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Across The Scorched Earth
The Final Leg Of A Global Journey: Across Australia On Urals
Many riders from all walks of life and countries had traversed the globe by motorcycles, but not the Russians. That is, not until the 30 year old, twin-brothers Sergey and Alexander Sinelnik did just that. Born in the city of Uralsk, Russia, the two became the first Russian nationals to circle the globe riding the pride of Russian motorcycles, the Ural. During their global journey, they found their final leg across Australia to be the most strenuous part of their two-year journey.
Not Born As Travelers
Anyone who knew the brothers Sinelnik could hardly see world travelers in these well-formed and strong fellows. Their artistic nature and calm demeanor foreshadowed the ad-venturer in both. They began running every day, for long distances and became strong enough for a Marathon race. They canoed along the Ural river, finished yacht school and made a journey around Europe on "Tasmania" yacht (6000 miles from Novorosibirsk to Saint-Petersburg), all in preparation of their global journey.
So, here, in Sergey's own words is the final chronicle of their exploits!
Beginning Of Journey
On June 28, 2002 we left Moscow for Vladivostok on Urals. In a month we overcame Eurasia and then on to South America for the trip from S?o Paolo to Lima, capital of Peru. We got 6000 kilometers in 20 days. In 2003 we "flew" on the Urals along Europe - 5000 kilometers from Moscow to Spain. We finished our trip at the Mediterrenean coast in Malaga. We even crossed Africa (9500km) from the Atlantic coast to Namibia.
We had different Urals at different stages. Ural-Wolf was used during the most part of the journey: along the North and South America and it was delivered by sea from Buenos Ai-res to Australia. A Ural Patrol with a side-car donated by the Irbit MotorWorks of America motor plant accompanied it there.
There were five of us that started in Australia and this group included Vladimir Saigakov - wonderful mechanic and Jack of All Trades, Timur Ibatullin - former racing motor-cyclist and constant companion of the brothers in motor, sail and alpinist expeditions and also a photographer-operator Andrey Sarmin.
However, the number of persons in this expedition was not limited by these five persons: people from Moscow were also a part. Mayak radio station was our general information sponsor. Representatives of Irbit motor plant in Moscow as well as a member of editor the Magazine of Fedor Konyukhov worked in the staff.
Aeroflot Airlines brought the searchers of adventures from the soiled Sheremetyevo airport to the Green Continent - Country of Dreams and Illusions, Australia. At parting their home Customs and Frontier Service presented us with the "gift" of a bill for fees amounting to $700 for spare parts that our fellows filled our rucksacks with.
Flight is long and we can reflect on what is waiting for us ahead. Length of the entire route is 15 thousand kilometers and 3500 kilometers of the route is off-road desert. Dmitriy Ti-mofeev, scientific consultant, doctor of geographic science, professor of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Science confirmed that Australian deserts are the most difficult deserts in the world: "It will be more difficult for you to drive there than in Afri-can Sahara!" More difficult?! We remember the scorching heat of sands in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia passed in spring 2003 for a long time. For all our lives.
But Where Is It Easy Now!
We arrived to Sydney, capital of Australia, in April 01 exactly, and difficult work started at once. But it did not start with the fight with absence of roads or settlement of technical mat-ters concerning our bikes but with. paper problems. Local bureaucracy did not let us start our way for a fortnight : they demanded complete re-issuance of documents for our bikes, checked bank information and availability of credit cards. They made us translate our driv-ing licenses into English and have them notarized - in not one of the 50 countries where the we have traveled, were such requirements. They were probably collecting files and worked with Interpol. Who can believe that unknown Russian bikers are eager of their own free will to drive over mortal deserts where one can't attract local aborigines?
We had to drive our Urals to have inspected for several times. And we should pay for eve-rything: we spent all our money and had to ask for money from our motherland.
Petr Schukin, officer of the Russian Consulate, helped us a lot - we could not have coped without him. Running about Sydney deprived us totally of two valuable weeks. We could drive over half of Australia for this period of time!
Everything was settled and on April 19 (instead for April 05 in accordance with our plans) Road of the Green Continent took Russian bikers. At the second hundred of kilometers of the excellent road from Sydney to Melbourne, the splines at the hind wheel of the Wolf were cut. The reason is probably fatigue of bikes: 27 thousand kilometers run with the cargo through both Americas made us know about it. Usual "Soviet apparatuses" can drive over the greater distance but they have three wheels and they all are interchangeable: if splines are cut at one wheel it is possible to set it at the side-car of ahead. And Wolf has different front and hind wheels.
We should change the hub of the hind wheel in full. But we had not a new one as we left spare parts in Sheremetyevo. Mechanic Volodya Saigakov had a lot to think of: where to find this part being at the distance of 10 thousand kilometers from the shop of spare parts?
Saigakov offered to weld a new hub from the old hub and standard Ural wheel: to cut the worn splices from the old hub, to cut the new ones from the new wheel and then to weld one to the other. And we decided to do that. But Volodya, Timur and Andrey had to return to Sydney for this purpose where there are connoisseurs and inveterate collectors of Rus-sian rarity equipment. That's fine that we had time to meet one of these cranks Don, col-lector of Urals, before our start. Don recommended a skilled metalworker and welder, an Armenian, by the way. This "golden man" refused our money for his work.
We Have Home Front
In Melbourne we met Dmitriy Driker, an entrepreneur from the Russian Diaspora. He helped us to rent an escorting jeep absolutely necessary in desert as we were "giving all we've got" - there were five of us on two bikes and also our bags with equipment hanging on each side as clusters. We could drive in such a way by the asphalt road but not by the ground without roads! We also wanted to take a quad-cycle or tricycle for our mechanic but we did not find them. We also had one more thought - to rent one more Ural, they have Urals in Australia. Well, they had them but almost all of them were old - made in the 50s or 60s. Even if we get this one rented it could hardly overcome a desert test.
In Melbourne one more problem appeared. Before we arrived in Australia, we were na?ve to think that the main positive feature in traveling along this country-continent is absence of borders as procedures while crossing them tired the fellows out at the other continents. And we suddenly found out that they have borders in Australia. And though they are not federal ones, these borders are not less strict here. Punishment for failure to have special visa while crossing of the borders of so called "parks", and if to say more exactly, - of na-tional territories where native inhabitants of the Green Continent live, is a large penalty and even imprisonment. It's not possible to drive round these territories as desert roads pass through these "parks" exactly. We needed one more week and assistance of our compatri-ots, and Dmitriy Driker first of all, to make visas for entry to aboriginal territories. We put a lot of products, stock of water and fuel in our jeep for a long autonomous travel.
At The Twelve Apostles
From Melbourne the road passed along the coast of the Indian ocean in western direction. Road No. 1 (and the last as there are no any other road here) brought us to Adelaide and farther to Perth. At the highway we sped up in full to make the time do for visiting Twelve Apostles. This local sight consists of ancient outlier rocks at the ocean shore and people from all over the world come here to look at them. We were in such a hurry that passed them as a result and had to return.
The night was falling, the ocean was very rough. We came to the shore. We saw a ma-jestic picture: apostles were standing in water as huge vessels. Waves were breaking un-der the precipice somewhere far away down, the strong wind threw with the salty grum-blers, foam and surf noise to the top. Everyone was mesmerized with this sight. Such things are retained in people's memory forever.
We overcame 100 more kilometers up to the night and just turned off the road and stayed to spend our night in the forest. We woke up in the morning and well, how do you like it! Kangaroos were grazing quite near us. These animals began jumping to the border of the forest at the sight of disheveled strange fellows. To complete the range of miracles we saw koalas at the branches of a tall eucalyptus.
Finally we reached the last point of the asphalt road and had to turn off the good route and continue our way along the desert. We had a plain with a mysterious name Nullarbor ahead. It was already strange that this plain had its own name as usually a mountain ridge, desert or a height at a pinch is honored with this respect. Maybe, the reason is that the Americans visited this place while nuclear testing.
What Does It Mean - To Drive Over The Desert?
When brothers Sinelnik were just planning their route via three Australian deserts they made calculations for the average daily run for 150 kilometers. It's not easy to keep this schedule of movement as with the "working day" of 15 hours (from sleep to sleep) we had to move via sand-dunes at a speed of 10 kilometers per hour. We tried to speed up along the city at an average speed of 120 kilometers per hour. We were to cross the desert from the South to the North and to depart to Uluru - famous outcrop of rocks, place that is called the heart of Australia.
We saw at the puddles that were not dried here and there and understood that rainy sea-son had just finished in this desert. They are "more terrible than heat, dust and sand: if you did not manage to get to the solid place you will get in desperate position" in accordance with the supervisor on studies of Professor Timofeev's team. During rainy season no one can drive here at any means of transportation and towns standing in this desert are iso-lated from the rest of the world for two weeks.
We planned an autonomous expedition at the distance of 1500 kilometers from the south-ern coast of Australia to the settlement of aboriginals called Warburton. And it turned out so that we did not have place to supplement stocks of gasoline, water and products. But it could turned out that aboriginals did not simply have these vitally important goods. Inhabi-tants of the settlement could go somewhere to make their own business in the desert and that is all. And fuel station could be closed - they could have no gasoline brought. We read in local papers of a good deal of such cases. But even if everything is at its place we could have bump: it turned out that aboriginals had strange hospitality customs in our opinion: if they do not like a stranger he will not probably get anything. And their benevolence is also strange. It is displayed in passiveness, inaction, sluggishness not understandable for us. We had an impression that they were so indifferent for everything in the world that even if an inhabitant from another planet flew by they will not be surprised. While talking to War-burton residents we were impressed with two things: they like dogs selflessly and can not throw boomerangs. And may be these were Europeans who invented an idea that boo-merang must be from outback? And also drug abuse is spreading among them. Fuel sta-tion owners had to fence fuel-filling columns with the grids that were opened just while feeding the vehicle. We needed four days to pass 800 kilometers from Warburton to the 22nd parallel through Gibson Desert. We were tired as never before and remembered our travel through Sahara as an entertainment for children. We slept during 5-6 hours, stopped keeping our diaries: we just wrote down two or three words and our eyes closed.
Relief of the desert is various: there are rocky taluses, gigantic gullies of drying up rivers. The most difficult thing is crossing sand-dunes; it's especially difficult for the Wolf crew - Sergey Sinelnik and side-car passenger Vladimir Saigakov. The bike has just one drive wheel and that is why it could not move to the top of the slope. We had to leap down while driving for the bikes not to lose their speed and to push them for all our might. And we did it at every sand dune and there were a lot of sand dune ridges going away to the horizon.
Ural-Patrol with the driving gear to the side-car wheel behaved more confidently. Alexandr Sinelnik was at the wheel. He managed to climb 300-meters dunes with the slope of 10-15 degrees without getting off his seat. But two drive wheels is not a panacea from dune sand and we had to push the Patrol from time to time.
The bikes turned over at the sand-dunes for many times and covered travelers with 350 kilograms of iron. Every boy could show you his bruises and abrasions. But once Alex-andr got a serious dislocation of his hand and we had to take time-out for two days.
The fifth member of expedition Timur Ibatullin, race-driver and racing motor-cyclist, was driving an escorting jeep with the stock of water and fuel for all these 1500 kilometers. It was also difficult for him to do it as he was looking for a special road for his car, was dodg-ing like a hare and sometimes we lost his sight. Once Timur had a heat stroke and that happened in spite of the fact that it was during winter season in Australia. It fell to the lot of all of us, but we all were keeping patience and drive farther! We reached the meteorite cra-ter Veevers - geographical border between Gibson Desert and Great Sandy Desert situ-ated farther in northern direction. We looked at it and sped up farther.
Without Water
It is difficult to obtain water here. In Victoria Desert - desert situated to the South of the above mentioned ones - we met two huge tanks with the taps at the bottom: one could pour and drink. There are no such tanks in Gibson Desert and Great Sandy Desert. They transmitted coordinates of water source to the travelers from the staff of expedition in Moscow by satellite communication: their disposition is not a secret, it is indicated in Aus-tralian Internet sites. But it's difficult to reach these sources even with GPS-navigator.
We found the first source far at the North of Great Sandy Desert. Sungabinni Well is a puddle of about 10 meters in diameter with the level of water up to the ankle near the edge and about 20 centimeters in the middle. Everything is muddled up and interlaced with the desert plants in this puddle and millions of terrible spiders and other spiteful insects as well as hundreds of snakes and other natural "goods" are living and getting on among these plants and they all are not aware that a little man wishes to drink some turbid water and wants to bother them. One can approach to this source just if he is able to get the better of fastidiousness and disgust. And one can decide to drink this water even if he had no drop of water for a week - as Saint-Exup?ry had in Sahara. As our team estimated, no man step near this source for about twenty years!
What Is The Mail?
Reading of SMS-messages from our cell-phones turned to be a special pleasure. At the beginning of the travel we tried to read incoming messages and to write them down in our diaries. When a number of SMS became more than one hundred we recorded just the most interesting ones. We even appointed prizes for their authors: Sasha Sinelnik decided to give one of his pictures and Andrey Sarmin offered one of the photos of course - huge and in a beautiful frame.
We can divide these hundreds of messages into three groups (without personal and offi-cial). The first group included fraternal supporting and cheering: "We are with you, broth-ers!", "Do not stand at the son for a long time", "Do not drink a lot of water in the after-noon", "Do not overload your bikes", "Did you take beer? Well, it's bad to be in desert with-out beer!". And comic little letters such as "bring me a koala" or "how are aboriginal women doing?". By the way, we were asked to bring not only koala or kangaroo but also a shoot of eucalyptus, a little bag with black salt from Lake Eyre for treatment of aquarium fishes and even roe of green frogs.
The second group consists of messages from inquisitive bikers: "What kind of oil did you fill up?", "How often do you change filters in desert?", "Was not break arm working loose?", "How do you wash your bikes at the route?", "Do you carry Patrol in sands?", "What is the fuel consumption?", "How much time do you spend to change rings?" and at last "How is the welded hub of the hind wheel doing?.." And we had the greatest amount of such ques-tions - hundreds of them!
The third group included messages from the fan girls being the team members of indefati-gable imagination and incinerating feelings owners. "Timur, darling, I understood that you are my ideal whom I was waiting for. Yours forever!" or "Well, Mom agreed that I can marry a traveler!.."
Just Timur could reciprocate our admirers' feelings as only he was single.
However seemed desert sand and steppes of the Green Continent be endless, they were left behind at last. The group had about 4000 kilometers left up to the finish in Sydney. It was heat again and that very same dust was around us. We were hastening as we could. And all the same we were late to get the planned flight.
Growth in difficulties at the route coincided with the growth in fatigue of the team. Some-one can reproach organizers in the lack of route planning. But in fact it was an intentional plan. Brothers Sinelnik declared, when they just finished their run over two Americas, that they wanted to finish their round-the-world run completely and make it actually powerful at the end and a living picture of their experience and serious future intentions. We can con-firm they managed it!
Results Of Round-The-World Trip
For 1 year and 10 months Ural bikes passed over 5 continents, 75 thousand kilometers, 35 countries of the world, 6000 kilometers over the bad roads including 3000 kilometers along difficult Australian deserts.
Ural-Wolf passed over 40 thousand kilometers of three continents without major overhaul. Now it is an honored exhibit at the museum of Irbit motor plant in Irbit.
Remarks For Travelers (opinion of Sinelnik)
One can take information of Australia from Internet (for example, at www.33in.net). In short they have such beauties that can not be compared with anything in the world. Nature is not severe at all here but vice versa we should say.
SIGHTS! They have a lot to see. For example, in a museum of a traveler with the name Byork in the city called after him at the Darling River. There are many museums in Sydney. We saw a sail vessel in this city that is the true copy of the famous "Bounty". They have natural monuments - meteorite craters (they have about thousand of them in Australia), Twelve Apostles and Alice Springs Rocks, Eight-mile Beach of white sand in Vallal Downs.
Water sources in deserts are marked at the map.
It is not difficult to find RENT STATIONS. But weigh everything. Toyota jeep in Melbourne will cost you $135 per one day. There are no ATV renting in Australia.
COMMUNICATION WITH RUSSIA. Telecommunication is expensive here. You can buy cards similar to those we have in Russia but they are cheaper. You can not do without sat-ellite phone travel in deserts.
DELIVERY. Air ticket costs from $1100 and more; delivery of bike by sea from Australia to Russia costs about $1200-1500 per one apparatus.
Pictures avalable here
by Eugene Shtil, Photos by Andrey Sarmin
Moto
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