Over the summer, Lachlan Morton (Garmin Sharp) and his brother Angus (formerly Drapac Porsche Cycling) embarked on the Australian adventure of a lifetime. The pair rode nearly 3000km, from the East Coast of Australia to Uluru in just 11 days.
Starting from their childhood home in Port Macquarie, they rode down to Broken Hill, through Peterborough, and finally up the Oodnadatta track to Uluru. Of course this sounds simple now, but riding an average of 270km a day, and often on unsealed roads is anything but.
“When you get right out there, it’s 400 to 500km between any sort of settlement - and those settlements may just be a petrol station, and one guy in a corner store,” Angus Morton told BikeRadar.
With Lachlan spending a good portion of his year in Europe, and Angus still living in Australia; the Morton brothers don’t get to spend much time together.
“We had been trying to catch up and arrange to go on a wild adventure for a while. We talked about going horseback riding in Mongolia or hiking in Alaska. Realistically with our work schedules, we just couldn't bring the two together.”
“Lachie said to me, ‘I am sick of riding just to race. Wouldn't it be awesome if we rode from the top of China down to the bottom.’ We decided that wasn’t super realistic; so instead we thought riding to Uluru would be a more sensible thing to do,” said Morton.
So they gathered a few mates - including their friend Scott Mitchell, to drive a support car, snap some photos and record the journey. What started as an epic bike ride turned into something so much more, with each remote settlement offering an overarching human element.
“We would roll into a pub out the back of god knows where, and everyone would look at us; because we were these two skinny dudes, rolling into a town with a population of 50 people.They would buy us a beer, sit down, and low and behold you would find out that this guy covered in tattoos, who looks like a complete hardass - his favorite thing was to be Santa Claus during Christmas at the local school,” explained Morton.
It was meeting people like the tattooed Santa Claus that allowed the Morton brothers to realize that on their adventure, riding bikes and meeting interesting people went hand-in-hand. With so many stories to tell, the Mortons with the help of Mitchell made a documentary.
The film called ‘Thereabouts’ is accompanied by a compilation of photos, telling the stories from their journey. Thereabouts will premier at the Rapha Cycle Club in Sydney on April 24 and is free to the public. Space is limited, to attend you must send an RSVP to yo@thereabouts.com.au by 22 of April 2014. The movie is only set for one screening, however the photo exhibition will remain on display for a few weeks.
For those who can’t attend the Sydney-based event, the photos and the film will be availabe on thereabouts.com.au the same day.