Monday 17 August

From Clare the weather improved and the roads and country side was magnificent. I stopped at a coffee shop in Melrose at the foot of some magnificent hills, and met a number of very nice people. The shop used to be a old blacksmith work shop and it's full of a lot of old blacksmith things from that time. I could spend a few weeks traveling around that area. It was a fantastic ride down a pass through the hills to the main highway at Winninowie.
Suddenly the countryside completely changed, from rolling green pasture, to more arid almost desert like land. After Port Augusta the land looks a lot like the Australian outback. Spent the next night at a small mining town called Iron Knob. From Iron Knob to Kimba the country remains very desert like, but from Kimba to about Ceduna it is very green open pasture land. The thing I noticed now is the roads are straighter for longer with only slight changes and the towns are a lot further apart.
Spent the next night at the Nullarbor roadhouse where I lashed out and got a backpackers cabin; everything at Nullarbor is very expensive. After a good nights sleep headed to Boarder Village and Western Australia. Stopped to look at the Great Australian Bite Where I met Karl. Karl is 58 years old from Brisbane and is riding his pushbike around Australia the oposite way to me. He left on the 1st March and plans to be home in October.
Now in WA, along some of the straight and flat stretches of road you'll come across a set of white lines painted across the road like pedestrian crossings, and then another set further along; it is used as an emergency runway for the Royal Flying Doctors Service.
The bike stated making a funny scraping noise when I went over pumps. I suspected the rear wheel bearings or brake, so I stopped at Cocklebiddy where Tony and Leny helped me out. I continued on to Caiguna, camped the night there and then continued onto Norseman. Buy this time the scraping noise was a lot worse. At Norseman I met Trevor and Karlyne at the servo and Trevor offered to let me use his shed and a jack to see if we could fix the problem. We replaced the rear swing arm bearings and Keith next door let me sleep the night there. Thank you very much to all of you who have helped me it has been very much appreciated.
I rode onto Esperance which is where I am now, still trying to find and fix the problem as it is getting worse.
After asking for help at another servo one phone call (to Kim Couzens) lead to another, where Bernie and Tracy are very kindly helping me and letting me stay in their caravan in the back, thank you again. I am overwhelmed by the kindness of the people I have met, it has been great.
We are now having to wait for a set of engine mounts to come from Bunbury to Perth then here in Esperance, hopefully we'll have the problem fixed in one or two days.