Friday, December 02, 2005
Departure Date
Just to let you all know I am leaving on the 12th of August 2006, so yes you all have to wait awhile, its killing me I just want to leave tomorrow but I need to gather that very important thing called money!
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Background info
A little about myself first....I grew up on a farm in the heart of the Mallee, Northern Victoria, with my elder sister and of course mum and dad. This is where a passion of mine was born, motorbikes. My father bought me my very first bike, a Honda Z50 and ever since then I have hardly never not had a motorbike in my life, road or trail! Life was great on the farm but having a bumpy ride through school I had to change schools 4 times just to find someone to put up with me, but in the end I past my final year in Mildura, much to my mums amazement as I was living with 4 other mates(for some strange reason I never had homework).
From there I decided to join the Airforce as an avionic engineer, at the time it sounded good but never really new what it entailed, of to Adelaide for 10 weeks for basic training then, Wagga Wagga for a year of trade training. After Wagga I was posted back to Adelaide where the real job was to start. I spent 6 years in the RAAF with a lot of very great times, great experiences, great mates and a hell off a lot of great hangovers! But after a while I became a little bored with things and went and trained as a commercial diver(underwater construction), after leaving the RAAF.
Before I landed a diving job I ended up traveling to Japan to teach english for a short period, realizing I was wearing the wrong kind of of suit to work(should have been a wet suit) and the fact that I still had to master the engwish wanguage myself, it just was not for me, so after a little traveling about it was back to Oz, with a few different jobs here and there I scored a diving number in Port Lincoln on the tuna farms and found myself stuck out at sea in the middle of the great Australian Bight bobbing up and down with the sharks for two months. Loved it! This lasted a season and then I packed up the 4WD and headed to Broome via the west coast, what a place, ended up working in the northern Kimberly region on a pearl farm. Still a little restless and missing the diving thing I found a job working up and down the WA coast with a diving team doing all kinds of amazing stuff! This lasted only a short time as I just had this burning desire to travel, travel been the other passion in my life.
Up until this stage I had been fortunate enough to have a father to take me on camping trips all over Australia as a young lad which planted the seed to what was to come. Also the RAAF sent me to the States and all over Oz and along with a few mates over my working years I had been to a few South East Asian countries....But I had this need to travel without any limits, no time limit, no direction and no money limit(the diving paid quite well.) 10 days after quitting my job I was on a one way ticket to Singapore, and a day after landing found a long time mate Clint on a beach in Thailand.
After 6 months in South East Asia I had managed to see the Orangutans in Borneo, amazing people of Cambodia, the famous Mekong in Loas, white sand in Thailand and to top it all off dislocate my elbow and break my arm in freak accident on the beach involving lots of Sam song thai whisky and a burning ring of fire!! This lead me to having daily treatment at the Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok for three and a half weeks. From here it was a sequence of meeting different people that lead me to eventually traveling to London, then the middle east, finally ending up back in London working and living.....something I never ever considered!
From there I decided to join the Airforce as an avionic engineer, at the time it sounded good but never really new what it entailed, of to Adelaide for 10 weeks for basic training then, Wagga Wagga for a year of trade training. After Wagga I was posted back to Adelaide where the real job was to start. I spent 6 years in the RAAF with a lot of very great times, great experiences, great mates and a hell off a lot of great hangovers! But after a while I became a little bored with things and went and trained as a commercial diver(underwater construction), after leaving the RAAF.
Before I landed a diving job I ended up traveling to Japan to teach english for a short period, realizing I was wearing the wrong kind of of suit to work(should have been a wet suit) and the fact that I still had to master the engwish wanguage myself, it just was not for me, so after a little traveling about it was back to Oz, with a few different jobs here and there I scored a diving number in Port Lincoln on the tuna farms and found myself stuck out at sea in the middle of the great Australian Bight bobbing up and down with the sharks for two months. Loved it! This lasted a season and then I packed up the 4WD and headed to Broome via the west coast, what a place, ended up working in the northern Kimberly region on a pearl farm. Still a little restless and missing the diving thing I found a job working up and down the WA coast with a diving team doing all kinds of amazing stuff! This lasted only a short time as I just had this burning desire to travel, travel been the other passion in my life.
Up until this stage I had been fortunate enough to have a father to take me on camping trips all over Australia as a young lad which planted the seed to what was to come. Also the RAAF sent me to the States and all over Oz and along with a few mates over my working years I had been to a few South East Asian countries....But I had this need to travel without any limits, no time limit, no direction and no money limit(the diving paid quite well.) 10 days after quitting my job I was on a one way ticket to Singapore, and a day after landing found a long time mate Clint on a beach in Thailand.
After 6 months in South East Asia I had managed to see the Orangutans in Borneo, amazing people of Cambodia, the famous Mekong in Loas, white sand in Thailand and to top it all off dislocate my elbow and break my arm in freak accident on the beach involving lots of Sam song thai whisky and a burning ring of fire!! This lead me to having daily treatment at the Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok for three and a half weeks. From here it was a sequence of meeting different people that lead me to eventually traveling to London, then the middle east, finally ending up back in London working and living.....something I never ever considered!
The Plan So Far
Working in London, living in the UK has enabled me to travel to places I may only ever dreamed of, like going to Iceland last year, also places like Bosnia, Austrian Alps, Northern Sweden and to run with the bulls in Pamplona Spain, it has all been brilliant but I have become a little bored with it all.....Been the person I am never content I have dreamt up my next adventure. One passion been motor bikes and the other been traveling, I thought why not combine the two for the ultimate adventure......I am going to ride a bike from London to the farm in the heart of the Mallee, Turriff, Victoria, Australia, the hard way home.(hopefully).
The plan is to ride from London to Mainland Europe to France down to Spain, then into Africa, a place I have always dreamed of. Bare in mind this is all only a rough plan-then down the west coast of Africa, through the Sahara, then taking in such countries as Mali, Ghana, Cameroon, Congo, Angola, onto South Africa. Then hopefully my backside will not be to sore and the wallet is still reasonably full in which case I will head north up the East Coast through Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and into Egypt. Then up through the middle East to Turkey and onto Kazakhstan, into Russia and then down to Mongolia, riding across the Gobi desert. From Mongolia it gets tricky as there are a few problems in entering China, fingers crossed I get in and then its south to Loas, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, boat across to Indo and then island hop across the number of Indonesian islands to East Timor where I will put my trusty steed on a ship for Darwin. And finally if I am not over it by then Darwin to Cape York, Cape York to Turriff! All in all I should take in a site or two and cover around 40 thousand kilometers.
But at any given time if it is beyond me for any reason at all, like health, wars, sore backside, loneliness or any reason what so ever I will not hesitate to load everything on a plane and head home, plans always change!
The plan is to ride from London to Mainland Europe to France down to Spain, then into Africa, a place I have always dreamed of. Bare in mind this is all only a rough plan-then down the west coast of Africa, through the Sahara, then taking in such countries as Mali, Ghana, Cameroon, Congo, Angola, onto South Africa. Then hopefully my backside will not be to sore and the wallet is still reasonably full in which case I will head north up the East Coast through Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and into Egypt. Then up through the middle East to Turkey and onto Kazakhstan, into Russia and then down to Mongolia, riding across the Gobi desert. From Mongolia it gets tricky as there are a few problems in entering China, fingers crossed I get in and then its south to Loas, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, boat across to Indo and then island hop across the number of Indonesian islands to East Timor where I will put my trusty steed on a ship for Darwin. And finally if I am not over it by then Darwin to Cape York, Cape York to Turriff! All in all I should take in a site or two and cover around 40 thousand kilometers.
But at any given time if it is beyond me for any reason at all, like health, wars, sore backside, loneliness or any reason what so ever I will not hesitate to load everything on a plane and head home, plans always change!
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