Mr Carter’s trip is fundraising for the RSPCA as well as being the first long distance trial of such a bike in Australia.

Southern Cross Motel owner Paul Blair hosted Mr Carter early last week, and Merredin Olympic Motel Peter Gerrand provided Mr Carter a free room and dinner at the Olympic Motel last Wednesday night to help him on his journey.

Mr Carter rode the motorcycle around the town on Thursday morning to see some of Merredin’s sights and chat with locals, before continuing on to the next

stop on his schedule, Coolgardie.

The bike was built by a mechanical engineering class at the University of Adelaide and is the only one of its kind registered in Australia.

Mr Carter began his journey from Adelaide several weeks ago and has already toured around the east coast and top of Australia and is now on the home stretch back towards Adelaide.

The bike runs on recycled cooking oil and waste fats, which are free, and has zero carbon emissions, but the bike has been plagued by mechanical problems.

“We have had it fixed several times, but it’s really amazing that we have got this far and it is still running,” said Mr Carter.

“Anything above 80 kilometres an hour, it starts blowing smoke everywhere, and police threatened to give us a yellow sticker so we’ve had to do the entire journey at 80.”

But speed is not essential for Mr Carter, who has been taking plenty of time to see and enjoy the towns he has passed through on the journey.

He is an author and plans to write a novel called The Good Oil about his trip, and a TV documentary about the

journey is also being filmed, which will include scenes from his visit to Merredin and his encounters with locals.

He said the bike, which cost $20,000 to build, was rough to ride and made him sore during the journey, but he expected it would provide a basis for more advanced models to be developed.

“We’re hoping that this prototype can be used to develop vehicles for agricultural purposes or as an alternative fuel for taxis and public transport.

“Every day, hundreds of tons of cooking oil are discarded from restaurants, which could be collected to run vehicles, such as this bike which can run 200 kilometres on eight litres of cooking oil.

“All the farmers I’ve met during this journey have shown a great interest in the bike and said they would definitely buy one if it became available commercially.”