BVT = Bicycle Velocity Tracker / Butt Verification Tour
My colleagues in the Sydney Lab have established a live tracking system and dashboard displaying my progress towards Sydney. The BVT column indicates 100% completion of my bicycle tour on the 19th.
Note: Even on the 18th they already knew I am going to make it to the finish line! 
- With Laurence, Matt, Will, Chris, Graham and students
Tweet ##transoceaniaThe Trans Oceania 2014 Cycling Expedition and Tour ended with a final Dinner for all riders and staff members in the dining room on the 25th floor of the Sydney Bayview / Boulevard Hotel.
Here Andreas and Team awarded the full tour riders with Finisher Medals and surprised almost everyone on the tour with a personalized gift, characterizing her or his special appearance during the tour. A great event to complete this fantastic trip after 4 months. Even Sponge Bob ‘reincarnated’ after being missing since the blast in the Bromo Crater on Java back in September.
I am cycling the rail trail from Bairnsdale to Orbot, far away from the Highway. A beautiful trail on an retired railway, cut into the forest. Pure nature, wallabies, a wombat, a giant monitor lizard and the sounds of birds are my only companions.
Soon the trail will lead me along the Princess HWY towards Nowa Nowa, where I might meet my fellow riders, who stayed on the road.
As we are currently riding through the State of Victoria in Australia it wasn’t for long that we were searching to uncover the secrets of Victoria, also known as Victoria’s Secrets.
This morning we were surprised to find 3 remarkable ‘Top Models’ in our camp. Obviously TdA managed to get us some of Victoria’s secret models (not to be mistaken with Victoria’s Secret Models).
The secret models are usually those, who are no longer eligible for the Catwalk, and hidden from public in a dark room, only released for very special services.
Source: Wikileaks 2014
Dish Duty Beauties
The 3 immediately proved their real qualities and are now on dish duty for the remaining days of the trip.
You often find this kind of road sign in South Australia.
Why do you think a road in some parts of Australia is only passable during the dry season and not recommended to be used, once it has rained?
Sure, the road might be flooded, but most 4×4 can run though it, if not too deep. Usually there are depth marker in flood areas, which indicated the water level. So there must be some other reason.
Well, it was all dry when I cycled passed it, thus I could not check it myself.
However the following road sign, which I saw soon after, may explain why it is dangerous to enter the road in the rainy season!
Can you see from what the motorists are being warned?
So better don’t leave the car, when you get stuck in water on a flooded road 
My photo of a very wet and cold cycling day …
I found this sign worth to stop in the pouring rain on this cold Sunday morning … luckily only a view ‘mad’ cyclists and runners were willing or forced to leave their comfort zone and therefore the promenade wasn’t to populated.
Tweet ##transoceaniaDue to bad weather conditions the ferry to Philip Idland is canceled and we have to take the train back to Frankstone and 2 more busses to get around the bay and onto the island to our camp site in Cowes.
Strange, we cycle 96km in this sh…ty weather without cancelation of this stage. Maybe TdA needs to take over some ferry rules for bad weather conditions 
Yesterday I stopped at a nature resort between Apollo Bay and Torquay. It was supposed to be a Coke Stop at the ‘Koala Café’. As the name suggested, there must be some of my friends. Thus I never got a Coke, but turned instead to the other side of the road and into the caravan park. There were many parrots of different kind and colors, cockatoos and some of my koala friends around. So I picked my camera to take photos, when all of a sudden I felt something l
touched down on my helmet. I turned the camera around to take a selfie and I found this ‘Kings Parrot’ wrestling with my tarantula, which lost an eye in the unequal battle, but continued to stay attached and the bird left into the trees to meet its companions and talk about the ‘bad food’ I carry.
On the first day on the Great Ocean Road I spent 2.5 hours in the Tower Hill State Game Reserve, which sits inside an extinct volcano formed some 30,000 years ago, and was declared Victoria’s first National Park in 1892.
I arrived at around 7am and was the only person so far in the park. Undisturbed wildlife welcomed me! Usually when a group of cyclist (or any group) is in the wilderness, there is too much noise and talks, and the animals disappear before even seen by us. So I was lucky to have it all for myself – the kangaroos and emus next to the road, the koalas sleeping in the eucalyptus trees. I had to wait a long time, before they slowly woke up and climbed down from their sleeping branches. 
What a fun scene to watch them climbing down backwards, leaping from on branch to the other, or walking and running on the ground. These koalas are the most adoring animals I’ve seen so far. They seem to watch me with the same curiosity as I watched them. I was lucky to carry a second 64GB memory card with me, as I quickly run out of disk space. I didn’t want to leave them, but after 2 hours I had to go, and with the first arriving tourists they also climbed higher into the trees, 
making it more difficult to see them. 2 German students were having breakfast at the rest place, closely monitored by an emu with her kids. There are many hiking trails around the lakes, especially for bird watching. I added time to walk a loop road in the dense forest. Eventually I left my ‘little Australian Ngorngoro’ with a final look over the rim into the crater and the surrounding ocean.
Here is a collection of photos taken in the crater park
The day out of Adelaide I cycled through the town of ‘Hahndorf’, an old German settlement founded in 1838.
Hahndorf is classified as Australia’s oldest surviving German settlement and each year thousands of people, young and old, enjoy its charm and the hospitality. Hahndorf is the jewel of the Adelaide Hills and one of South Australia’s most popular towns.
It was as being back to home. German and Bavarian flags, Hofbräu Bier, roads and buildings like in the old days at home. I stopped to take some photos for my German friends & for a special Bavarian friend with wife, who may now regret that they did not come to visit me on this tour, like they did in 2008, when they traveled to South Africa, to meet me in Cape Town. I went to Otto’s Bakery, 
to see if I could get a Brezel, but was immediately sure, it wasn’t a German baker at work anymore, when I saw the display of breads and cakes in the shop. However I got an ‘apple swirl’ (Apfelschnecke), which I saved for a later breakfast in the fields.
The French seem to invade this territory, too. However in a friendly manner, how else could a Brasserie and the Hofbräuhaus go together?!
