Australian Alps’ before swinging down through Canberra, the country’s capital, and on into cosmopolitain Sydney.”

TDA is the company we’ve used for other trips like this. There’s about 15 starting, so we should have remembered names before Sydney.

The Australian leg is 3500km. Which is of course correct, as Australia converted from miles to kilometres on 1 July 1974. Our conversion remains 5/8 so it’s about 2200 miles to the Imperialists. To keep things simple for visitors from the UK they remain on the left – we hope.

A smooth journey overall, once the wonderful BA assistant Cris (with no h), had wrangled the check-in system to the floor to allow us to book our bikes on at the airport. “You can’t add the extra bag on- line beforehand as the leg to Sydney is on a different airline”. But you sold us one ticket that covers both airlines. “Don’t be smart with us – and anyway it’s a cinch to add the extra bag at the airport check-in”. A sweaty 30+ minutes wait watching Cris’ eyebrows be his only expression of worry. A work around was found.

Having taken approaching 24 hours flying to Adelaide from Heathrow, you do have to wonder and admire the early Western explorers bobbing across the oceans to get here. “Take a note Walter (the Pigeon). Have reached a large expanse of land with an even bigger beach in the middle. Sent to UK with conviction”.

The impressively smooth transfer at Sydney was somewhat delayed in taking off whilst waiting for a no-show passenger’s bag to be found and removed from the plane’s hold. Dislocating the shoulder of the baggage handler in the process (witness the poor fella surrounded by 6 uniforms of which maybe 2 were medics. Still be grateful it wasn’t one of St John’s specialist forces).

Adelaide is a city of 1.4 million folks. (As the whole state is 1.8 million we can expect a few small towns in days to come:after Adelaide the next largest is 28000). The next few days we’ll be exploring on foot and bus. Foot might take a long time and hazardous. The pedestrian crossings take ages to allow you to cross then change almost with your first step. There’s probably a remote controller in stitches somewhere, watching the clock and reflecting on why this region has a time zone 30 minutes different from Sydney.

To bed…..