Stephen Edwards and Bradley McElroy arrive in Katherine, Northern Territory
Stephen all loaded up
Stephen hits the road
Bradley takes a quick break
On the last leg of the trip!
PADTHAWAY locals Bradley McElroy and Stephen Edwards had no real reason to ride 2127km in 17 days, they just wanted to.
So they did.
They rode from Cairns via the Savannah way to Katherine in the Northern Territory, carrying everything from tents to food in their hybrid explorer bikes' pannier bags.
After crossing the cape, the duo followed the coastline to Borroloola and then down to the Stuart Highway.
There were long distances between food and water and the small towns that they did stop at had very limited supplies.
Mr McElroy, a farmer, said he had never done anything like it before.
"We did not know how long it would take," he said.
"We allowed just under a month with planned rest days but got bored so rode on."
He and Mr Edwards, a farmer and chaplain, had previously travelled to Vietnam together so knew they would get along well.
They had not undergone a training regime for the trip, just regular rides around their local area.
Each morning they woke up at about 5am, packed up their belongings and were on the road by 6.30am.
Despite being initially worried about the weather being too hot, they were lucky to have an average temperature of 28 degrees.
Along the way there were plenty of hills to tackle and 500km of dirt road.
"We kept thinking the hills would flatten out but at some points it was just hill after hill," Mr McElroy said.
On their longest day they rode 181km which took almost 10 hours.
There were many highlights along the way including the scenery, the people they met and the isolation.
Mr Edwards said it was great being in the outback - in places that most people would never get to see.
"We got an idea of how isolated some of the communities really are but everyone was so friendly, especially those caravanning around."
There were also lots of different smells. A pleasant honey scent wafted from the grevillea trees but the smell of roadkill was not nice," Mr McElroy said.
"The most memorable moment, though, was Hell's Gates - it was really rough, in the middle of nowhere.
"That was after the longest day as well and the people in the caravan park were great."
Mr Edwards enjoyed seeing the Leichhardt falls: "They looked brilliant when the sun set over them."
At the end of their bike trip the duo were satisfied with what they had achieved.
"I thought, this is crazy," Mr Edwards said.
"It was like we rode from Padthaway to Mount Gambier (in a day) - or more than that!"