As BoB has said - getting to know your bike cannot be a bad thing (unless you kill it of course!) as on the journey things will go wrong / beak and if you know the bike already having fettled it then you will be more relaxed about it and accept it as part of the adventure. Also you will know what it should be like and are more likely to spot it if things start to go wrong.

One thing has occurred to me and that is the route. Are you set on going from Australia to the UK or would the Uk to Australia be acceptable? There is a simple reason for asking - if you go from the UK to Australia then you can just about time everything to be travelling in good weather - think of a very long summer - rather than be going through all sorts of weather. There is an Australian couple - Shirley and Brian Rix (Aussiesoverland.com.au) that chronicled their journey in a book and they switched the route to going back to Oz for that reason.

Hi is that question for me? If so I thought I would continue on where I left off a few years back. I then rode to Darwin and put the bike on a boat bound for dilli, Timor last, then island hoped from jipang to Flores and bajo to sapa and kept going till I got to Bali. Then sent my hp2 home. I reckon I would ride from Bali to Gilimanuk then take ferry to java and up to Sumatra and a ferry to Malaysia then ride to Bangkok and go left or right. Not real sure.