Day 33 – Wed, 11 Aug at Darwin

Early morning rise as I had to be at the BMW dealer by 7:15am to ensure that I would be the first bike serviced. I didn’t want to be waiting all day for the bike.

I arrived and yep the gates don’t open to 8am and I am the only bike – they could have told me that yesterday. Oh, well the mechanic recommends that we fix the lower windscreen mount and re-attach the driving lights. He has a new GSA which he can get the parts from and then order in the relevant parts to replace his bike’s bits. So the parts are available for shipping to them so he cannibalises his bike – only a couple of parts.

On collection the service is done and he informs me that the whole windscreen support as well as the crash bars are going to need replacing. They are bent and he needed to use some persuasion to get things roughly in place. This will have to wait until I get back to Sydney as it is not worth hanging around to have it done here.

Rather than waiting around whilst the bike was done I headed over to the Australian Aviation Heritage Centre which was on the other side of the Stuart Hwy at the end of the RAAF base (I think). Well this was a real surprise and well worth the $12 entry fee.

First up was a brief history of the Japanese bombing of Darwin – I don’t know why but I thought there were only a couple of initial attacks, but it lasted for many years following the first attack in 1942.

Inside the hanger was an American B52 bomber – that’s right one of those massive strategic bombers (only one of two outside the USA). It is on permanent loan to the museum from a US museum. Scattered around underneath and beside this were various planes and artefacts from Australia’s military aviation past and photos and a great collection of interesting items.

Absolutely wonderful time spent there and reminded me of our visit to the Spruce Goose in Oregon, USA back in 2006 when Robyn and I stubbled across an aviation museum there – great places to see interesting things, and usually unexpected.

On collecting the bike I headed for a place where I could do a little more bike maintenance. I wanted to change the air pre-filter that I had installed before leaving. So I headed for Fannie Bay and parked in the shade with a cool breeze coming off the water (somewhere they call the East Point). I changed the pre-filter (not as bad as I would have thought given some of the riding conditions that I have been through) and checked the actual air filter (which was absolutely clean). So I put on a new pre-filter then cleaned the old one and re-oiled it in readiness for the next change. Great suggestion from Rick from the BMW riders group to install these filters from Unifilter (that’s the front section of the red pre-filter in the ice cream container before cleaning).

So now I am back in the room, oh I am at the Darwin YWCA, but they do allow men and the bathrooms on floors 1 & 3 are unisex, with women's only on floor 2. Lots of rooms, a pool, one large kitchen and a smaller kitchenette on each floor. In Mitchell Street (the heart of Darwin) but far enough away from the action to be fairly quiet.

So my riding gear is in the washing machine as I thought I should do this, as it was standing up by itself when I took the gear off. I’m off to the pool now then heading up town for a light meal. See you then.