There were a couple of things. Basically it started in around 1997/98. I was unemployed, broke and regularly riding day trips into the Gold Coast hinterland at the time, but wanted to go further. At that time I read a magazine article about a bike tour on Bruny Island, just off the coast of Tasmania. I began to look upon it as an interesting way of riding longer distances and seeing more of the country. The trouble was that I couldn't afford the airfares to Tasmania at the time.
The desire to ride there was what motivated me to get off my backside, get a degree and a decent job. Along the way I took my first two-week tour -- a jaunt across Northern NSW to Inverell and back. Looking back it's quite astonishing just how naive I was about a lot of things at the time, but I made it. A few years later I finally made the Tasmanian tour, and since then I've gone on to bigger and better things.
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I am clinically insane. I am proud of it.
That is all.