Mullum

18th June – Day 43: Mullum

We’ll stay in Mullum for a bit I think. Do some repairs and servicing of our bikes. We had planned to do this in Brisbane but maybe it will happen here a bit.

A cuppa in Mullum and a game of chess with Stav, a fella in the RocknRoll cafe who looked up for a game. A great game, thanks. He beat me 🙂

The noise hasn’t gone away! The cushdrive rubbers and bearings were not the source of the noise.

Soaking it up

Local, fresh, creamy milk for $1/L. Fantastic!

19th June – Day 44: Mullum

Raman ran into a fella, “Buddy”,  yesterday who we met in Lismore at the Kawasaki dealer. He is a motorcycle enthusiast and mechanic and invited us around to do some work on Mawson. To hopefully arrest this darn clunking. The joke that has emerged is that we are really  Clunking Miles.

Trying to work out what is causing the clunk. We suspected the chain as I had found a very tight link.

We took the chain off and clean it in kero. After a lot of fiddling around with a few stiff links we decided one was probably the cause and removed it. Replacing it with a spare master link I have. After replacing it I realised there were some very worn links and some perfect links. Some links had no play at all and others had up to 3mm each. Bingo, uneven wear was causing the variable chain tension and hence the noise. I had managed to get rid of the noise by running the chain very loose but I did notice a bit of chain slap when I did this. This chain was a DID 520 oring Gold Link and got 17,000km. The Original was an Enuma EK 520. I changed it at 18,000km. The chain I replaced the DID with was an Enuma EK 520 xring.

Two heads, four hands. Replacing the stuffed chain.

Buddy, the Guzzi man, showed us his ol beasts that he is restoring over a very nice coffee

Packing up after a successful day

Thank you Buddy! Really appreciate your company, hospitality, mechanical knowledge and your generosity to open your house and garage to us. See you soon.

20th June – Day 45: Mullum

Planted out lots of seedlings at Cyrano’s house. Its raining today. Not hard but steadily.

21st June – Day 46: Mullum

Winter solstice music and dancing at the Durrumbul hall near Mullum. I have sore legs from all the dancing 🙂

22nd June – Day 47: Mullum

A relaxed day after last nights great event at Durrumbul, with a little spice thrown in when someone in the community drove a car off the edge of a cattle grid. Spent a while jacking the XTrail back up and getting it off its belly.

1 July – Day 56 :Goodbye Mullum

The stay here in Mullum has turned out to be our “half way” pit stop. We have done repairs and maintenance on the bikes and soaked up life here in this alterno region.

Raman wanted to check out the Byron region and it has worked out for us to stay here for a good length of time.

Bangalow Market

Brunswick Heads

“super moon” rising from Cape Byron lighthouse.
The Eastern tip of Australia.

A very big thanks to Cyrano and Bianca for making this possible by giving us their your new house. Without your generosity our stay would surely have been fleeting.

Biaca and Cyrano’s new home and our Mullum “holiday house”.

The best of luck in your new community. I hope to drop in again in the near future.

Installing a bracket to join two large beams that allow many of the internal walls to be removed.

Many hands make light work.
Installing one of the beams.

Cyrano excitedly declared us his first WWOOFers. “And I’ll be damned, a Holmgren at that! Haven’ the tables turned” he exclaimed one afternoon. We planted some vegie seedlings too and boy do things grow quickly around here but all in all we got off very lightly for WWOOFers! Thanks again. Enjoy your new home.

A big thanks to Buddy Guzzi for helping us with maintenance and generally great hospitality. Really chuffed to know exactly which Guzzi it was that Su rode back in Napoli in the early 70’s.

Su’s Moto Guzzi

Thanks for getting us in on the night life Aaron. Had a really great dance at both Durrumbul and Byron. Hope to catch you again somewhere you crazy bugger 🙂

You da man!

Glad to have met you Claire. Thanks for showing me your surfing paradise. I have always been into snow boarding more than surfing, mad as it is in this country of ours that has such good surf and such poor snow. Perhaps I’ll head for the coast next time instead. Enjoy being you. Enjoy the waves while you can see them!

Seeing the Perch Creek Family Jug Band play in Bangalow was great fun.

Really glad to have you meet Christi. Good luck with your year 12 and your dream of riding up through Australia on motorcycle. Might catch you back in Melbourne some day.

Christi Hodgkins blowing us a away on trombone

A great voice after something spooky on the saw

And finally, what a lot of rain! The whole area is swimming. I was going to go to Mt Warning but the track is closed due to a land slide. I really wouldn’t be surprised if more falls away after the rain we are getting now. The BOM (Bereau of Meteorology) is saying that much of the area has had over 50mm (and less than 100mm) since 9am and it has been raining for days. Some of the roads are flooded now. We were going to leave today but the rain said quite loudly, “wait”.

Tomorrow’s prospects are much better though according to the BOM.