OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
I have put off writing this blog for a long time. Somehow, putting it all into words seemed as though it might somehow lesson the magic of our time in New Zealand. New Zealand was like a dream, a country we felt connected to long before we ever arrived on her shores. It offered everything we love; stunning coastlines, jagged…
As we worked our way from the East coast of South Island New Zealand to the West coast, our thoughts were on one thing. Getting to Franz Josef to do some heli-hiking on the Glacier. Check one off the bucket list. We began by spending the night in Franz Josef Township, a tiny town of a mere 250 residents.…
Well I’m a man of my word. As promised in the blog, here is the first of three videos documenting the transvecto journey. ”Transvecto One” is a 15 minute sequence of nearly every shot filmed from a GoPro camera mounted on the dashboard of Magda, from London to Sydney. It’s high definition, so make sure you get the good quality…
Location: 36° 29′ 13″ S, 148° 07′ 34″ E (Snowy Mountains, New South Wales) Distance from Sydney: 405 km And so the final day is here. When I planned this journey, I knew I wanted to drive back into Sydney. I could have had Magda shipped straight from Bangkok to Sydney and flown home. But it didn’t seem right. You…
Location: 33° 33′ 25″ S, 115° 01′ 50″ E (Cape Naturaliste, Western Australia) Distance from Sydney: 3,351 km Here’s a free tip for all those planning to ship your car to Australia by container: Don’t. Ship it to the moon instead. It’ll be easier. When I shipped Magda to the UK she went via a roll-on roll-off (RoRo) vessel. I…
Tweet Getting out of Sydney was tough! We were leaving behind a familiar bed, it’s so weird how we get used to comforts so quick! But right outside of Sydney, heading south on the coastal road, were amazing views of the ocean and terrain. Really one of the most amazing coastal roads we’ve done so far! Luckily we found an…
Tweet In Cairns our big thing was to get an oil change since it was overdue and we also had some oil leakage. Turns out the BMW Motorrad there isn’t too friendly and they weren’t really willing to help us or answer any questions. After running around to almost every store on the main street, we found the Castrol Power…
Touching down in Darwin, Australia was bittersweet. Being in Australiameant that we had finished our first leg of our trip, and we would be back to a somewhat US-like environment. But that also meant being done with Asia. I wouldn’t call it being back in “civilization” because that’s just degrading. It really gets under our skin when other people say…
As a kid, I remember the arrival of Christmas. The closer it got, the more excited I became. The more excited I became the slower time would pass. And the slower time passed the more convinced I would become that Christmas would NEVER arrive. And therefore of course we should open our presents immediately. I became that kid again this…
Finishing up with the Nullarbor, I got in contact with some riders in Perth that I’d met in Columbia and arranged to stay with them while my bike got dealt with- new front tyre, my wiring harness checked, and various other odds and ends that were no doubt a result of my little Finke run. Poor bike- she’s still young,…
Riding the highway down south is an exercise in patience. It’s neither barren enough to satisfy my ‘desolation’ fix, nor diverse enough to give you something new to look at every so often. Then you get close to Coober Pedy and the scrub disappears and is replaced by piles of dirt from the (estimated) million+ opal mining shafts. The town…
After a hot, sandy, sweaty, hard day- you know- the best kind, I finished the night just outside of Kings Canyon. After the rather flat and uninteresting terrain, the rising cliffs were a most welcome change. As always in the desert, the morning came early and cool. It wasn’t going to last, so I got myself together quickly and headed…
The outback- the real middle of Australia outback- creeps up on you. Over hundreds of kilometers, the grassy prairies and small forests slowly become sandy stretches and small copses of stunted trees. There is no line- no instant you can say ‘I am now in the outback’. It is something you feel and changes for everyone and in every season. …
So, after a pleasant little stay in Brisbane that also included meeting up with a rider that I had just missed in Botswana, I decided to head North-West and towards the outback. Well, I’d planned to that is. I knew there had been some flooding, but knew pretty much which roads were out and thought I could avoid them without…
On the bike, on the road again, and… Nothing. Everything was fine, but just that- fine, nothing was really grabbing me. The people were perfectly nice, the riding perfectly pleasant, but it seemed somewhat pointless. No ‘WOW!’ moments. I think most of the blame can be laid firmly at New Zealand’s feet since it really was such a wonderful treat. …
I’ve made a point of skipping much of the boring detail of shipping a bike around the world- this blog isn’t about that sort of thing. Horizons Unlimited is where I post that info since, really- how many people care which customs shed you have to take form B to in order to get stamp 12 so you can return…
London to London, via tip-ex We were at the end of a 10 month odyssey, only a few days drive from the finish line and we had just discovered that we were off to the USA on route to circumnavigating the globe. Avid followers of this blog may have got the impression that our final few weeks in Australia were…
22nd November Carnarvon Gorge We leave Emerald and make the drive to Carnarvon Gorge driving along the A7 65km south to Springsure then another 70 km east to Rolleston along the Great Inland Way. From here it is a further 61km south to the Carnarvon turnoff. Plumes of smoke from bush fires appear on the horizon and we hope it…
9th November Wanting to explore historic Cooktown to the north of Cairns, we drive via the scenic 33km off-road Bloomfield Track through the pristine Daintree forest. The track was the scene of major confrontation with conservationists in the 1980’s who opposed the development, however the track was completed within three weeks. We had hoped to turn off onto the Crebb…
With Christmas on its way, I picked what sounded like a perfect campsite from the D.O.C website and started to head towards it. I had a mountain pass to cross and another to partially cross, so it was another day of tight corners opening up into stunning views. The road coming down towards the coast was especially dramatic and it…
Before I hit the flat lands properly I had some fun riding through recreated historical towns… More impressionist masterpieces… And more scenes from LOTR, this one being close to where they filmed the chase scenes through Rohan to Fangorn forest. I also met up with another rider, though he spent far too much time just staring at the views, so…
It was finally time to ride up to Mount Cook/Aoraki. I honestly wasn’t expecting too much since the weather had been excellent for the last week or so and with less than 70 rain free days a year at the mount and my luck, I figured it was time for the weather to roll in. Guess not. The ride up…
…And left the rest of the world with the bran flakes. Hitting the south coast it was time to do the mandatory ‘Southern Most Point’ pic at Bluff and like most of these points, it’s technically not the southern most point (that honour belongs to Slope Point), but it’s the traditional one, so it gets the pic. I then had…
Obama was in town, there were soldiers and police on every corner, our taxi was not technically road-legal and the windscreen was spider webbed with cracks. We tried desperately to look cool and not draw attention as the cab slowly pulled out of Darwin, catching the smallest glimpse of Air Force One in the tiny airport. It was like a…
Off to Milford Sound and another ride down a couple of different memory lanes… My luck was holding out and the normally rainy area was filled with puffy white clouds and warm sunlight. This, of course, meant plenty of tourist buses, cars, and caravans on the road. All things that tend act as fun vacuums on bike, but on this…
But focus on what? The next days riding through The Hasst Pass to the Queenstown area had the lascivious road take second place to the comforting beauty of the scenery. Stops for photos and simple time to immerse yourself in the views was the joy of the day. Your focus was endlessly torn between the peace of the surroundings and…
When the weather finally cleared I was on the road and heading to the west coast for what I was told was the best tarmac ride in New Zealand. First I had to get through Nelson with it’s closed roads and other problems due to flooding, etc. They had done an excellent job of getting things cleared up, but there…
Now, as an obvious punishment for doubting the filming choices of Sir Jackson, the heavens opened up again. I road straight past Mount Taranaki (Egmont) without even catching a glimpse of it. Wellington wasn’t much better, so a ferry to the sunny South Island seemed like the best choice. As we entered the fjords leading to Picton it seemed that…
Even if you wanted to, which I certainly don’t, it’s impossible to get away from The Lord of The Rings movies in New Zealand. Peter Jacksons trilogy was more than a masterful book adaptation, it cemented New Zealands place as a land of unsurpassed natural beauty in the eyes of the world. The first of the iconic sights I was…
After traveling around for so long (or just getting older I suppose), you get used to your mind traveling without you. Almost any simple sight can teleport you back to another time and place- a memory forgotten brought back in an instant. Some of these flashes are simple visual similarities with other places you’ve visited. Others can sweep you away…