In the Land Down Under, June 22

As I excused myself and took my seat on one of the middle seats of the A330 in Sidney, the gentleman next to me asked, “Was that an American accent I detected?” Our flight had gotten out of Indy on-time with black clouds forming to the north. We had overheard other passengers talking of being diverted from Chicago O’Hare due to the severe storms. In Dallas we boarded the Airbus A-380 Super Jumbo after having a scare that the Visa information that I had entered on the Qantas website apparently had not be processed and our entry visa for Australia did not exist. Qantas Gate personnel took our passports and after a quickly entering our information were able to secure our visas with about 10 minutes to spare before boarding. Nearly 17 hours later, a beautiful sunrise greeted us as we landed in Sydney.

It was now two calendar days after having left Champaign having somehow lost the 21^st day of June sometime between passing over the West coast of Mexico and our arrival in Sidney. Adrian, seated next to me on our flight to Melbourne, was traveling for a day’s business. Now a banker, the retired Australian Naval officer was interested about where we were from in the U.S. Our conversations over the next hour and a half, spanned Australian as well as American political races, as well as tackling a wide range of questions about one another’s country. Adrian was interested in our ride and asked if we would be blogging our progress so I shared the website address.

David was waiting for us upon our 10:30 arrival in Melbourne and met us street side before helping us move everything into the rental van. An hour later we had made our way south from Melbourne into the coastal town of Torquay. It was rather windy and the Southern Ocean was crowned in whitecaps. I actually felt rather well rested after the flights. After dropping off our gear at the cabin, and sharing lunch in town we set to work un-packing and re-assembling the bikes. I was dark by 5:30 PM and we put finishing touches on assembly as it began to rain. Tomorrow we are planning on going back into Melbourne to do some sightseeing. We are tentatively targeting Friday for our start along the Great Ocean Road.