Planalto Cycles

We left at 5:30 to the airport, had a breakfast and left to Adelaide at 6:45. At the airport, M&M’s car was awaiting us and you could feel the excitement of them that the road-trip was beginning!

First we filled up our stocks and had an early lunch, then we went to the ferry to Kangaroo Island,

driving through a landscape that reminded me on my bike tour. The ferry was fully booked, taking 50 cars on board but after a 25min drive we reached our first camping site, the Antichamber Bay North Campground, near the east end of the island at Lashmar conservation park and it was empty except us.

We set up a tent for Doron and me (doing camping together for the first time for 20 years), M&M have a perfect rooftop tent that just needs to be opened, prepared dinner, had a short walk around

(seeing a big fire on the other side of the sea and Doron caught his first kangaroo pic)

and soon after dinner were covered in darkness.

After the short last night, it was no problem to fall asleep soon, accompanied only by the sound of the waves on the nearby beach…

Well, the first part of the day was business as usual. At 19:00 we left to the airport to fetch Doron, but of course the flight had a delay and passing immigration and getting the luggage was later, too.

But finally, he came out ?

265 Sydney 10 preparing to leave 11.4.2019

In the morning, Doron and I went to the shopping center, for him to get and for me to re-charge the SIM-card. Doron had made a research first and wanted to get this type that he had selected, but all the boxes with this “plan” were empty in the first supermarket so we went on and tried to get it in other places. One was a post office where they had th right card but the clerk was unsure about the terms  and recommended to go to the shop of Telstra  somewhere upstairs – nice and effective for us. Next was a hat for Doron and again we went through some shops before finally found something else than caps and that hat even was quite good. At home, we emptied the fridge for lunch, baked bread (this time freestyle as Markus wished to get “Weckerl”, something between rolls and small breads) which made it easier and harder at the same time, because it was not clear how to do it in the best way and I had no strict rules to obey.
Everything was going well until in mid evening I got a message that my ship form Sydney to Singapore will skip Sydney and I either might enter it in Melbourne 3 days later or take another one 1 week later. Going to Melbourne would either mean leaving by bike soon after the camping trip going back the same route or taking a train with the problem that the bike must be packed very small. Going later would mean the risk to arrive too late for the plans Lulu Hasmik and I had made for meeting.
It was a lot of research and writing emails that dominated the rest of the evening…

M&M started with gardening in the morning while I tried to turn videos from my camera into photos. The 4K-Photos are short videos and you decide which moment to take. But the same procedure sometimes led to photos sometimes again to – now shorter – videos and only when I cut  or edited this video-photo-bastard, it stayed a photo. It took some time to fix and finish that.
I joined the garden work for a while,

we had an outside lunch and later, Efan came. After a short tour through M&M’s garden and bee-watching

we went to the community garden for watering.

And then we had a recording session. Efan knows how to speak German, so I chose two hard parts and I think I got a good performance from her at the end.
In the evening, M&M and I made a short walk to get milk from a supermarket “SPAR” which is a bit funny for me, as I live on top of such a supermarket. We bought also some chocolates and I made a big mistake, because I focused too much on Australian production and only at home saw that “Jaffas”-chocolate from Allen’s is a Nesté product. Nestlé is my best-hated company mainly because of their cynical water-capitalism.

262 Sydney 07 nothing special

Today I cut many “Bürgschaft”-videos and it was fun and nice.
I went shopping for the dinner with friends on Tuesday and was surprised how hot it still can be! Besides this food, I also bought a chocolate spread, and it is not that easy to get the right one. If it has no palm oil, it is imported from Germany or Italy, if it is from Australia, it has palm oil and I only found a small organic one at Cole’s which is not the best company regarding their relation to farmers (and customers) as Markus told me.
Then there was something a bit weird for me:
Markus had given me a key for making a copy in that shopping center.
At home, I emptied all pockets of the rucksack and put those keys on the table. Markus came home at noon and when I came down from “my” room to the table, the keys were not there anymore, so I supposed he had seen them and put in the right place.
So far the version that was stored in my brain.
Later Markus asked where those keys are and I told him this version. So, he was a bit confused and looked for them where he could have put them.
Then I said I would look upstairs if I would have put them there somewhere and just to be sure he could look again in the backpack. And there were the keys!
And even after knowing that I cannot delete the lively but wrong memory of putting everything out in the kitchen, sorting it by stuff for the fridge, other stuff for the kitchen, my stuff for upstairs and those key for the table, including the “aha-moment” when I came down and the keys were not there “anymore”
I am just happy that also before I was not especially proud of my memory and didn’t rely too much on it, but still it is not nice to be fooled by myself.

263 Sydney 08 work bread friends 9.4.2019

Besides dealing with Singapore and Europe regarding routes and contacts to hosts I was responsible for baking the bread. Not only this was the first time, it also should be served for dinner with M&M’s friends Matthew & Paul. I am not sure if there is much to do wrong but still, I was glad when the product was ok and for the records, I made 6 photos

and when Markus noted that he usually takes more pictures I made a second round.

Then M&M+M prepared the main dishes for dinner, M&P came, we had some conversation and a satisfying meal (maybe apart from Paul who is entangled in a low carb diet) and it was finished quite early.

In the morning, I cycled to Strathfield to meet Katherine, who also had been a couchsurfer in Vienna. We had been meeting in 2015 on my first trip to Sydney with stops for visiting friends, too, and she had been saying something interesting and important in that short time of meeting. She suggested that I am having the best time of my life (not only in the 49 days of that trip but in general) and after a short time of thinking I happily agreed.
There are two conflicting concepts (regarding at least my life). One says, everything is gone, I have had my chance and I am just waiting to get old enough for dying (short version) and the other says I am still able to do things, to change something, maybe even enjoy life and it is the easier part of my life, because there are no big struggles, I am in a position of stability and safety regarding many aspects and have a global network of friendship. In a way both concepts are true, because I needed to give up hope and expectations for this desirelessness that made things possible blossoming on these for a while nearly empty grounds. And now these words of Katherine helped me to make a shift from:
“It is all over but still some nice things can happen” to “I am grateful how many nice things are happening!”
We met in a Korean café and talked for a while,

Katherine now is a doctor working in a hospital as last part of this education and probably because of this working environment she frequently catches illnesses and didn’t feel too well.
On the way back, I wondered about all those car drivers who prefer building up a traffic jam to having some motion or exercise and moving on faster on a bike or using public transport. Of course, there might be situations where it is not only more convenient but also more efficient to use a car, but I fear that many people don’t even thing on alternatives being alternatives.
At 14:00 the “working bee” in the community garden started and more and more people came, doing a little work each and summing up to clean the place and maintaining and nursing the plantings.

At 16:00 it changed to the party part of this gathering, many of the neighbours had brought something to eat and now were standing in small groups for talking and eating.

I had the impression that the idea behind such a community garden was put into effect. But there are difficulties to master in the long run of every project that is based on commitment, because some do more, some do less, some want to usurp everything and others just want to contribute to keep the idea alive but they get more and more to do until they are exhausted. And you must meet frustrations like theft and vandalism in this case.
So, I hope this project can stay alive and can grow more than plants for many years ?
In the evening, I looked at the photos we had been taking with my new camera and saw that half of them are little videos were you can take out a photo. I had seen that the camera was slow until we pressed the 4K-button to change back to normal but now I saw the effect:
It is a much longer process to open these vids in the proper program to extract photos and then you have 50-100 different pics you can choose. If you have one photo, you can decide to keep it or not, but with so many options it is harder to come to a decision.
I will not press the 4K-button on purpose too often…

In the morning, I again went to the shopping center to buy the rest of the food we needed for dinner and took another glimpse in the shelves, not really expecting my camera to suddenly lie there, but still… In a way it is believing in magic, but I am not in wonderland, so my camera didn’t move away from the person who took it.
M&M came in the later afternoon for preparing the meal and nearly at time their friends, Carrie & Jason and Rita & Will came. They are all funny and I regret that my English is too poor to understand everything in a fluent conversation.
They asked me some questions about my trip, but for me, it didn’t  seem interesting enough anymore. It is like months before the trip, I told everybody that I will go to Sydney by bike, but other people apparently could imagine better than me how crazy and big this trip would be.
Then, a few days before starting, I also felt it, I was nervous, anxious and excited more and more every day. During cycling it was not so strong anymore, only the day-by-day nervousness and only after staying somewhere it was always hard to get back in the riding mode, like jumping into cold water.
And now, it is done (except the way back) and I cannot realize how great it was to do such thing or it simply is not. It is just cycling a bit every day, like some people do on weekends, only many weekends in a row.
But I am still happy that I reached Sydney and glad that no big problems occurred al the way here!

Yesterday (257) was a very normal day, just again asking for my lost camera and the rest daily life, what doesn’t mean it was bad or boring but should I tell about washing clothes, eating, (editing videos), talking, laughing, planning the dinner for Friday when friends will come, harvesting green beans from the tiny but fruitful garden?
Ok, now I did.
And this day (258) had some other things to tell:
In the morning, Efan, her friends Anne and Danny and I met for breakfast. (Ok, we didn’t really meet, Efan had to find me, because I had not found her.) It was a Chinese restaurant and besides the food I enjoyed being remembered on that part of my trip.
I left earlier to go to the nearby shopping center where I not only had lost the camera but where I wanted to re-buy it now.

They didn’t have it (Yesterday, Markus had found two other shops that could have it, but I wanted to give it a try if I am so near) and in a short time, I decided to buy a different camera with those features I had appreciated on the lost one and maybe some extras that I will appreciate sooner or later. But for the moment, I have still mixed feeling, because it is like in a silly fairy-tale were a prince marries the younger sister few days after his bride had died.
Not exactly the same, because I am no prince and DC-TZ90 is not the younger sister of DCS-WX500.
It took a while before Efan, her friends and I met again, because when they went in the shopping center I went out, when I went back to the shop they were not there anymore and calling didn’t work, but finally I just waited somewhere without moving and they found me.
We went to the University of Sydney that Efan would show us and on the way she helped me to activate DC-TZ90 and even brought it to the library for charging.
We didn’t move too fast, because A&D were in a way a professional photo shooting team and Efan seemed to have fun to cope with them and shot a lot.

So, there will now exist a big selection of campus + girls variations, with hands in the air, hat on or off, leaned like this or turned like that and whatever else you can do for posing.

For me this was fun and fascinating to see, because I like photos more if I am not to see on them and extra posing is in a way weird for me. But Efan and I even did something like that, too ?

And in the end, you can have SD-cards, hard-discs clouds and PCs full of photos or you must select them…
Originally, we had planned to do the costal walk together, but my time was too limited to feel relaxed enough, because M&M had arranged a Pilates session that I could join.
So, I left Efan, A&D and went home.
There, I tried to get acquainted with the camera, but I am to impatient to do that thoroughly, so I will again end up with 20% of what I could do with the camera, which is maybe 5% of what the camera could do in the hands of a real prince, I mean photographer (for whom on the other hand this camera would be a very little sister, but this only shows that my comparison lags).
M&M and M went to the Pilates place to be ill-treated on a middle-ages-inspired rack. You are ordered to make a movement, and when it starts to be exhausting you make some additional repetitions in the very range of movement where it is most hurting. But it is only 45min and you should feel something everywhere, so it is not too long and too painful on each muscle.
At home M&M started with the first preparations for the dinner with guests tomorrow. It is always funny for me to see in which way Markus is different or similar to me and the kitchen is the room where you can study this best, because everyone is there often enough to develop some special routines and to optimize techniques and/or rituals with real good reasons or not.

In the morning, I went back to the shopping center but had not too much hope to get my camera again. And so it was. I gave my number to the shop managers and to the information of the center and looked around myself, but a camera is easy to take and useful and there are enough people around to have the one person who takes it.
At home, I tried (starting) to organize the last two parts of my trip: after Australia, I have two long ship parts, around 2 weeks in Singapore/Malaysia and the way back to Vienna from Duncerque. In Singapore I may stay partly in my tent and then meeting Hasmik and going to Kuala Lumpur with her. And of course, we would meet Lulu!
I also did other things, on my PC there are enough videos to edit and for many days I had to add the photos to the diary blog.
In the afternoon, Markus went to shops with me by bike. I remember how bad I felt in 2015 going in Sydney by bike, now it was nearly normal to go on the left side. Markus has an electric bike and seeing how fast he could start after a stop and how easy it is going uphill reminded me on the fun I had with the motor in my bike. I think, I will change back to electric in Vienna ?
In the evening M&M offered me their second camera for the rest of my trip! They will come to Austria and Italy in September and then I can give it back. This is great, because otherwise I would have bought a new now. But in Vienna, in normal live, I don’t need it so much, so I could wait with buying a new one until Uganda or so.

no own photos, because I lost my camera 🙁

Although I was excited, because I would reach Sydney this day, I woke up later than usually. Of course, there always are more possible reasons, but at least the acupuncture could be one.
When I was ready to leave, Lulu even gave a present to me, a bracelet and a tiny jar, we made some good-bye photos

and then I left them, looking in the mirror and seeing them wave and waving back until I was out of sight.
There can be good-byes with people where you had a good time and then you can leave and it is in a way ok, but sometimes it hurts a bit. And in case of Lulu, Micka and Hugo I just can hope that they really will relocate to France, because I want to see them again and don’t know if I ever would come back to Australia (depends on M&M – do the soon come back to Austria or not??) but even then I am not sure if we would meet again.
But I nearly forgot:
We maybe meet before I leave to Singapore, Lulu and Micka thought about coming to Sydney on a weekend – will there be one left between our camping trip and my ship departure?

For a while a was distracted from these thoughts, because Mr.G had decided to make my last lag more thrilling by losing the map, telling me he must but cannot re-calculated the route and beeping all the time. I tried to get some hints by him and by the sun position, because I didn’t find any street sign to Sydney and later only to Liverpool or Kingsgrove which was not so helpful if you have no idea about those locations. For the route until China I had printed out the names of villages and cities on the way but after Iran this had been quite useless, because in SE-Asia, they think more in provinces or the like, not cities and you often even can’t tell in which city you are because there are no signs. However, in Australia in would have worked well and in this situation it would have been useful.
Normally, I don’t like all those acoustic messages Mr.G send but there is one, a jolly, “de-doo!” and written: “found the route”.
One problem was probably Eugene’s map that is a few years old and in Australia a lot changes in such a period of time.
So, I had 2x the a problem with crossing a railway track. The street Mr.G wanted me to take was closed. The second time led to a big detour where I ended pushing my bike uphill on a meadow and had to take off the bags to pass a narrow gate. After that, I didn’t find the original route anymore. I re-planned it on the phone, send it to Mr.G and was surprised that this worked well.
The rest of the tour was easy (besides front wind and hilly surface, but that is no big deal when it is only 55km) and I arrived at one where Efan and I wanted to meet at 2. Luckily, she lives near enough, so we had some additional time for talking.

But time flew and so we agreed to meet again, and I went on to my final destination – M&M’s house.
It was interesting first for me everything was so unreal – am I really here, did I really reach Sydney on day 255 since leaving Vienna? And then, after greeting and hugging, it was so natural, as if I had gone just to a house next door to see my brother like last week (in fact it was July 2017 that we had met at a family gathering in Aggsbach, a village at the Danube)
We went out to a bub for dinner and then to a shopping center and somewhere I left my camera. Normally, I have a bag for my stuff, this time I thought it is only the camera and it is ok to carry that for this short time, but sometimes you need two hands and in such a situation I put it down and didn’t pick it up again. And I fear that someone else did it, because when I asked in the shops the next morning, I didn’t get it.
It is of course bad to lose a camera, but in this case, I am also sad not to have the photos of this special day.

We had a relaxed start in the morning besides that Hugo was waking Lulu and Michaél up many times, so they were quite tired, but we had a late breakfast (in two shifts, because always one of them was caring for Hugo who had problems with his teeth an additionally, he had a cold).
After that, Micka and I went outside, he started dismounting the swimming pool and after (hopefully finally!) fixing the hole in my tyre I helped him.
In the afternoon we again talked a lot and made a Bürgschaft-recording and Lulu explained me TCM (she is studying it)

and asked me some questions to prepare a acupuncture session.

Then, while Mike prepared dinner,

Lulu treated me with some needles aiming at my sleepless early mornings. (Later I thought, maybe I cannot sleep well because I would fear I would sleep too well after that treatment – complicated stuff, but, “no worries” – I will see!)
We had dinner

and another long talking session, although after the last night all of us had intended to go to sleep earlier. But every story reminded of something else, so it is hard to stop…

The sausages needed a lot of water to balance and so I had been drinking 3 glasses in the evening. At night it had started raining. There was no hope it would stop until morning, so I had again a “do what has to be done”- situation when those three glasses had done their job. I then sat down again in the kitchen but soon began feeling cold, because 14° is not enough to feel comfortable while sitting in short trousers. On the wall, directly next to me, was an electric heater. I don’t want to imagine a situation where I would turn on such a thing, but I hoped someone would come in, feel cold, turn it on and I would get my share of warmth and could at the same time wash my hands of it. But this is not only morally doubtful, it is unrealistic, because the average Australian can tolerate lower temperatures than me and officially the kitchen would open only at 8:30, one hour later. Well, it is a kitchen, but I had nothing to eat, so the solution that stood out was going back to my tent and warm up and eat something.
But then the rain stopped, and I hurried to pack up my things and a man told me that normally leaving time is 11:00. After packing the bike, I ate a muesli and went off. I still had not decided to go on the normal road or that motorway, but it happened by itself. The road just led to the highway and when Mr.G wanted to turn left it looked like a bike lane that made a detour from the street and would come back. But it didn’t come back, or I didn’t.

So I was again on the motorway and felt only a little uncomfortable because of “motor” in the name, but I hadn’t seen any sign to forbid cycling. And I did, I was fast, because it was going down and sometimes the wind pushed me and I nearly had no rain and everything was going well until…
I had my first flat tyre since I had started this trip 253 days ago! I don’t like that, but if it is done by putting down the bags, getting out the tube, fixing the hole, putting the tube back in the tyre and the bags back on the bike, it should be no big deal.

But after a few km, the tyre was flat again. I thought, maybe this is because the hole was near the seam and put a bigger patch on top. But after a while it was the same again. I had tried to find another hole but hadn’t seen any and the wind and the traffic were too strong for testing by hearing or feeling the air coming out. So, I pumped up every now and then until I reached the house of Lulu and Michaél.

We had a lively conversation from the start, Lulu had made lunch, their baby Hugo is a friendly guy and so it was nice to be there. We had agreed to go to a culture festival together and so we did. The wind had been getting stronger and colder and when we arrived there, we soon felt cold and there was no place to warm up. We had some food but couldn’t sit down for eating it. The place was nearly empty because the wind and the temperature made it hard to stay and there was not too much going on. We could stand in an empty tent for a while and waited for friends of Lulu and Micka. But soon after they had come, the event ended, and we had to leave this refuge. So, we went back home.
We had a second dinner with a fermented rice that I knew from Shenzhen and sticky rice balls but filled with peanuts. And we talked about cycling, exchanging experiences we had had in Iran and always there was something new to tell. I also invited them to my 2025 party and explained my ideas about a camp/village in Uganda and as so often, I again got new input and inspiration. Micka is a planter and has learned permaculture and so also this principle as again present for me and will influence my way of thinking and planning.