At least it's not frozen.

Australia better be having warm sunny weather a month from now!! I've ordered +25C to +32C, sunny, and no wind, with overnight lows maybe about half that.

Depends where you are going. The weather is rubbish in northern NSW and Queensland, floods, winds, extremely heavy rain. So bad McEwen and a couple of other pros have flown to Melbourne to train.

Victoria has been really hot, although the weather the last week and a half is spot on with your request!

I'll be heading to areas I've been before and loved. Perhaps you've heard of them ... Philip Island and Wilson's Prom. Oh, and I'll be starting the trip just north of Melbourne.

Phillip Island and the Prom are my neck of the woods. I'm in Gippsland.

Be sure when riding from Phillip Island to the Prom to follow the road from Wonthaggi to Cape Patterson to Inverloch. I went for a spin around there the other week when we went over to the beach. Its a short but lovely diversion around the coast there.

If you like post an itinerary and I may be able to offer some suggestions. There are some beautiful routes around this way (seppomadness will attest to this) but some boring ones too.

I believe that's the way I went last time ... only the other direction - Wilson's Prom to Philip Island.

I've actually got a "tour guide" for this trip ... another Aussie forum member who lives just north of Melbourne. :)

I've probably already been there. My cycling partner in 2004 was a sadist. Australia is flat he told me ... and I looked it up. Yep, flattest continent. Australia is hot. And I looked up information on that too. Yep, Australia seemed a lot warmer than Canada. We'll do 100 kms a day 6 days a week, he told me. It won't be any different than putting in a day's work. OK, that didn't sound too bad.

BAH

The first thing we did was to ride in Sydney, then up out of Wollongong, then over the Snowy Mountains. Were were along the Great Ocean Road and into the Grampians. Then over to Tasmania. And we rounded out the trip by riding the hilly coast in Queensland, and just for some additional fun we rode up onto the Atherton Tableland. Flat**********? I'm convinced there isn't a single piece of Australia that's flat.

When I arrived in Sydney it was 15 degrees and raining. It remained about that temperature ... occasionally dropping cooler ... and continued to rain for the next two months. It wasn't until we got to Queensland before it warmed up. Hot???? Not!!!

And 100 kms a day ... over the Snowy Mountains with loaded touring bikes ... in his dreams!!!

That tour nearly killed me.

I'm hoping for a much more relaxing, smell-the-roses type of trip this time. :)

Well, here is where you're going. Phillip Island and the Prom are South Gippsland. The Strezleckis are the hills visible to the north when you are in sth gippy.

http://www.gippslandtourism.com.au/

Remember, Gippsland is a big place. Phillip Island is over 120km from Melbourne, Traralgon 160km, Bairnsdale is 300km from Melbourne and Mallacoota is 500km+ from Melbourne.

http://www.gippslandtourism.com.au/Maps/main.gif

Anyone ever ride a bicycle in Darwin?

This was my route (I've really got to transcribe my notes to put the actual story in) for my 2004 tour.
http://www.machka.net/australia/ride.htm


I see that on:

October 15th, we cycled from Sale to Port Welshpool
October 16th, we cycled from Port Welshpool to Tidal River (Wilson's Prom)
October 18th, we cycled from Tidal River (Wilson's Prom) to Cowes (Philip Island)
October 20th, we cycled from Philip Island to Point Cook (across Mornington Penninsula)

So I've been in that area. :)

I don't think anyone in Darwin has ever been sober for long enough to learn how to balance on one :p

Ride Magazine had an article about riding in Darwin. If you are interested I could scan and email*

*Busy at the moment so might take a while...

Yeah, bunarong coastal drive between Inverloch and Cape Patterson is what I was crapping on about, so you've done it already. Big trip you had. The first 70km out of Sale to Port Welshpool aren't especially exciting scenery wise, but its nicer after that.

North of Yarram and Foster is the Tarra-Bulga National Park and Grand Ridge Road which are worth a look. No decent sized towns up there though except for Mirboo Nth, which only has about 1500 people but at least its got a brewery :D and the worlds greatest outdoor pool.

Hey Classic, do you happen to know the lot who do a group ride around there (north from Inverloch then across to Wonthaggi, down to Cape Patterson and back to Inverloch - http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path...Wonthaggi-40km)? I rode with them a few times earlier this year when I was there on holidays - friendly group!

I can gloat a little. 5 hours in the saddle today in the beautiful Melbourne sunshine. Juicy! :)

Yeah I took my mtb up there when I went camping for a couple of weeks in August. I rang a bike shop up there before I went to ask about places to ride and they said they had no idea, they were all roadies:) So you should be able to find a few bunch rides via the one or two? shops there. The roads are pretty good, but it's not very exciting scenery around Darwin. Lots of road trains too, but I found the locals to be cool. I did one ride around the western edges of Darwin where I was staying when in Darwin but was spending most of my time in Kakadu and around Katherine and Litchfield. That meant riding the walking trails in the National Parks and the sandy roads to a couple of waterfalls both of which were pretty hard work. Again there's lots of long stretches of dull dead bitumen out there too. Pretty darn hot in the sun too of course. Real early or around sunset was the only sensible riding times.

I got to abandon my plans to go to a party tonight just so I could get home before the road was blocked by floodwaters. :(

As for riding .... not without a f@#$ing snorkel!

0 hours for me today. fark it was great

I don't live down that way, my Grandfather did until a week ago, so I'd only ride around that way a few times a year. I probably don't know them unless they are mixed up with Leongatha cycling club and have been around a while. There may be one bloke I know, an old dude by the name of John Stewart? Lives in Traralgon but I could have sworn I saw him there the other week.

If I stay there I normally do a touch bigger loop than on the link. If going anti-clockwise on that circuit you can extend that loop to 50km if you go straight ahead from Inverloch to Kongwak, longer again (and tougher) by going straight ahead just after Kongwak instead of left towards Wonthaggi. Its too narrow and busy out towards Tarwin Lower IMO.

More impressive than the Naracoorte Swimming Lake?

http://www.naracoortelucindale.sa.go...page.cfm?u=293

It's in South Australia, which immediately disqualifies it from any 'best of' contest. Besides, its called Narrocoorte swimming 'lake', not 'pool'.

How was the Oz/NZ trip Johnny?

It was good. It got better as time went on. The weather in Perth was great - I didn't want to come back here to the cold fog.

I spent a couple of days in Naracoorte a few years ago. There's a caravan park next to the lake (where we were staying in a tent on our road trip from Sydney to Perth). The lake is a fantastic asset for the town when it's 35C as it was when we were there. It's not a bad part of Oz either. It's not far from the Grampians or Coonawara and is a nice town to boot. Saw an Echidna outside the Naracoorte Caves as well.

See plenty of them down here. When I was a kid they'd sometimes wander over from the bush reserve to the school. They taste shthouse. Pricks of things.

Shepparton has a similar pool set up to Narracoorte. Its pretty good. I'd guess a few of those towns in the hot parts of Victoria and NSW would have something similar.

Mirboo Nth pool is a traditional set up (big pool, middle size pool, kidde pool), but the pools are in the bottom of a sloping 'bowl'. You can sit anywhere on the grass and see the pools, and the whole thing is surrounded by bush. In fact its so good I might pull a sicky if its hot next week and take the little bloke there.:p

As of today it's been a year since I had my last sick day. This is pretty much a record for me. I remember when I was in high school the teacher mentioning that I'd had 8 Mondays off in a row.

The funny thing is that we get 13 weeks of sick leave here.