For the first time on the tour we managed to get away on time. We left craig and miffy's having received incredible hospitality, only to stumble at the first hurdle. We had gone to the local servo to acquire a couple of stickers for the panniers only to find it was waist deep in splender attenders and the traffic was diabolical. To add insult to injury, my low beam headlight bulb blew. We rode to just outside the gold coast before calling the very helpful people at bmw roadside assist who put me in touch with a local bmw dealer, morgan & wacker, dodgy name, great people. They were extremely helpful and very willing to impart knowledge of riding the cape.
me reviewing the manual before changing my globe
So after farnarcling around for a couple of hours we were back on the road proper but well behind schedule which meant that I didn't have time to catch up with a good mate of mine in maroochydore, sorry mikey. If you're reading this, i will catch up with youin afew weeks. We did however make time for a quick visit to the big pineapple, it's big and it's fruit so why not? Leaving the big pinapple was another thing altogether, i had parked my bike on just enough of an incline that made it impossible to move backwards while sitting on it. So there was nothing else to do but to get off and man-handle it out of the car space, well at least i got my exercise for the day.
big wal,big pinapple, nuff said
We choked down a quick lunch at a truck stop somewhere just south of noosa and kept on going. Past noosa and on to gympie where the landscape started to change, there was sugar cane, lots and lots of sugar cane, and cattle, i think the go-betweens were on to something. By the time we got to childers we realised there was no way we were going to get to seventeen seventy in daylight so the decision was made to stay in bundaberg. The road to bundaberg was delightful, cresting a hill we came out into a sea of, yes you guessed it, sugar cane, bathed in late afternoon sunlight, that just spread out as far as the eye could see.The road was gently undulating with gentle curves and was a great deal of fun to ride on. I don't know whats happening in bundaberg at the moment but cheap accommodation was scarce and we just managed to snag the last little unit thing at a place on the main drag where we promptly collapsed in a heap.
The plan tomorrow is to get to serina, just south of mackay. Let's see how that goes.