YOLO: Sydney to Darwin — 5,000 km on an Energica Experia Green Tourer – CleanTechnica

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CleanTechnica readers will remember Ed Darmanin’s previous electric motorcycle adventures published here and here. He recently shared his latest adventure on an Energica Experia Green Tourer with me:

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By Ed Darmanin

In the early 1980s, I was a young single man in my early twenties who regularly ventured out on motorcycle adventures into the Australian countryside that included several trans-Australia and Outback trips. Sydney to Perth and back, Sydney to Uluru and back (twice!), and passing through lesser-known places such as Oodnadatta and Innamincka. It was on one of these latter trips that I had Birdsville as a destination but had to abort due to bad weather and road closures. I had also never ridden to Cairns or Darwin in the north of Australia.

So, fast forward to 2022, the year I retired and bought myself a Harley-Davidson Livewire electric motorcycle with the intent of reliving my youth traveling the Aussie countryside again on two wheels after 40 years on the treadmill of life. I did the 4,000 km Sydney-to-Cairns trip first, plotting a route largely through the more populated parts of Australia with more access to DC fast chargers and support services if needed.

After successfully completing this trip, I immediately thought, why not become the first person to ever ride an electric motorcycle across Australia? This was a much bigger undertaking, riding nearly 5,000 km from Perth to Sydney across the infamous Nullarbor Plain that includes many long-isolated stretches of around 200 km with nothing but Aussie ‘Outback’ landscapes in between. This pushed the limits of the Livewire, but I made it back home to Sydney alone and unassisted to achieve my goal.

About 6 months later, I started planning an even more ambitious trip to ride an electric motorcycle 5,000 km from Sydney to Darwin via the remote town of Birdsville famous for hosting the ‘Big Red Bash’ and the ‘Birdsville Races.’ The distances between towns and roadhouses on this route are typically between 200 and 260 km, meaning that I needed an electric motorcycle with a bigger battery and more range than the Livewire. Ideally, it needed to be an adventure tourer style motorcycle to better handle the rough unsealed road. So, I sold the Livewire and bought the Italian-made state of the art Energica Experia Green Tourer that ticked all the boxes, with a 50% bigger battery, better suspension, full fairing, and an integrated luggage system.

While planning the route on Google Maps, I discovered one potential obstacle approaching Birdsville from the east. The distance from Windorah to Birdsville is 390 km, with no fuel station, no cell phone coverage, and not much else either. However, in 2021, after being closed for about 20 years, the Betoota Hotel that is roughly halfway between Windorah and Birdsville reopened, so I contacted the proprietor ‘Robbo’ to see if I could book a room at the pub and recharge the bike during my stay. His response: “No Worries.” So I booked the one and only room available for 2 nights at $100/night that gave me the option to charge during the day if need be.

I left Sydney on a cold wet morning on 14th June 2024 traveling north on backroads I had never ridden before through the mountains near Walcha then across to Tamworth then Gunnedah. On day 3, the rain finally stopped and I travelled up to Lightning Ridge, on to Roma, then Charleville. 1700 km in 5 days. Made easy by slow charging for about 8 hours overnight, then DC fast charging around lunchtime each day. However, after Charleville, there was only one or two DC fast chargers over the remaining 3,300 km stretch to Darwin, reducing the daily distance to around 250 km on one charge each night from a standard 10 amp domestic power socket.

Heading west from Charleville, the countryside quickly changes from rural to outback landscape. From here on, a lot more people were fascinated to see an electric motorcycle, as no one had ever taken one out this way before. Of course, nearly everyone asked “how far do you get on a charge?” and “how long does it take to charge?” Another common response was “I never even knew they made electric motorbikes.” While I expected these remarks, I was surprised that several adventure touring motorcyclists I met in towns along the way also had no idea that electric motorcycles like this existed.

When I arrived in Windorah, I had mixed feelings of excitement and anxiety, as this was the last town before the 390 km road to Birdsville that is mostly unsealed. I wonder what condition the road is in? What if I breakdown? Betoota is ‘off grid.’ What if I can’t charge on the Betoota Hotel generator? Then I came to my senses: “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” In my younger days, I had successfully completed more challenging high-risk solo trips through extremely remote areas with no mobile phone, no internet, no Google Maps, and no GPS navigation. So, while this next leg to Birdsville is certainly remote, it is fairly well travelled at this time of the year. As long as I did not crash and get hurt or killed, every other situation was manageable. The next morning, I left Windorah with an immense feeling of excitement to finally be traveling the road to Birdsville after failing 40 years ago. My time had come. YOLO.

I had a perfect day. Cool weather, not a cloud in the sky, and the gravel roads were generally in very good condition. The scenery along this route is amazing, regularly changing from grassy plains to salt bush to stony desert to lush low-lying floodplains. I filmed a lot of this section of the trip using my POV action camera mounted on my helmet and took time out to get some drone shots. Here is a short 3-minute video that captures what I cannot express in words. [Great video, Ed!!]

When I arrived at the Betoota Hotel, I had an incredible feeling of achievement. I wasn’t even halfway to Darwin but I felt like I had achieved … one giant leap for electric motorcycles! A twist on JFK’s famous speech: “I choose to go to Darwin via Birdsville, not because it easy, but because it is hard.” No one had ever been out here on an electric motorcycle until I rolled in! Electric cars, yes, but not an electric motorcycle. Betoota has a population of zero, as Robbo, his wife Trish, and few part-time staff are the only inhabitants during the dry season from April to October each year, with no one there during the wet season from November to March. My stay at this remote pub was a highlight of this trip. Robbo and Trish were amazing and I met some great locals and travellers passing through on their way to the Big Red Bash in Birdsville commencing the following week.

After a two-night stay in Betoota, I set off on the final 190 km stretch of gravel road to Birdsville, which also has amazing scenery along the way. It is almost moonlike in places, but then you come over a hill and see a large green floodplain covered in vegetation with an abundance of birdlife. Simply awesome. Then, I had an “oh shit” moment. While taking in the amazing scenery and not closely watching the road, I found myself in a deep gravel patch which caused the bike to go into a big ‘tank slapper’ where the front wheel violently oscillated from left to right trying to pick its line, causing the whole bike to buck and weave while it tried to make up its mind. Meanwhile, I was thinking “oh shit, I am going to crash,” then quickly remembered the best way out of this situation is to accelerate, which somehow I did just in time and the bike immediately settled down. I was on the edge of disaster, but saved it, just 50 km outside Birdsville.

As I arrived in Birdsville, I once again had a great feeling of achievement and excitement. This was a major bucket list item for me, and also my eldest son Evan was flying into Birdsville that afternoon to join me for a couple of days sightseeing then hopping on the back of the bike for the 700 km leg up to Mount Isa.

I discouraged my 3 kids from ever getting on a motorcycle. But when Evan asked if he could join me on this leg, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to share the experience — next to no traffic to worry about and pretty much straight flat roads with great visibility the whole way. This was an epic part of the trip traveling north along the eastern edge of the Simpson Desert, watching New South Wales beat Queensland at Bedourie Hotel in the 2nd State of Origin football match, and Evan shooting some amazing drone footage off the back of the bike of us traveling through the desert landscape north of Birdsville. You can watch the video via this link.

One minor problem I had with the bike was that the battery equalization was a bit out, so I could not rely on the BMS state of charge reading below 8%, where it became non-linear. This was because the bike had sat idle in my garage for about 2 months before I left as I narrowly avoided a heart attack, had a stent fitted in a main coronary artery (LAD), and went through rehab. YOLO. Do the bike trip now!

After arriving safely in Mount Isa, Evan being an engineer like his old man figured out State of Charge (SOC) targets for the 262 km stretch I had ahead of me from Camooweal to Barkley Tablelands Roadhouse. This was literally worked out on the back of a XXXX beer coaster at the Mount Isa Hotel the night before we parted ways.

From Mount Isa, Evan flew back to Sydney and I pressed on towards Darwin, following the beer coaster plan that worked perfectly, and a few days later I arrived at the Three Ways where the east-west Barkley Highway meets the north-south Stuart Highway. Turn left to go south to Alice Springs and Uluru. Turn right to head north to Darwin. I had been here 43 years ago on my way to Uluru on a 1979 Honda 750 Four with a mate on the back. It was a nice feeling to be here again reliving the great memories of that trip. Here are a couple of then and now photos.

A few days later, I arrived in Darwin, successfully completing the 5,000 km trip solo and unassisted with just one close call as described above. The bike performed flawlessly. I put the bike on a truck in Darwin and shipped it back to Sydney. My wife met me in Darwin, then we did a self-drive trip from there to Broome via Kakadu, the Bungle Bungles, and the Gibb River Road. (Another 3500 km!)

It would have been almost impossible to undertake this trip on an electric motorcycle without the meticulous planning that included accurate distance schedules between charging stops and pre-arranging charging at all stops that included motels, trailer park cabins, and pubs. Most of these let me charge the bike for free except at two locations that charged me $10 for the privilege. The same trip on a petrol motorcycle would have required some planning, but these days we take for granted that there will be fuel available at each town on the map.

One day in the future, the same will be true for electric vehicle charging. But, for now, the lack of charging infrastructure is part of the challenge in a similar way that 40 years ago I used to have to work out my range between stops and carry spare fuel in order to get there. There are many EV haters out there, and many more in the motorcycling community, particularly on social media, that quickly dismiss electric motorcycles with derogatory comments that cannot be repeated. But there are many that take a genuine interest in this transition, as they know it is inevitable. It is a similar mentality to the resistance to the transition from film cameras to digital cameras, with the argument being that one is better than the other. Eventually, they coexist, then the newer and better technology replaces the old.

I feel privileged to have the financial capacity and time to own and experience electric motorcycles as an early adopter. I have several more adventures in mind that I plan to undertake over the next few years. Watch this space!

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Addendum: Ed wrote this up while in Barcelona for the America’s Cup. His daughter Lisa Darmanin is on the Australian women’s team that start racing on Sunday, 6th October. Check it out here. Thanks for sharing your adventures with us, Ed.