Ed Darmanin’s Big Lap — Part 2: Sydney to Broome

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By Ed Darmanin as told to David Waterworth for CleanTechnica

Here we go, in Ed’s words with comments from me in square brackets.

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When I rode out of Sydney on 24 June, the plan was simple enough: 18,000 kilometres, anti-clockwise, one electric motorcycle, no support vehicle. What I didn’t plan for was a cracked subframe near Biloela, a Chargefox unit that cut out five times in Warnum, NT, a string of faulty 50kW fast chargers self-limiting to 8kW, a battery too hot to charge quickly in 35-degree heat south of Darwin, or a bull standing in the middle of the Stuart Highway that wasn’t moving for anyone.

[For those just tuning in, CleanTechnica published about Ed’s trip planning here. In addition, you can follow his trip, live at Follow the Journey. The map will prove invaluable for those who do know Australia’s geography and scale. For those who prefer Facebook, you can head there.]

I also didn’t plan on nearly 500,000 views on social media, a live ABC Radio interview in Mount Isa, digital media coverage from Hungary, or followers I’ve never met defending my trip against strangers on the internet at two in the morning. [In the end, Ed turned to Claude AI for advice on how to best block the trolls.] But here we are, eight weeks in and just past Broome, and the trip is running exactly as planned — which is to say, nothing has gone exactly to plan, and that’s been the whole point.

Just 1,300 km into the trip at Biloela QLD, a routine check found the rear subframe loose — a fatigue break in the top rail. Potentially trip ending, but became just another problem to solve. Hardware stores, a bent steel brace, and a rough fix got me to Yeppoon for a scheduled talk that night. The next day, the Coast Guard building became a workshop. Arthur Hunt and Phil Nash gave up their time to help me strip the rear end, take the subframe to a local welder, and return it properly repaired and reinforced with solid bar along both rails. By nightfall the bike was stronger than when it left Sydney.

It passed its 2,000km check in Section 3 with nothing to report. It’s still holding now, more than 9,000 kilometres later and carrying a pillion 1,200km across Far North Queensland.

A few days after Yeppoon, on a charging stop in Mackay, Arthur quietly arranged something I couldn’t have planned for. Glenn George — the first person to drive an electric vehicle around Australia, back in 2011, in a modified 1950s MG he’d converted himself — was waiting at the charger. He was 67 when he did it. I’ll be 67 when I finish this one. We stood beside the charger and talked for an hour with another EV enthusiast, Trevor Richards, who brought a packed lunch for all to share. Two electric pioneers, fifteen years apart, same age, same instinct. It’s the kind of moment that only happens on a trip like this, and only if someone like Arthur thinks to make it happen.

Range and planning

The charging infrastructure along the east coast is genuinely good. From Sydney to Cairns the network rarely required improvisation — fast chargers at predictable intervals, reliable units, straightforward legs. What required management was speed and heat. In section 4 through the Northern Territory there are still gaps in the charging infrastructure, but the ones that are installed worked perfectly. However, stretches at 130 km/h into Katherine the bike consumed battery capacity at a rate that made later sections unforgiving due to hot battery conditions slowing DC fast-charging noticeably — the Adelaide River charge took over an hour due to high battery temperature from the previous fast charge and 35°C degree heat keeping the battery temperature elevated. The safety electronics just doing its job protecting the battery.

Section 3, from Cairns to Mount Isa via Normanton and the Queensland Gulf Country, covered 1,200 kilometres with no DC fast chargers. Every charge was AC — caravan park power points, hotel sockets, one 15-amp feed at a Georgetown caravan park while [son] Evan and I played nine holes of golf waiting for the battery to fill. We discovered mid-section that the trip computer had been under-reading distance since I’d changed the front drive sprocket, which meant our range calculations had a 0.5 kWh/100km buffer we hadn’t known about. In the Gulf Country, that kind of margin matters.

Section 4, solo from Mount Isa, brought the Kimberley and its own version of infrastructure. A Chargefox unit at Warnum, WA, cut out five times across consecutive charge attempts — 42%, 50%, 70%, 80%, then finally 95% — with phone support wrongly blaming my credit card while PlugShare showed other users hitting the same fault. At Fitzroy Crossing, I improvised a charge off a 3-phase socket using an adapter I’d built myself (I am a licensed electrician!) parked directly beside the fuel bowser. At Timber Creek and Willare Bridge, hotel power points and verandas stood in for dedicated EV infrastructure. None of this stopped the trip. All of it required planning.

The infrastructure story

Two charging stops deserve particular attention. At Victoria River [in the Northern Territory], a new NRMA off-grid solar canopy with two DC chargers and four CCS2 plugs sits completely independent of any roadhouse power supply. Freestanding, modular, solar-powered with battery storage and a diesel backup that runs less than one percent of the time. It’s the most scalable model I’ve seen for remote-area EV charging in Australia, and it stopped me in my tracks.

At Ngumban Cliff in the Kimberley, a ground-mounted solar array with a fast charger sits beside the highway with nothing else for 100 and 200 kilometres in either direction. The charger runs on solar power stored in onsite batteries with a standby generator as backup in case the sun doesn’t shine, very rare out here. A 30-second selfie video at that stop generated 64,000 views and sparked a debate in the comments that my followers resolved without any help from me. Here is a second link from a drone footage showing the remoteness of this site.

The social media dimension

The trip has attracted attention I didn’t anticipate. Approximately 500,000 combined views across Facebook and Instagram. Coverage from CleanTechnica, ABC Radio, CQ Today, a Hungarian motorcycle magazine, a UK electric motorcycle publication, and The Pack News in Europe. Individual posts reaching 50,000 to 80,000 views, the majority to people who had never heard of the trip before.

What’s struck me most is the community that’s formed around it. When sceptics challenge the practicality of electric motorcycling through remote Australia, followers I’ve never met — engineers, touring riders, EV owners — respond with facts and precision before I’ve even seen the comment. I add fuel occasionally with a personal observation or a technical clarification. The conversation has become self-sustaining.

The most engaged post wasn’t the most dramatic landscape or the most remote location. It was a 30-second selfie at an offline fast charger on a 290-kilometre stretch of WA highway, describing the problem and how I was going to solve it. 52,000 views, 112 comments, 89 new followers in 14 hours. Real adversity, described plainly, resonates in a way that polished content doesn’t.

Where things stand

Eight weeks in, the Experia bike has covered more than 8,000 kilometres, with no problems except for the subframe issue that I put down to accumulated stress from several previous overloaded trips. The subframe repair has held through pillion loads, corrugated dirt roads, and Gulf Country back roads. The range planning has worked — not because conditions have been easy, but because the planning accounted for conditions being difficult.

Sally, my wife, has joined me in Broome for Section 5. The Kimberley is behind me. Ahead: the WA coast, the Nullarbor, and the last 5,000 kilometres home.

The technology is here. The infrastructure is here — imperfect, incomplete in places, but here and growing. The argument isn’t theoretical any more. It’s 9,000 kilometres of Australian road and counting.

My thoughts, not just a big lap, but perhaps a Phar Lap.