The Cycling Adventurer

   Perth-Adelaide 1997

Epilogue   

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What happened after the adventure

I can write this Epilogue with considerable afterthought and knowledge. In a nutshell, the following things happened after my adventure finished:

• I spent several very happy days getting reacquainted with my kids. They departed for home as scheduled.

  I rode around some of the pathways in Adelaide, rode around Adelaide Oval which is famous for Test cricket, retraced some history on the old Australian Grand Prix circuit, including the memorial to Ayrton Senna, and felt entirely at home in a city that has some of my fondest memories (my first national hockey tournament was in Adelaide, I attended three Australian Grands Prix there, and one of my romances really started to take off while visiting the city).

• I bought a suit from Thwaites Menswear in Adelaide, packed up all my bike and gear, and took an (uncomfortable) overnight coach trip from Adelaide to Melbourne.

The dream of a cycling business came to fruition with Cycling Adventures Tasmania.

• I met the chairman of the interview panel at Melbourne Airport as arranged. I didn't get the job, nor did I get any of the others for which I had been short-listed. I ended up broke, but quite happy!

• I returned to Tasmania on the Bass Strait ferry, the Spirit of Tasmania. As I was waiting to board the ship, a woman leapt out of a campervan and ran over almost hysterical with delight, shouting "You made it! You made it!". She and her husband had seen me on the Nullarbor somewhere several weeks beforehand. It brought that special feeling of celebrity back to me, the same that I had felt while riding between Norseman and Eucla. That was a special incident that brought home to me the significance of this achievement.

• I rode from Devonport to Hobart, stopping off in Legana near Launceston, to see old friends John and Lyuoba Richards, and their daughter, Lydia.

• I stayed with my sister and her then-partner for several months at Lauderdale, and spent most of that time renovating the overgrown gardens of my parents' home near Hobart.

• I enrolled in a tour guiding course and a small business course and eventually established Cycling Adventures Tasmania, thereby bringing to fruition my idea very early on in the trip of operating a tourism enterprise.

• I was saddened shortly after arriving in Hobart to see news coverage of bushfires that ripped through areas in southern Western Australia and wiped out the canola crops. The area seemed to be doing extremely well in terms of rural economies when I passed through.

• The bike I used for the trip was stolen about four months after I arrived in Hobart, and was never seen again. I had failed for the first time to lock it to a carport post at the house in Warrane to where I moved from my sister's place. I still have various bits and pieces from the adventure, including the Tasmanian devil T-shirt and some very worn and faded panniers.

• I still frequented bike and camping stores to browse and price-shop and built up quite an inventory of cycling and camping gear.

• I went on to grander things in cycle touring and cycling administration in Hobart.

• I am still broke but happy!