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This was the longest adventure undertaken by VVCMCC since the New Zealand tour of 2005. Only three riders commenced this ride Lorraine Litster & Mac West, both on BMW K75's & Steve Keough also BMW mounted on his R100RS. Steve was however providing Mac & I with moral support as he returned home at lunchtime on Day 1, when we reached Temora. Here is the story of our trip. On again ever westward, with the country looking glorious after good rain in early Spring. Temora was having a flying weekend, this event has been the venue for two previous VVCMCC overnight events in 2006 & 2007. The former being a major washout with torrential rain. We drove to the museum in time to see the early jets take to the air. These are my favorites, the Gloucester Meteor & De Havilland Vampire, both late 1940's early 50s designs followed by the Canberra Bomber also a durable 50s design. Indeed these aircraft are of a similar age to my MSS Velocette! Steve left us for home & Mac & I thanked him for his support before we headed west again. We stopped at Ariah Park where we were welcomed by the landlady who remembered me from the 2006 weekend. After a chat & a cold drink it was on towards Ardlethan, where my K75 low fuel light came on, strange. But this was Saturday afternoon & there were no fuel stations open. So on we rode to the other small towns, all similarly closed. This was serious and I was concerned I would not reach Griffith. Indeed I did not and the bulldozer crawled to a halt just outside the town: but oh joy: I was only 200 yards from a petrol station which was open, so a short push & I was fueled up, all only 5Km from Griffith. So we rolled into town & booked into the Area Hotel in Griffith's main St. This was a big mistake as you will see.(I had intended to stay at the Victoria , just down the street). We had a lovely meal at the RSL & all was well, the bikes were locked up behind the pub and we felt fine. That was until 1030pm when a disco fired up downstairs, a very loud disco. I lay there with the room vibrating to the music until midnight when I dressed & went downstairs to find several hundred revelers in a heaving nightspot. We had not been told of this when we paid for our room & I was ropeable. I found the manager who seemed genuinely concerned when I waved the key under his nose saying I had booked a hotel room to sleep in, & was not impressed. He refunded our money, which was little consolation for a lost night's sleep. Mac went down later & was similarly amazed at the disco. At 2:30am it did eventually stop & we slept exhausted to about 730am.
West again on a detour to Maude we rode. This could have been a disaster when we hit a plank bridge at high speed & were lucky to remain in the saddle. There should be a road sign 'Beware Plank Bridge'. More caution was in order!! Balranald arrived, a similar town to Hay, but smaller. Here we rode to a park on the bank of the Murrumbidgee. A green oasis & a healthy looking river: children swimming betrayed the lack of flow, despite the good water level: not so healthy perhaps? West again and the last of the dreadful Hay plain, with a short stop at Euston, soft drinks were needed as the cool Day 1 had given way to a hotter Day 2. Mildura arrived, another irrigated green land nestled on the Murray & kept alive by its life giving water, surrounded by desert. Mildura proved to be a sophisticated place, altogether superior to the 'ocker' town of Griffith. The town only has two pubs, both of which had been turned into up market places beyond our budget. So instead we stayed at a very good motel on Dickson St. Again a very good meal was eaten at the Workman's Club, just along the street. Ah! This trip was going well. Mac & I even had a swim in the motel pool. How were the bikes going? Well Mac's K75 was fine, but my Bulldozer had developed alarming noises in the range 40-80Km/hr. A telephone call to Doug Bryant, the Canberra BMW sage, identified the noises as injector caused. I was advised to ride faster beyond the noise! OK!! I can do that I replied!
******** Beyond Wentworth, where we had fueled & eaten, the country became desert again very rapidly. However we continued blessed with mild weather. Mac & I had swapped K75s to experience the difference between Mac's fared & my naked bike. Soon I saw how Mac could maintain higher speeds with less effort than myself. & Mac realised why I had been requesting lower cruise speeds. Mac professed relief to get his own bike back at the roadhouse. The only place to stop on the whole route was the Coombah Road House, so we dutifully stopped, dusty & feeling like characters from Mad Max. Fuel & water/de-water (think about that) & we were off again towards a distant range of hills: the broken hills? The day was warm & the shadows long when we rode into this almost mythical mining town, littered with mining machinery & spoil heaps both new & long abandoned. The pubs proved to be very disappointing in this old & care-worn town, many were long since shut, with their licences transferred to big city wine bars many miles away. Many others had become guesthouses & the like: consequently we ended up in a lodge in a motel style room. A walk around the old streets of the town showed that the predominant building material had been corrugated iron, not only for the roofs, but the walls too. The town was well past its best, with many houses run down or abandoned. Finding a decent place to eat was a challenge too & I ended up eating alone in a pizza place whilst Mac went to the cinema.
******** We rode out of town northward to Silverton, a ghost town which had been a silver mine. In more recent years it was the location for Mad Max 2, its claim to fame. There were only a few buildings remaining, churches, the court house, the council building & a few cottages oh & the pub remained. This was a lovely pub sporting photos of all the crews who had used the town for film sets, including Mel Gibson & his cast drinking in the pub, in costume. Outside was a car used in the film, a 1970s Ford. Further north we reached the escarpment as the range dropped into the desert plain to the north. This really was 'outback'. Back again to BH & then off to the south to Menindee, where ancient lakes have been transformed into water storage for the Darling River, & where BH's water comes from. There was water in the Darling, but evidently not enough to store any & we found the 'lakes' dry. We took a dirt road along the Darling for a while & this is where we hit a snag. The river looked grand but the road back was heavily corrugated & Mac hit a snag. The bracket holding his instruments sheared off & the dials were hanging on their cable. Okky straps were tried but only the beloved duct tape did the job properly, before we could ride back to BH. On our return we explored an old closed mine-head & took photos. That evening we ate at the Musicians Club, a hang over from the days when BH had lots of brass bands, which I also suspect have disappeared. There we had a good meal & we were satisfied on our return to the 'Lodge'.
******** The Darling is just a puddle now sadly & the grazing land has become desert again. This poor town is a wreck, with a significant population of aboriginals who appear to have neglected the town to the point of its demise, with ruined buildings & boarded up businesses the norm. I discovered an amazing sight whilst there: the substantial Victorian nunnery next door to the Catholic Church had lost its entire end wall, which lay in a pile of rubble beside the building. This can't be blamed on the black fellas, but it was a graphic indication of a town in its death throws. On again to the east across more desert and another ancient range of hills appeared, the Macculloch Range. We crossed them too & beyond them the desert began to change. First small shrubs were seen, then larger ones & then trees, sparse at first but later almost a park like forest in places. Our time in the desert was evidently coming to an end. Cobar appeared, a really ordinary NSW town, a miners town & a tidy place, full of tradesmen in blue singlets & boots. We booked into the big old pub with quite a nice motel style room out the back, surrounded by utes & small trucks, belonging to the clientele. That evening we sought out the RSL for our meal, it was Asian & not very good sadly, but we were satisfied. It had been a long day's ride.
******** The Court House was the most wonderful piece of Victorian architecture, modeled on a maharajah's palace. After a snack in a little old fashioned cafe we had to cross the Darling again to say we had been 'Out-the back-of-Bourke'. I was amazed to see a tourist 'destination' of the same name being built outside town. What it will do is anyone's guess. Incidentally the bridge over the Darling was the earliest lifting bridge on the NSW river system, originally manually operated. It seemed amazing that large boats once came up river beyond Bourke This town's purpose must have been as a trading port like Wilcannia in colonial days, but unlike that other town Bourke evidently has found itself another purpose. We now headed east again & dry country slowly gave way to farming. We had not seen such activity since we left irrigated Mildura. We arrived in Brewarrina, which was a small & slightly scruffy little town, again with its 'burden'. We had lunch in a little cafe full of faded 1920s decor & silver to match. It must have been quite a treat in those lost days, a sort of ice cream parlour perhaps. The old couple running it were still cooking meals on a coal fired range. It is surprising what one finds in these forgotten places. On again o Walgett, where my original plan had been to stop for the night. This was a tidy little town well worthy of an overnight stay, but our plans had changed & after a brief stop we rode on eastward, to Burren Junction. This unremarkable village is the site of a hot spring, actually a bore which went wrong. A pool was built & the hot water gushing up, fed into it. We stopped here for a swim,: it seemed to be a favoured stop for the grey nomads of whom at least ten groups were camped for the night.
******** Then it was off to the boring Pilliga Scrub, not really scrub but a poor sort of forest with only a few species evident. This ride took us to Coonabarabran. There was traffic now & I began to miss our wide-open roads & vast vistas of the real outback. Coonabarabran was a nice town too, the sort of place I could live. Another cafe was found, with a light lunch eaten. My original plan had been to ride to Dubbo hence to Parkes & home, but we decided that the route further east via Dunedoo, Gulgong & Mudgee would offer better riding. The country looked magnificent, green & lush, with farms looking prosperous. This was different country altogether to that of the past week. This was NSW heartland. In Dunedoo we refueled & I was very sad to see that the Royal Hotel had closed, its licence probably gracing a trendy Sydney wine bar. I had stayed at this pub many years ago on my return from a ride to Cape York & back, my last night in fact. I remembered it fondly. On we rode to Gulgong as the afternoon lengthened. We stopped there too to wander the narrow streets of the very English looking little town, a left over from mining too, like Silverton, but no ghost town this one! We rode on then to Mudgee only to find that it was hosting a massive wine & rock music festival & the town was full. So there was little to do but to ride back to Gulgong. After all it was only 30Km away. There we booked a room in a pub & a delightful pub-crawl of an evening resulted.
******** From Kandos we rode to Sofala where a drink in the pub was welcome. There were other riders there as this was Saturday & we had a sociable stop. Then onto Bathurst, with my fuel light on again. The poor running I mentioned earlier was gradually worsening, & with it the fuel consumption. But I got to Bathurst & to fuel before our we visited our last cafe of the week: a relaxing place with sofas to sit on. The next leg was to Oberon & onto the newly tarred Taralga road. A word of warning to you all however. This was a C Class road with lots of dirt before: now it is a C class road with tar. The same steep gradients, sharp corners & narrow creek crossings remain so it warrants due care to ride it. Unfortunately the sudden advent of a tar road between Goulburn & Bathurst has brought out a nasty rash of hotted up Holden drivers, who treat it as an A Class road: it is not. This was Saturday afternoon & not good a good time to be there. Sadly I predict motoring carnage on this road in the next year or two. It may however mean a renaissance for Taralga, long a forgotten backwater. Our last final leg to Goulburn & home was uneventful. I didn't see Mac again after we refueled in Goulburn, he was keen to get home. I arrived home by 6pm a tired but very contented rider. The bike was a mess of smashed insects & baked on dirt, but a good tub the next day got it back to normal. It is now back at Doug's for a 2nd go at the injectors.
******** Lorraine Litster ******** LARGER VERSIONS OF THE PHOTOS CAN BE SEEN HERE |
