Day  1:                                   Wilson’s Prom National Park to Fish Creek turnoff at Yanakie

Distance:                             29.2km

Av speed:                            15.2km/h

Total Elevation:                 187m

Calories:                               1097

Weather:                             Cloudy and cool (11*c)

After 12 months of planning (including a lazy 2105 emails between us), today was d-day.

With the stress of packing behind us, it was an early morning drive down to the official starting line.... the viewing platform about 13km into the Wilson’s Prom National Park. As many of you know, Wilson’s Prom is still recovering from flash flooding back in March and the Prom has been closed beyond the viewing platform. This meant that we weren’t able to hike the 21km to “South Point”.... whilst disappointing, it’s not really a big loss in the scheme of a 4500km bike ride! Having seen many of the region’s finest counsel workers at the Exchange Hotel in Foster (UpUnder 2011’s first watering hole), we can understand why the repair works continue some 5 months later! Poor old Mick can’t even keep his eyes open to drink!!

Starting at the viewing platform had another benefit... a crowd of 20+ kangaroos to bid us farewell. A very surreal and ‘Australian’ experience for the adventure to start.  With Verge and Bruiser playing paparazzi, the standard departure shots were taken and we were away.

By the time we’d warmed up, hijacked a boat and got used to riding mountain bikes with 32kg of trailers behind them... we’d reached our cabin and the day’s riding was done! If a ‘prologue’ is good enough for the professionals, a shorter first stage is good enough for us too!!

Tomorrow we have 60km ahead of us as we ride to Mirboo North and commence our crossing of the Great Dividing Range.... one eye will firmly be turned to bom.gov.au in the hope that snow will not be following us in the next few days!!