And the days are not full enough

My list for #29in29 says that today I should tell you about Mogumber Tavern, but I've already done that. So today I will give you the poem that my amazing friend Rio sent me when I asked for encouragement at a low point in my solo adventure. it is by Ezra Pound and we think it has no title:

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass

She added, "Better have full days on your own than empty days in a relationship. xxxx"

And I realised that the idea of living a life that didn't shake the grass was even worse than living a life the wrong side of the glass. Occasional loneliness is a fair price to pay for freedom.

Rose Hotel, Bunbury

If I were pitching this story as a Vogleresque 12 Stage Hero's Journey, this part would be Stage 7, Approach to Inmost Cave. I've Crossed the Threshold, met my Allies, made some enemies and now I am taking my leap into the great unknown. I am resolved not to sit in my room at the Dolphin Retreat Youth Hostel, eating peanuts and cheese spread on flatbread and drinking water from a tooth mug, which is what I usually do in the evenings when I travel alone. I have had a fantastic day riding the Balingup-Nannup road, looking for the Big Apple and drinking excellent coffee and now I am going to go into a pub and buy myself a proper dinner and a pint.

It may sound daft that I am making such a big deal of this. Going into pubs is not difficult. Or, it's not difficult in your own country. Although Australia is hardly in the same league as Syria or Cuba for culture shock, the clues that unconsciously inform my choices in the UK are missing or misfiring here. For example, I know at home that Giraffe is kid-friendly and that going into one of their restaurants and asking for a table for one might lead to anxious looks from over-protective parents. All Bar One, on the other hand, is a great place to go for a solo dinner. What is the equivalent here? I can't tell.

I walk around the town centre and find that Bunbury has lots of restaurants but mainly they are full of big groups, all having a lovely time. I start to lose my confidence, because this scenario is the one you would create if you wanted to kill me. Winston Smith's biggest horror is rats. Mine is everyone else in the world having a wonderful time and deliberately leaving me on the wrong side of the glass.

In the end I pick the Rose Hotel because it is on the street back to the hostel, and because it looks pretty. The Victoria Street bar is all wood panels and high, lazy fans. It's nearly empty - there is a table of fifty-something men talking loudly about somebody they work with but don't like, and me. I order a bowl of wedges and a pint, carry my pint to the table, sit down with too much gusto and bounce my head off the mantelpiece behind me. My attempt to pretend it didn't happen is foiled by one of the businessmen asking if I am OK. Wedges and a pint cost 15 dollars. I think for some time that the barmaid must have charged me for a full meal by mistake but it turns out beer in Australia is upwards of £6 a pint. Not quite such a lucky country after all.

Silhouetted by the sea

I have come to watch the sun go down. The glossy leaflet I picked up in Perth Tourist Information Centre tells me it's one of the things I mustn't miss while I'm in Geographe Bay. I have on my dinky vintage frock with the flippy skirt and flowers, and a pair of very cheap sandshoes from K-Mart. I am clutching my camera and look like a tourist. This is not a good thing. The sand is warm but the wind is cold. Later, walking down the street in search of something to eat, and in an ideal world, a beer to wash it down with, the wind will catch this skirt and flip it over my head, to the detriment of everyone in the thai restaurant whose view of the moonlit sea will be interrupted by a flash of my purple knickers. Sorry about that.

Further up the beach a gang of teenagers are having a laugh and shoving each other around, violence as a proxy for affection. If I climbed the rocks in front of me and shoved the bloke minding his own business with an esky and a fishing rod, I think he would not find it as funny as the lads by the waves do.

I love the sea. I love the white noise of the surf, and the way you can see to the edge of the world without obstacle. As the sun sinks lower the sky lights up crazy pink and gold. On the horizon there are three big ships: a couple of container ships and one that is all cranes and funnels. I wonder if the guys on them still find the sunset worth looking at. Maybe they have seen it so many times that it is just the way the world is painted.

I suffer a sudden attack of melancholy. The sky is Barbara Cartland pink, the sand is warm and I have a dress on. The sunset is genuinely extraordinary but I have no-one to share the moment with. Later in this trip I will realise that it is enough that I should be enjoying such experiences, but tonight I have yet to learn that lesson.

I dance with the waves for a little while, letting them wash up to my knees before jumping to safety. Maybe tomorrow I will swim, if I can work out what to do with the bike keys.

It is getting dark, and it is time for a beer. I scrunch my toes dry in the sand, put my shoes back on and go back to being a grownup. But walking through a party town where the glass-fronted restaurants are full of families does not lift my spirits.

Back seat rider

8.00 am on New Year's Eve and I am sitting on a table at the Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour, while Woody takes a phone call from his accountant.

It is not where I am supposed to be. I am supposed to be riding south on a gnarly yellow GS, not sitting looking at a placid harbour. I am between bikes. The ailing GS has been returned, and, rather than leave me in Rockingham with a book, Woody has taken responsibility for me for the day. He says that he doesn't mind at all, that it will be a good opportunity to see how Trac Tor, his immense new Kawasaki, copes with a pillion. It is possible that he is just being polite and he would rather be at home with his wife and a glass of wine than entertaining me until Colin arrives back at Witch Suzuki to rent me a Bandit. But I choose to believe him. I spent too long with a man who would brood on every statement until he could turn it into something dark. It is not a habit I wish to acquire. Woody says he has done well out of life and now he enjoys helping people. I enjoy being helped, although, like cream cakes or tanning, it is something I ought only to indulge in sparingly. He is an entertaining and informative guide. He came to Australia as a young man with half his family - they only had enough money to pay for one parent to emigrate. He began as a policeman, and later became a very successful businessman, though the day is quite well advanced before he lets this slip. In Fremantle he tells me about the Kailis brothers, who own a fishing fleet, and a restaurant, and now a pearl business. In Scarborough and Cottesloe he tells me about Alan Bond, who made himself a rich man by spending other people's money. Over coffees and lemon squash we talk about families, and bikes, and from my immense, comfy seat I watch the beautiful people on the beaches, and the trees which now have to be called Grasstrees, and the charcoal-and-ash fire breaks, and the windmills, and Woody doesn't even let me pay for lunch as a thank you.

Peeling with Feeling

I am relieved to be through with trees. In the end they freaked me out a little. Endless, ancient and crowding in on me with no respect for my personal space. I am happier when I can see the sky. Riding north from Albany to return the bike to Colin in Rockingham, it isn't too long before I am back under beautiful, blazing blue.

Just north of Mount Barker, a sign for "Peeling with Feeling Shearing Services" marks my return to wheat and sheep country. I have a day to cover 400km - 250 miles in old money. I have been allowing myself to be nervous about making the distance but it's far less than I cover in a day on an end-to-end or with Graham on the Old Farts Tour, and if I really screw it up I have dispensation to return the bike on Tuesday morning.

Because I am making good time, and the riding is easy, I allow myself a detour to Wagin to see the Big Ram. And maybe an iced coffee. It has been too cold for those in the south and I am in withdrawal.

My route to Wagin is via the Kojonup-Katanning Road. It is straight, like a cartoon, and black, like beauty. A silver pipe runs on my right, carrying water to the wheatbelt, and looking like an opportunity for malice in a Bond movie. I want to stop on the centre line and take a photo. I can see for miles in front and behind me. There should be plenty of time to pose the bike, take the picture and nip back to the verge. But fear of having to explain to Colin why his bike has been flattened into roadkill by an invisible road train forces me to compromise.

I also have to compromise on my plan to avoid the highway for as long as possible. Filling up in Narrogin I ask the pump attendant at the garage if he can point me at the start of the Wandering-Narrogin Road. I'm out of luck, he tells me. The bridge is down at Pumphrey and there's a 25km detour via gravel. Unless I fancy myself as the next Steve McQueen. We look at the bike, and at me, and at the bike, and I ask him to point me back towards the Albany Highway instead. If I hadn't had a chat with him I would have had to spend a long time backtracking. The universe is rewarding me for being sociable.

My reward to myself is a stop at what looks to be an excellent tourist trap. The Williams Woolshed held out the offer of a sheepy souvenir or two to come with me on future travels. I used to travel accompanied by a moose, but he went AWOL on a trip to Glasgow to see Def Leppard and talk about road safety. Since then I've tried a Highland Cow and a small dog from the Ducati factory, but they're just not the same.

The Woolshed has a range of upmarket booths selling art objects and kitchen things, a restaurant which is packed, and a shop selling a range of spectacularly unattractive jumpers. This leaves me a choice between Ugg boots, which I can't fit on the bike, and can't really afford, or a teatowel. I have a look round the Shearers' Yarn gallery to postpone the decision.

I know a very small amount about sheepshearing. I know that you do it in two-hour runs. I know that you need to know whether someone used straight combs or pulled ones before you offer to buy him a pint. And I know that wrestling sheep gives you flat knuckles.

But I want to know what it feels like to stand in a sling and shear a sheep every three minutes until the bell rings as part of a shearing team that works hard and plays harder. What it sounds like. Is it noisy? It must surely be, with machines to drive the shears, and sheep stamping around, but is it a place where people shout and banter, or can you only get the job done by keeping your head down and concentrating?

The Woolshed does its best. It's got a display of equipment, and some posters about union rates and wool prices, and a copy of a newspaper interview with an old boy who talks about trying to do better than the bloke next to you, while playing fair - shearing the first sheep you pick, not picking the easiest ones to shear - but it's terribly solemn and quiet. Which I suspect may be the exact opposite of how a shearing shed really is.

I don't buy a souvenir in the end. All the cuddly sheep seem to have been shipped in from China.