Dear reader, 

We (Olivier and Sébastien) write from Port Fairy, on the Great Ocean Road, South West of Melbourne in Australia where we enjoy incredible free coastal flying between short bikes rides. 

We made it flying from the Top of Australia finally, the Mt Kosciusko. We went from there to Bright, Capital of thermal flying in Australia and got part on a mini “X-Alps” race with running and flying. For one month Sebastien went on his own on a van trip and to fly other parts of Australia. With Nadège we took the best out of the little time left together and crossed the Alps through astonishing forest of gum trees until Melbourne a month ago. From there she had to leave, get back to France, which has been extremely difficult time to live for both of us. We will retrieve each other when I finish in three years.

Since, I stayed three weeks in Melbourne to work a lot on the bike and the equipment getting old and having to be replaced. We also received and tested the kites that will pull us through the desert on the road, thanks to Gavin Mulvay in New Zealand who made these lightweight Nasa wings especially for us with the support of Porcher Sports for the fabric.

We had Christmas on the road again in Aireys Inlet in a house of improvised hosts who live just behind the take off; they offered us a whole bungalow and delicious food, after our full flying day, what a Christmas gift!

HELP NEEDED! Is anyone travelling from Europe to Australia in January?

We need to have exchanged our broken solar battery (0.7kg) but shipping cost to Australia is out of price (150E). We need a person who would accept having sent the new one (in Germany, München now) over to him/her and then taking back the old one to then send it from Europe, it would help us lot. All shipping cost would be covered and our gratitude assured.

Website updates:

We added new posts about the flying on Kosciusko, in Bright and the ride through the wild Alps with Nadège until she leaves. You can read this HERE.

Our Facebook page, is mainly managed by Sébastien and he updates it quite often. It’s open to non-FB users and it’s a good way for you to get latest news and updates, even though the website remains the ‘quality’ book with selected images and stories. It will also definitely help and motivate us a lot if you ‘like’ the page/articles/pictures and share it around with your friends. ‘Like’ means also ‘subscribe’ to every updates we put. 

Media:

We had an interview from the Travel with a Mission (TWAM) website for which Olivier is now official ambassador. You can read it HERE. 

The concept of this website is to put in contact those who want to travel and educate or promote things or values they believe in, such as unpowered way of travelling (!) and the people or organisation who can and desire listen to them.

What’s planned?

We will get to see and try to fly on the famous twelve Apostles. We’ll hit the road to get to Kingston where a 200kms hard sand beach will allow us to fully test and tune our bike kite system. Adelaide will be the last stop in mid January before the great crossing of the Nullarbor until Perth during which we hope to ride as much as we can with the kites as well as stopping along the cliffs of the coast to fly.

Wishing you a HAPPY new YEAR! 

Adventurously,

Olivier and Sebastien