Leg 1: Australia

2720km

   3 States

1 Territory

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The Australian leg is the first and a very important leg to us, it is where we live and grew up, we both have, and have had numerous friends and family members that have been effected by both Cancer and Parkinson's diseases and hope to do all that we can to support our local charities, Cure Cancer Australia and Parkinson's NSW along the way.

During this leg of our journey we plan to visit a couple of key locations. Locations close to us and which hold meaning.

The tour will be kicked off in Ballarat the home of Jason but more importantly his father David, a sufferer of Parkinson's and the seed that started the idea of this trip.

During the first day of the tour we will be joined on the road by a number of friends and supporters who will ride the 100km route from Ballarat to Geelong to see us off on our journey. While in Geelong we intend to catch up with our bicycle sponsor Baum Cycles who are based there.

We then head south to catch the ferry to the Mornigton Peninsula and on through Gippsland in south east Victoria before we turn up into NSW via the coast and a few hills (hmmmmm…. Hills). Along the way we deviate away from the coastal roads and head inland towards Cootumundra, the home of Garry's late grand mother who battled with cancer for many years without ever giving up. They say the will is stronger than the body. Garry's grandmother proved this day in day out. She will be missed.

After Coota, its back towards the coast and onto Sydney, the home of Garry and a party celebrating that we actually survived the journey so far, before loading the bikes up once more and making our way upwards again. Destination, Brisbane.


Bellow is our new map for leg 1 of our tour, our home leg in Australia.

Through out this leg the plan is to drop into as many schools and support groups as physically possible. This way we can give encouragement to those that are fighting their own battles with these diseases while also providing awareness to all those that have yet to, and we hope never have to, experience what these diseases can do to individuals and families.

Leg one will take us through 3 states and 1 territory in 31days covering a total of 2720km, but this is only the beginning of our journey, next stop or should I say start.... Vancouver Canada and Leg 2 of the tour across the USA.

So that’s it for now. Till next time.

Where have we been...

Bit of a slow month for us update wise but only because there was a heap of good quality bike racing on with the "Tour de France" and it's thrills and spills, the Mountain Bike World Cup and finally the BMX World Champs. Out of all that the Aussies did, I would say, well. Cadel Evans got his first Tour victory (the first Australian to win it) and our Junior Women now have a BMX world champ. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi.... After all that excitement we plain and simply were exhausted, but as the saying goes, it's time to get back in the saddle.

What's been happening ...... Hmmmmm. Well Jason's been using his graphical skills and tinkering away with the tour maps trying as always to find the best way across each country (including staying away from bears and mountain lions). At one stage I believe his mapping pen slipped because I'm sure we weren't heading to Brisbane, Australia, but then I was informed that it wasn't a mistake and yes we were going to the Sunshine state.

We've also been looking at some new phones and mobile devices which we will be taking with us. The idea was to try and use mobiles to update you all on what we are up to, including posting pics and vids. At the moment we are 75% certain the Samsung Galaxy S2 will do everything we need but we are holding off a little to check out some of the other competition. If you have any opinions on these or other phones let us know especially some of our international friends. We would love to know how they go in the US and EU.