Go Fundraise - Australian Donation Pages

Garry and I have had a few people ask us about our donation pages and mention they had had problems donating.


We have since tested both the Cure Cancer Australia and Parkinson's NSW pages and found them to be working fine, if anyone else has any further problems please let either Garry or myself know.


On another note we have also removed the old links to PayPal from the donation page as we are no longer using this option for donations.

Day 3 - Tintinara to Kaniva

Day 3 was pretty uneventful. Got up at 7.30am (ish). Left Tintinara at 8.45am, heading into the wind for Keith.

The first 40km's was just hell. The head wind would gust up and almost stop you in your tracks (reported to be 30 kph). Garry almost had a melt down from the 'De-motivator' (what he nick named the head wind) and threatened to catch the train a couple of times. But he got through it. Even Jason yelled at the wind at one stage.

I guess the most interesting thing that happened in the first 40km's was the hunt for strange noises from our bikes. Jasons seat was squeaking a little but the most difficult to find was Garry's rattle. It sounded like something tapping on the spokes but do you think we could find it? In the end it was a strap that was just dangling a little on the back.

We did find out about some bloke who turned a massive amount of unfertile land into fertile land. Kind of interesting.

Lunch was had at Keith where we saw one of our sponsors, SRAM, on their way to the Mountain Bike National Champs in Adelaide.

At lunch Jason bought some oranges but decided that he didnt want both. Interest of wasting it he mounted it to his bike. Garry wasnt sure it would stay on but it did.

The next section from Keith to Bordertown went very smoothly. Another 40 odd km's but nothing really happened. Ummm... we had a break 20km's in. That was about it. Oh hang on. Jason went to the bathroom in a gaol. There you go something did happen.

From Bordertown to Kaniva was a little different. The first 20km's to the border (Yes Bordertown isnt the actual border. Go figure) went well.

But Garry didnt do so well on the next 23km's. He simply ran out of puff and struggled the rest of the way into Kaniva.

The Colonial Gardens Motor Inn was a welcome site. Paul and Paula were fantastic and shouted us a room for the night, and the food at the dinner down the road was great. Chicken schnitzel and chips with cheese on top. Yum.

That's that. Day 4 to come.

Day 2 - Wellington to Tintinara

No hills, but lots of wind, that just about sums up todays ride to Tintinara,

so we were up nice and early this morning, got the panniers packed, posted the previouse days blog and made a few tweeks to the bikes, mainly playing around with the postion of the rear panniers on the racks to see how it effected handeling, then off we headed in search of water and food for the start of the day.

Our first stop of the day came 500 meters in to the ride where we got to the Murray River on the edge of Wellington. after joining the queu we eventualy boarded the ferry and were away on our 200 meter ride across the river.

We were eventually off and riding once again, we had been tossing up between two possible routes for this second leg and in the end decided we would brave the highway, we knew it would be busy and that there were roadworks but it was the most direct route and didn't really feel like tackling more rough dirt roads just yet. Well the first 30km's or so went quire well after we started with the wind in our backs until Tailem Bend and the roadworks turned out to be a blessing in disguise, more often than not the speed limit was down to between 60 to 80 and in some cases even slower, we also found the dirt left of the shoulder was often smoother than the road, giving us a good 5 meters at times from the traffic.

We were more than happy to share the road with trucks and cars at this speed.

But after the first 30km's we began to face strong head winds and if it wasn't in our faces it was blowing us around from the side, add the heat (Jason's bike computer read over 40 degrees at one point.) to this and the rest of the day became pretty tough.

Oh and Garry had his second crash of the tour, this time pulling of an old favourite where he stopped and couldn't get his feet out of the pedals fast enough, sure enough there we was laying on the ground with the bike on top of him, a predicament that was made worse by the extra weight of the load on his bike, unfortunately Jason couldn't get the camera out fast enough for a shot.

One of the interesting traffic safety signs we saw along the way.

The long straight road to Tintinara.

South Australia is the driest state in Australia and we could see why, the roads are open and straight with little to no shelter from the wind and heat, all we could do was keep rolling along and keep the fluids up. 

We eventually made it to Coonalpyn where we simply had to get out of the heat for a while before continuing on, after a good 1/2 hour break we were back on the road and heading for Tintinara.

Garry having a little nap on the lawn at Coonalpyn.

Arriving into Tintinara, our stop for the night.

Garry and Jason would like to thank the local store in Coomandook for their hospitality and donation to our charities during our lunch stop today and also the local motel in Tintinara who generously donated a room to us for the night.

It's an early start tomorrow for our longest leg for the week, 125km's from Tintinara to Kaniva in Victoria.

Day 1 - Adelaide to Wellington

Climb, Climb, Climb. For almost 50km's out of the 102km's we did, we climbed. That was not fun and took us almost half of the 6hrs on the road just to do.

But I should start from the beginning.

8am wake up to get the bikes ready so that we could be on the road by 10am. That almost happened. We only missed our start time by one and a half hours but we were at Rymill Park when we said we would. Just had to fiddle with the bikes a little.

Then off we went.

Seems the day was destined to be eventful.

To begin with Jason got attacked by ants after he stopped on the side of the road and just happened to be standing on the nest. Then half way up Mount Lofty we met some riders from the UK who were on their final day of a Sydney to Adelaide tour, and Garry had a small accident (ran into a barricade on the way up the Adelaide hills) and scratched his pannier bag but didnt come off. Great skill on his part he thinks, mind you he was only doing about 5kph.

Then we climbed and climbed some more.

The hill we had to get to the top of.

On the way up we went through a little town called Hahndorf. A German themed town in the outer hills of Adelaide. This was our first main stop for some lunch, a German sausage sandwich. A nice place but very busy.

Then one of the worst experiances of the day. The dread dirt road. It was our intention to cut a few km's off the days ride. It started off promising and a little fun. A smooth road with a few bumps here and there. Then it got angry and seemed to never end. Bumpy, rocky and sandy. It was like that for almost 10km's if not a little longer.

When we finally hit a bit of tarmac Garry couldnt believe it so he kissed the road. That may have been a bit premature as the wind came up and wanted to stop us dead in our tracks

Finally after 102km's and many trials along the way we got to our first stop, Wellington. A bed, shower and food awaited us.

On to day 2.