On a bicycle made for two...

Where to celebrate the anniversary of our first year of travel? How about the world’s second largest meteorite crater and the setting of an infamous horror movie. Perfect. 
It’s hard to believe that one year has passed since we handed over the keys of our empty home to the new buyers and started cycling (on our hilarious folding small wheel tandem) to London and then onto France to attend some very special wedding celebrations. Such a lot has happened since then, including our not blogged about but awesomely brilliant Scotland coastal motorbike tour and our time back in Yorkshire with family and friends. 3 months backpacking around colourful S.E Asia has lead to some interesting experiences and hilarious blog posts and now we find ourselves over 5 months into our Australian overland adventure, having successfully traversed everything from deserts and rocky roads to beaches, rivers and lush mountain tracks. The Crampervan had so far proved reliable bar the small blip in the bungles, whe…

Hello The Bungle Bungles!!! Prepare to be amazed. I first feel the need to comment on just what a fantastic name this place has, having said that ‘the bungle bungles’ or ‘the bungles’ isn’t it’s the park’s official name. Purnululu National Park is the Aboriginal name this amazing place goes by and if you can bare the journey into the national park, you will not be disappointed with what it has to show you. 
The access to the national park is tipped as one of Australia’s worst roads (if ‘a road’ is what you can call it). It’s essentially 33 miles of monster corrugations, bumps, twists and turns, with handfuls of creek crossings thrown in for good measure (all were dry except for one, due to the time of year). Pre entering, L and I had been quite hopeful having heard that the road into the Bungles had just been graded two weeks ago. What  luck we thought, a freshly flattened track for a smooth drive in. Oh how we were wrong! You see in only two weeks the road condition had returned to be…

We left Alice Springs and headed north for 2 days, straight up the Stuart highway which passed through… not a lot. There were a couple of nondescript towns/settlements along the way and the remains of the old stone telegraph station at Barrow Creek which had some information boards and had been recently restored. The 3200 km (1988 mile) telegraph line was installed from Adelaide in the south, to Darwin in the north in 1872. L and I had already read about the feat at Alice which is how the town came about, as it was a half way point for the men working on the line. Hundreds of Afghan cameleers worked on the line using their camels to carry the poles and equipment through the harsh Australian desert environment. Upon completing the line and over subsequent years, camels were set loose and after breeding prolifically now wander the outback by the thousands. In fact Australia’s well bred camels are now favoured over their Middle Eastern forefathers and are being sold back. So far L and I …