Andy Luck 3

Today, March 23^rd, we are heading for Cervantes, a fishing town about 680 km south of Monkey Mia, between Geraldton and Perth. Cervantes boasts a strange geological feature, ‘The Pinnacles’, a series of stone, er, pinnacles, sticking up out of the sand. If you saw Billy Connelly’s ‘World Tour of Australia’ you would have seen him prancing naked around them. I did think about it…

The formations are best viewed at dusk, but owing to a slight technical hitch we were forced to view them in the morning. We stopped for lunch at Geraldton, at the famous Golden Arches restaurant (Macca’s!) and I had parked facing the windows. Therefore, when I turned my ignition on I could see that I had no headlight. Try main beam, no main beam either. Hmm, doesn’t seem to be the globe then! I was carrying a spare globe, but as neither filament worked I presumed it was a more serious fault. Oh well, we don’t actually need a headlight in daylight, perhaps we can get to Cervantes before dusk.

We did make Cervantes before dusk, despite taking a wrong turn which meant travelling over about 30kms of poor dirt road. I lost my headlight protector along here, plus I also broke a bracket on the Gearsack Rack, although I did not discover this until we had arrived back in Perth. We found our booked accommodation, unloaded the bike and I then turned my attention to the headlight problem. Right, first remove globe, and check across battery to determine whether the globe is the problem. The globe lights up! Rats, it must be in the wiring! Dismantle motorcycle at high speed and check wiring as best one can without a multimeter. Cannot see a problem! It is now getting dark so I abandon the attempt until morning. New problem, we have no food and no transport to get to the hotel for a meal. Horrors, we will have to walk! This we do, by torchlight as streetlights are few and far between in Cervantes. The meal is OK and we meet a couple on a Harley, but we talk to them anyway! He is a Canadian touring Australia, she is Dutch, an Australian resident, who he met on his travels. Great country Australia, not only fantastic weather, scenery and culture, but also female company on demand. Hey, I could get to like it here! Well, I do like it here.

Morning finds me up to my elbows in the bike again but still no luck. Give up, reassemble and postpone solution until Perth. It seems I will need an auto electrician, if I can find one who is prepared to look at motorcycles. Pinnacles, here we come. They were, in fact, quite interesting, although I can see they would be more striking at dusk. We get back to Cervantes for brunch and, refreshed, set off again for Perth. We only have about 200klms to go and are soon back on Rob & Marjorie’s doorstep. No one is home so we leave a note on the door, with Marilyn’s Mobile Number and trundle round to the local shopping centre for coffee and a bite to eat.

We have hardly sunk our teeth in the chicken burger when the phone rings to tell us Marjorie is home. OK, finish our repast, and back we go. Marjorie is home with her sister Jane and we regale them with our adventures over the last four days. I phone an Auto Electrician and arrange to take the bike over in the morning. Wait, says Marjorie and Jane, Ian (Jane’s husband) is a mobile mechanic, perhaps he can help. Ian is duly phoned and arrives with both van and son. I explain the problem and Ian sets to work. I have already dismantled the bike again by this time. Ian ignores my diagnosis and, with his multimeter, tests the headlight connector. There is power where, and when, there should be!

How can this be? I try the spare globe I have been carrying since Melbourne. It works! What is going on here? Of course, anyone but me would have tried the new globe FIRST! Not me, oh no, I have to DEDUCE the problem! Ian tests the original globe. Would you believe it, it lights up if you connect across the high and low beam filament, but not from earth to either! This is obviously what I had done across the battery. The globe had failed internally!

I am forced to bear the humiliation of female observations as to why I could not have tried the globe before, as she suggested at the time, so that we could have ridden to the pub, so that we could have seen the Pinnacles at dusk…. and so on. Try as I might I could not come up with any answer. There goes a whole bunch of Brownie Points, so hard to earn, so easy to lose! I suppose the bright side is that Ian welded up the bracket and I repaired a crack in the inner fairing and glued the fairing mounts back together again. Still, I don’t suppose I am going to hear the end of this for years!

That evening Rob and Marjorie took us into Perth by car and we took photos of the lights of the City from Kings Park. I must admit Perth is a very pretty city. The next day I had to phone the Auto Electrician, confess my sins and cancel the appointment, then visit the motorcycle shops to replace my headlight protector and spare globe. We then had lunch and took a boat trip down the Swan River to Fremantle. We had intended to visit Rottnest Island that day, but, with having to visit the motorcycle shops, there was not time to do the trip justice. I also had no desire to risk seasickness after my experiences on the barrier reef! That evening we took Bob and Marjorie, Ian and Jane out to dinner as a gesture of thanks for their hospitality and assistance. Lovely people.

The following day, March 26^th, we set off south for Bunbury, where the Ulysses AGM was to be held. First we visited Fremantle, where I hoped to find an Internet Café to pick up my email. Success, although the information I had hoped to receive from the USA had not arrived. This did not prove important as the principle of the idea I wished to float at the AGM received no support, never mind having to answer detailed questions. I shall return to this later. Even before we visited the Internet Café we had bumped into John Donellan, from Adelaide. We saw his bike first, just where we were to park.. It was fairly easy to recognise, not many motorcyclists are prepared to use a PINK sheepskin saddle cover! John himself soon turned up, he was going to visit his daughter (from his first marriage) who lives in Fremantle. After picking up our email we had a Chinese meal at a food court in town. Fremantle apparently benefited enormously from our short hold on the America’s Cup. Millions of dollars were spent ‘doing up’ the town, and it shows. It is now a very pleasant spot.

After lunch it was back on the bike for the trip south to Bunbury. A very good, but very straight highway, just a touch boring really. Now why is this short stretch of highway boring and the long haul to Monkey Mia not boring? Possibly that this bit is tree lined and you cannot see as far. Odd! I was so affected that I had to pull off the road for a drink and a lie down for half an hour. It is only 170klms to Bunbury so it did not take long to get there. We were staying at the Clifton Beach Hotel rather than the Caravan Park which was the AGM HQ although it was a very pleasant park. On the journey home we discovered Caravan, or more correctly, Holiday Parks, as Cabin Accommodation was about half the price of Motels and perfectly satisfactory. Prices varied from $25, (now where was that?) to $45. Linen would have been extra but we were carrying sleeping bags so we did not need it. They usually provided towels, either free or for $1 only.