Touring - Seeking ride-partners through Australia

Hey all! I'm going to be cycling Australia early in 2004 (likely April/May), hoping to ride from Darwin in the north down to Ayers Rock, then flying over to take the east coast south to Sydney.

I rode the US southern tier last year and had a great time -- camping maybe four nights out of five -- and now it's time to start crossing other continents off the list. I'm hoping to find some other young, fun, adventure-loving riders. If somebody wanted to join me for the whole time, that'd be great, but I'm most interested in finding some riders for the Darwin-to-Ayers-Rock leg, which is arguable the most challenging/dangerous/fun.

Anybody interested?

PS: I'm a web designer and will be building a pretty slick, blatantly self-promotional tour site to highlight our adventures. If you're curious you can check out my last such monstrosity at...

http://crazyemergency.com/biketrip/

I'd love to join you, but there's no way in the world I'll get time off work for that - given the time I'm taking off in Dec/Jan for my own tour. If you've got a spare couple of days, I highly recommend heading to Victoria to ride the Great Ocean Road.

I may be interested, depending on work also...

Cool. You know anything about the prevailing winds in different parts of the country that time of year? I've gotten a lot of conflicting reports, particularly on weather the winds are pushing north or south through the Top End in April...

I expect you'll get mainly cross-winds straight off the ocean on the East coast. That normally seems to be the way. Given that low-pressure systems tend to be "cyclones" and highs tend to be anti-cyclones, I'd expect a similar sort of direction at the top end at that time of year, too. Albeit with greater magnitude. I could be wrong about that one, however.

Yeah, when I did the U.S. last year, it pretty much seemed like the wind always blew in off the ocean, regardless of the ocean in question.

It was recommended to me... "You may want to look at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology site www.bom.gov.au" ...to learn about prevailing winds. I haven't done so yet, but will in the next day or two. Figured I'd put it here in case you guys didn't know about this site yet.

If you decide to visit the best part of Australia (the views expressed may not be those of the rest of the Aussies:D) and come to Western Australia, let me know.

I'd be happy to spend a bit of time riding with you in Perth and the surrounding areas.