Prologue: The free train tickets

A benevolent Victorian State Government provides two free return tickets on its public transport network, trains and road coaches to senior citizens each year.

We decided to go to the end of one line at Ararat and ride to the end of another line at Warrnambool.

The bike spaces in the Diesel Multiple Unit railway carriages are designed for single bikes but fortunately we decided to have S&S couplers when we ordered our tandem.

Although this was a credit card tour we carried almost 18kg of luggage.
Rear panniers averaged 5kg each, Mike's clothing was slightly heavier then Mary's and the Ortliebs are not exactly featherweight before you start to fill them.

The right front pannier was for the tools and came in at 4kg , including a first aid kit, (the black roll up object at top right, a spare folding tyre (we had nearly 5,000 km on the original tyres supplied with the bike at the start of our ride but if I started a ride with new tyres I don't think I would bother with a spare tyre.)
In the plastic container is the Thorn spanner for the S&S couplers and a #20 torx key for the external bolts on the Rohloff hub and the contents of the screw top pill jar are shown in the next picture.

The old 35mm film cannister contains a selection of cap screws, cleat bolts, chain link connectors etc.

The left front pannier was the food pannier which started off at about 3.5kg.
Mary cooked oatmeal each morning except for the day we were at the B&B, lunch was bread wraps with tomatos and cheese and we had cous cous with flavoured tuna and tomatos on the side on a couple of occasions when we did not eat out.
We also carried tea bags and we purchased a 600ml carton of milk when we reached our destination each day.The food pannier also contained our bulk supply of dried cranberries with a ready use container in the bar bag.

The Roads
In Australia bikes are entitled to use all roads except some high speed motorways and toll roads which are signposted accordingly.
The metre clearance rule for passing a bike is now mandatory in South Australia (actually 1.5 metres is what the law says) but in Victoria it is still advisory only.
I subscribe to the "own the lane" theory and usually ride at least 1/3 of the way in from the lane edge but I do spend a lot of time checking my rear view miror.
This ride was on B and C roads and traffic was not heavy. From some of the pictures you will note that although there is usually a white line demarcating the edge of the road these roads do not have made shoulders but most of the time the shoulders were at the same level as the road surface, handy if you have to bail out suddenly. Parts of the road between Halls Gap and Dunkeld had a very steep camber which Mary refers to in her narrative.
With one exception all traffic, both cars and trucks gave us plenty of clearance when overtaking. The exception was a car which overtook in the face of oncoming traffic and cut in sharply in from of us necessitating me going for the brakes.

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