Days 126 - 128 Toronto - Lake MacQuarie - Mother of Ducks - Nimbin

36171 - 37073   902 km

We really needed one morning to do some maintenance for the gear. Doing laundry and getting tents and sleeping bags properly dry again. The bikes also needed some small repairing like they always do. Mirco fixed his helmet's speaker connection and I tried to sort out all the insurance things for USA.

In the afternoon we hit the road. We took the boring freeway north to get near Port Macquarie. That's the beginning of Oksley Highway which is said to be one of the best motorcycle roads in whole Australia. We definitely wanted to ride that one.

Freeway was really boring but it took us quite quickly ro our destination which was a camping ground in a village called Ellenborough. Nice camping ground with a lot of people. It rained a bit in the evening and also in the morning so we got our gear a little wet again.

Before leaving the camp ground in the morning Mirco faced the first obstacle of the day. His right hand mirror got loose and we didn't find a way to tighten it anymore. So he has to survive with only one mirror. It's good we are mainly riding forward.

Oksley Highway was really worth riding. After maybe 20 km the sun came out and riding was pure pleasure. Absolutely wonderful road! Endlessly corners and curves but not too tight. Australians mark corners with recommended speed (15, 25, 35 etc) in which the smaller recommended speed means tighter curve. 15 is practically a hairpin. Oksley Highway is mostly 35 and 45 which ment going through the corners with approximate speed of 50 and 60. Most bikers say you can ride double the recommendation but Annie is way too fat for that. And with those knobby tires I have to be a little more careful. I would love to ride that one with a street bike.

At some point near halfway I lost Mirco from my mirror. I usually ride in front as I have the navigator all the time available. Mirco needs to charge his occasionally. I stopped and waited for a while and then turned back to see if something has happened. I found Mirco on the side of the road with a gear lever in his hand. It had just snapped in two! Luckily he only needed to push the bike for about 500 meters to safer place.

The gear lever seemed original but apparently it's time had came to an end. It had snapped from the welding. I'm glad we both are a bit MacGyvers. We uninstalled the part surrounding the shaft and installed two steel bars I had removed from my crashbars. Mirco added a couple of zip ties to add some traction and it worked fine. He tried to avoid changing gears for the next 70km until next town. But we even visited one waterfall on the way. That was a beautiful place.

In the next town we found an engineering shop where a helpful guy welded the lever and even painted it. Now it looks better than new.

In the morning a helpful older lady from the neighboring camper had told us about a camping ground called Mother of Ducks. Actually there was nothing special at the place but it was nice. Shop was close and the toilet was ok. 

The problem called thunderstorm started at around eight in the evening and lasted close to midnight. Unfortunately I had pitched my tent to the place where the water run down the hillside. So basically my tent was in a river. I didn't want to take the risk of leaking floor so I pulled out all the pegs and dragged my tent to a better place. And of course it was pouring all the time. I cannot even remember when I've been as wet previous time. I needed a towel to dry myself in the tent. But after I finally got everything sorted out and crawled into my sleeping bag I slept the night quite well.

The first task of the morning was to get the gear dry. Sun was shining and there was a little breeze. Getting stuff dried hanged on exercise center lookes a bit funny.

Drying and repacking the gear only took about two hours and we were ready to get going. On the way to Nimbin we stopped at one waterfall and enjoyed some great motorcycle roads again. In the evening we arrived in Nimbin Rainbow Retrite. Nimbin is said to be the hippie town of Australia. For me it doesn't matter... but having a real bed for a night sounds like a good idea.