Howdy from St Helena NE suburb of Melbourne, and welcome to the Forum Sid.
Cheers to all for the warm welcome and sorry to hear those in Vic have had their travel restricted once again (won't get into why, but have a few mates down there who are a wits end with all the shite.
Thanks for those words. Whilst the past and current COVID situation down here in VIC have been difficult, tiresome, frustrating, etc .. we are still better off than family and friends in the UK, EUR, USA and many other locations, so we just seem to soldier-on. Might be easy for me to say because family and friends here have not been too adversely impacted - we except for no. 1 son who was stood down from his five plus year airline job, but he picked-up a better one. Wife and I are pee'd off though, no more o/s business class flights for us.
Looks like I will be heading to Sydney area to hopefully pick up a 1300 in about 2-3 weeks. Will be buying up clobber/spares/tools/camping bits'n'bobs etc for the trip home.
Good luck with the ST1300, enjoy the ride home, turn the ride into a holiday. I'll presume you are an experienced rider with an ST1300, like most of us, and you don't need to be told too much, although there are a couple of ST1300 specific tips from me:
1. Spare set of keys.
2. Spare set of side pannier keys (I have, like some others on the Forum got some cut-off / half length keys), these stay in the locks throughout the day but removed when sight-seeing and overnight.
3. The OEM saddle is good, many of the after market saddle - Sargant, Russell (like mine) are better for the long km you'll be doing.
4. I like my " L" valve stems (some others aren't fans).
5. I also like my TMPS (some others have not been as sucessful - Garry and Langers, we still need to sort this matter out).
6. If you can get a RAM dash mount to mount some accessories, I think you'd prefer that over the individual mounts.
Others will be along with some suggestions re. highway pegs, cruise control, bar risers, driving lights - items which I don't yet - but as they have them, they will be more knowledgeable.
Appreciate all the info/yarns in the various forums- what a wealth of knowledge you have all put together. Maybe I can add an NT perspective to it a some point. Cheers Sid
Info, yarns and knowledge are aways better with pics.