Well done David & Jan, excellent adventure .
Well, our Around-Australia Trip is over. We have arrived home at Bicheno in Tasmania with both of us and the URAL in one piece. In fact, the only scratch we put on the bike was when I was pushing it at a roadhouse in Western Australia and I managed to scrape it against a railing and remove paint from the sidecar mudguard.
We did 15,522 km over 51 days. We had 5 days off so we travelled an average of 334 km/day on the days we were travelling.
The URAL performed very well – we were most happy with it and developed a deep affection for it. In fact I started talking to it, encouraging it, which is never a good sign. We had a few minor issues such as a cracked rim and some loose spokes but it never once held us up. Under all circumstances of heat, cold and rain it kept going. It never missed a beat except in Darwin where it was out overnight in torrential rain and ran on one cylinder for a minute the next morning before water presumably cleared from one carburetor and we were off and running again.
The UDF (URAL Delay Factor) proved to be a wonderful way to meet people – both locals and fellow travelers. People continually came up and wanted to chat about the outfit and our trip. I doubt that we would have had so much friendly contact with people if we had been riding the latest BMW 1200 RT, which was my preferred option at one stage for this trip, before Jan once again convinced me to get another URAL so she could travel in sidecar comfort and not have to worry about the bike falling over at traffic lights when she was riding.
Thank you to all the friendly URAL owners who gave us advice on this website. Yes – Ash’s Spoked Wheelz in Brisbane was a great contact – Ash and his brother Jack did a great job for us, re-lacing one wheel with a new rim quickly sent by our ever-helpful Clare at URAL Oz, and also tensioning and balancing a second wheel for us. I learnt a great deal about URAL service from them and other wonderful URAL contacts in Perth, Darwin and Townsville – everyone was so obliging and helpful. As we know, the URAL community, even those in business, are more than just commercial contacts, they are kindred spirits who, in their own unique ways, are also involved in this madcap adventure called ‘life’.
The only dark side of the trip was occasional severe tailgating, sometimes by trucks and sometimes by cars, mainly on the coast highway from Townsville to Melbourne. On occasions it was downright dangerous. I realise we caused this situation because we travelled slower than the traffic stream but, nonetheless, most people, including the vast majority of trucks, were understanding and willing to add 30 or 60 seconds to their travel time, staying well back and passing safely when the opportunity arose. But some few drivers really have no patience or innate humanity. A situation which springs to mind was a huge Kenworth B-Double truck which insisted on following me 2 meters from my rear down a mountain pass in NSW. The road was winding and he forced me to travel much faster that I felt comfortable since I was worried about him driving straight over me if I slowed. It was a most nerve racking situation and achieved nothing for him since he had no place to pass me until the next divided road and he was so close that I could not pull off to let him pass. Ah well – all ended well.
My daughter, Louisa, came up with a great suggestion to deter tailgating – fit a “Baby on Board” sticker to the rear – see the photograph. This suggestion was a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, but, nonetheless, the sticker seemed in keeping with the general craziness of it all.
All in all, the trip was a wonderful experience for both Jan and me. Why did we do it? – we wanted an adventure, I guess. And our URAL certainly provided that. But when we got back home I had to drive down to the local bakery to get a loaf of bread – it is only about 1 km away and I realized that even this distance is an adventure on a URAL – I felt the same sense of spirit and history on that 1 km trip as we felt touring around Australia. URALs are like that, for some reason.
Now I will go up to my shed and give our trusty Russian pony a good degrease, a wash and a full service ready for the next adventure – perhaps a trip to the IGA.
Cheers, Jake (David and pleased-to-still-be-alive-wife, Jan)