From the Library

[Biggles]

By this stage Geoff had caught up with us, just in time for to run into some roadworks. "Think we're gonna get pretty wet soon," the ganger holding the stop/go pole told us.
We told him we already had. Twice. But that we had just laughed it off as the rain was warm, plus we were hard-assed bikers who feared nothing but a lack of pies and beer. Unfazed by our chutzpah, he said, "We had a shower last night – about two inches it was. Think we might get another one today."
We wished him well, handed him a snorkel and sped on.
As the roadworker had predicted, we were alternately drenched by rain and dried by sunshine as we rode along. The rain stung our hands, since it was too hot for gloves, but it was a good-to-be-alive kind of stinging.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p110

[Biggles]

"Oi, you don't wanna ride Triumphs, mate. AJS is the bike," he said, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a large AJS tattoo. "I used to ride everywhere with me mate on ours until he went straight on at a bend and came a cropper on a barbed wire fence. Right across the neck. Nasty."
Having thus failed his interview as head of marketing for AJS, he pottered off.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p113

[Biggles]

Zen had succeeded where conflict would have failed, and perhaps it was that which led to the feeling of beautiful contentment I had as we rode up the Sunshine Coast that morning. Or perhaps it was because we had cast off our jackets and were riding in our T-shirts, feeling like boys on bicycles on our summer holidays, filled with that gloriously youthful sense of our whole lives in front of us, filled with infinite possibilities. Or perhaps it was as a result of weeks of being surrounded by people living in the endless summer that is Australia. Whatever it was, it lasted all the livelong day, as we sped north along the section of Highway One called the Bruce Highway, with jagged blue mountains shimmering in the distance and in the foreground a vista of hills and dales, forests and streams, pine trees and palms, like the love child of Scotland and Barbados.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p116

[Biggles]

From time to time we were stopped by the roadworks which will turn Highway One from two lanes into four, after which it will presumably be known as the Bruce and Sheila Dual Carriageway.
The great thing about bikes at roadwork queues, of course, is that you can filter all the way to the front, and this afternoon Colin set a new world record as he led the way to the front of a two-mile tailback just as the man with the 'Stop' sign swung it around to 'Slow'.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p118

[Biggles]

All too aware that this was the witching hour for Australian wildlife, we kept a careful eye out for assorted kangaroos, wombats, koalas and funnel-web spiders as, at speeds which would have had us in a Van Diemen's Land chain gang had there been any traffic cops about, we swooped and dived through lush grassland, copse and sugar plantations, on a road of such seductive curves that if it had been a woman, you would have married her and had her children, never mind the pain.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p118-9

[Biggles]

I stood there for a long time, filled with the happiness which being around old aeroplanes and motorcycles creates in me, possibly because it blesses me by osmosis with a ghost of the heroism of the men who flew and rode them, and then I got on more modern motorcycle and rode west into the late afternoon, imagining as I did that, as well as the hum of the engine, I heard an echo of another sound, the thrumming of ancient Avros and de Havillands heading home through the dying light of the day.
And then I realised that the thrumming was coming from below me, accompanied by a staccato thudding against my boots. Looking down, I saw that they were liberally covered with bits of dead insect, and realised that Ray's grasshopper plague had come to pass. He'd just exaggerated the height they could jump.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p129

[Biggles]

And if you're wondering why the Corones Hotel is my favourite venue for the founding of Qantas, it's partly because Poppa Corones allegedly proposed that the airline's first planes should be named after the figures of Greek mythology, such as Hermes and Pegasus, and as a reward was granted the Qantas catering contract so that, as every plane touched down at Charleville, his staff were already on their way across the grass with food, white table linen and silver service. And even more, because when Amy Johnson stopped to refuel at Charleville during her epic flight from England to Australia in 1930, she stayed at the Corones and asked Poppa for a champagne bath to celebrate the fact that the most dangerous part of her journey was over.
Poppa duly filled a bath with sixteen bottles and, not being a man to waste a penny, not only managed to rebottle the champagne after Amy had left, but ended up with seventeen bottles, so heaven knows what Amy got up to in that bath.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p129

[Biggles]

Our bad-luck streak hadn't quite run out though as, just out of town, Matt was pulled over by the police for driving too close to Geoff. I chucked a Uey to have word as Matt pulled away, and the cop, who was actually pretty friendly, said, "I just thought he was driving too close to your mate, and didn't know you were all travelling together, no worries mate."
After driving along the same dead-straight road for another 80km, Geoff and I were pulled over outside a police station in the middle of nowhere - the same cop we had encountered earlier was now doing random breath tests. We reckoned that he and his partner were just bored and wanted to have a look at the bikes, and sure enough, one of them turned out to be a biker.
After they had breathalysed us, and Geoff revealed he had left his licence at home - "It's okay, too much paperwork mate" - we had a yarn about what we were up to and they told us that the next bend was 480 kilometres away.
"We'll have to be re-trained," I said.
"No worries. Once you turn right there, there's another couple of bends before Darwin - you'll love it, it's really interesting bike country."
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p138-9

[Biggles]

To relieve the boredom of the endless straights, Colin and I finally decided to put them to some use by having a race, and as we were hurtling along side by side at a shade over 130mph, the thought suddenly occurred to me that this was only the average speed of the Isle of Man TT lap record set by John McGuinness the year before on winding country roads. It was about time we slowed down anyway, since a wind had sprung up from nowhere, flinging us this way and that across the road, and we found the reason why when we stopped to refuel; a sign in the window of the filling station saying, 'Fishing contest cancelled due to cyclone'.
"You're lucky.  Today's just the end of it," said the woman behind the counter.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p141

[Biggles]

Then, all of a sudden, red sandstone bluffs began fisting through the sunbaked earth, and before we knew it, we had dipped into the gorge of the Victoria River, winding through the dappled shade with the sun dancing cool blue on the river to our right and hot red on the cliffs to our left. We swooped around corners, like boys reborn. The scenery and grandeur lifted our mood after the enforced captivity of Darwin and we each hummed tunes as we sped along. We felt like the whistling kites that circled above us as we swooped through the valleys, the road rising and falling as it cut its way around the mountains. Black and white cockatoos kept us company as we drove, with the only downside being the occasional smell of death as we passed yet another wildlife traffic victim. Even cattle aren't safe from the road trains, and we saw at least two cows by the side of the road, slowly putrefying in the heat.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p161

[Biggles]

West Australians are known as 'sandgropers' by the other states and looking around it was easy to see why. This area had very little soil but an abundance of white sand and it seems the local plants have evolved to survive in it. Unfortunately the town of Eucla hadn't fared so well as, back in the nineteenth century it had been completely swallowed up by the shifting sand only to emerge every now and then, perfectly preserved, before being swallowed up again.
A sign from the local police kept me amused for the next few miles. It informed passing drivers that the local fuzz were 'targeting fatigue' and I wondered how they went about doing that. If they saw your eyelids drooping, did they jump out of the bushes and offer you a coffee? Or a pillow and a blanket? Maybe they drive you back to the station and tuck you in and read you a bedtime story. The possibilities for positive public relations seemed endless.
Clearly I was in need of a break, so we stopped at a hamlet called Edeabba, where we spotted a sign at the local football oval reading 'Beware Falling Limbs'. I looked at Geoff and checked my own, but they all seemed to be well attached.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p193

[Biggles]

We left at lunchtime, riding south in glorious sunshine and equable warmth, bliss after the heat and humidity of the north, through gum trees lining cow meadows and  vineyards, until at last - Colin and Paul having gone ahead - I found myself riding behind an immaculately restored pearl grey and indigo Jaguar.
As we fell together through the chiaroscuro of the late afternoon light through the trees, it was as if we slowly slipped back into a more elegant age, so that instead of riding a modern Triumph, I was astride a Vincent Rapide or Brough Superior, wearing a houndstooth jacket and soft-collared shirt, goggles and tweed cap reversed, on my way home to a little house in a grove tor a supper of Lancashire hotpot and Spitfire ale with my wife.
But my wife was Far And Away across the world, so when we arrived in Margaret River I had a takeaway pizza and a glass of wine, then fell asleep in a backpackers' dorm, my heart filled with melancholy.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p196-7

[Biggles]

The next day, with time now on our hands after the long days in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, what bliss it was to wake late, have a leisurely breakfast and then gain all the time lost anyway by flinging the bikes around the curves of the road to Nannup, a sleepy hollow of wooden houses, a bowling green and a little cafe where we sat outside in the sun drinking organic hand-knitted free-range cappomochafrappuchinos and passing the time of day with locals walking their dogs or just themselves.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p201

[Biggles]

The next morning, we were filling up at the village petrol station when owner Mick Cassidy pointed to a postcard on the wall behind him of a naked woman sprinting across the road. "The Nullarbor Nymph, lads. Keep your eyes peeled for her, for very few are lucky enough to see her," he said in an accent which still had traces of London.
"Where are you from, Mick?" I said, handing over my credit card.
"Wembley. You know, where our lot always beat you lot at football. Came out here to help my brother run the local store, then had to close it fifteen years ago when the gold mine closed down. One hundred and fifty miners left with their families and houses, and that was the beginning of the end for Norseman. Oh, and I don't want to see you lads again today."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm the local undertaker's assistant as well."
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p207

[Biggles]

Balladonia had achieved brief global glory in 1979 when the space station Skylab broke up on re-entry and fell on it, after which President Jimmy Carter phoned the mayor to apologise and a brief industry sprang up overnight selling T-shirts saying 'I Survived Skylab'.
Today, the attractions of the town are even more down to earth. I had plenty of time to think about them, since they were listed on a series of signs by the road into town cunningly calculated to build the hysteria up to near danger levels: 'Swimming Pool'; 'Children's Playground'; 'Cappuccino'.
As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, shortly afterwards was the start of a ninety-mile stretch, known for being the longest straight road in the world. As we rode along it for mile after endless mile, I could not help but think that Zen Buddhists spend a lot of time meditating to find the nothingness at the centre of their being, which is traditionally an inch and a half above the centre of their navels. I've got news for you, chaps. You're wasting your time. The nothingness you seek is in the Nullarbor, which is full of the stuff.
Oz around Australia on a Triumph Geoff Hill & Colin O'Carroll p209