Laava and MamaJo's Great Aussie Bike Tour!

[Laava]

Part One

Day 1, Sept 14th 2012. We fly out of Orks at 6.30pm to Sydney where we are met by Tony, the man who has agreed to our scheme of doing a bike swap, and has generously also picked us up from the airport and put us up for the night. We meet his lovely wife Sue and have supper and a few nips of American Honey with them before crashing for the night.

Day 2, Saturday. We load our stuff onto “Wee Willie” and depart Sydney heading south to Nowra where we have our first lunch, fish and chips etc, more than we can eat! On the advice of Tony we head SW thru the Turpentine Rd also known as the Braidwood Rd. Soon we come to a waterfalls where we have to stop for a look. Here we discover, thanks to the tight turning in the carpark, that the handlebars on LHS contact the tankbag activating the horn button and what a horn it is! I am sure Tony has pilfered it from a freight train, and so are the people we have just scared witless! We continued on to Braidswood and stopped for a cuppatea, still a bit underwhelmed with the weather, which we thought would be way warmer than home. Not that it was a problem as we did not feel the need to be ripping all our gear off every time we stopped! We continued on through the Araluen road to Cooma which was mostly gravel and turned to hard packed clay as we wound through the forest portion. We were astounded by the number of dead roos and wombats on this stretch of road and realized that we did not want to be hitting any of these very large road obstacles! Cooma turned on another cuppatea and then we pushed on for Jindabyne through Berridale. This is where we realized that we had made the mistake of not doing enough research and had arrived in full ski season/school holidays! So there was no accommodation available at all! We had to backtrack to Jindabyne east, in the dark and freezing cold, where we scored possibly the last room in the area.

Day 3, Sunday, We got up and consumed the breakfast that was thankfully included in the most expensive accommodation of the trip, and after scraping off the frost fired Willie up and pointed him at the alps! We only got as far as Ski Tube, just shy of Thredbo, before effectively getting turned back at National Park entryway. Our preferred option of the Barry Way was also not an option due to slippage so we decided to head SE instead of SW and miss out on the Alpine Highway for now which I had been looking forward to. So we followed the Snowy River Way to Bombala which was very open and rural up high in the hills. So far we had managed to avoid the long straight roads and just stick to secondary or rural roads. Bombala was our early lunch stop and then we headed 3km out of town on to the Delegate road where there was a Platypus reserve. Nobody else was there and contrary to the displayed info, which informed us that we needed to be there dusk or dawn, there was a Platypus swimming mid river as well as some very noisy but invisible frogs and several basking lizards.
I was keen to do the delegate road but hadn’t enough fuel so we went down the Monaro highway for a little bit before heading due east on the Imlay road. I should mention that most of the roads we took are specifically mentioned in Tony’s HEMA motorcycle atlas of OZ which he had sent over to us in NZ much earlier. Imlay road is through forestry areas so we are advised to watch out for logging trucks but it is Sunday and no-one seems to be working today! The road goes through a couple or three state forests and we made the most of it pulling off to take a break and hunt for critters. There were only a couple of cars on the whole road which made it seem a lot more remote than it is. We hit the Princes highway and turned south and headed for Victoria where we turned left at Genoa to head for the coast at Mallacoota. Yet another cuppatea and we headed back to the Princes Highway to turn off at Orbost to stay the night at a lovely seaside town called Marlo at the mouth of the Snowy River.

Day 4, Monday, We turned west on the Princes Highway again and stopped at Lakes Entrance for brekkie and a quick wander across the estuary, hopefully to molest the as yet unphotographed pelicans. Nope, they proved too smart for us! So we saddled up and headed off through Bairnsdale, and the south end of the coveted Great Alpine Rd, to Sale where we deserted the Princes for the South Gippsland Highway to Welshpool where we went to the port and had a slightly disappointing scallop pie. Well in fact I had 1 and ¾ pies. So not too disappointing then! Some linesman guys there told us to do Wilsons Promontory which apparently is a good place to encounter wombats. Unfortunately we were already running out of time as we needed to be in Mel for the night. So we cracked on for the Bass Highway via Tarwin Lower and Venus Bay through to Inverloch. I should mention that there are an endless supply of great holiday spots here such as Venus Bay and Marlo etc. Guaranteed they will be booked out at Xmas time. So, Bass Highway to Melbourne then but this is where we started to use our sat-nav, who we have come to know as Bitch-face! We got diverted through Koo Wee Rup for apparently no other reason, other than to irritate us. She eventually found Jesse and Katherines place and from there we found a nice flash place to stay in Toorak Rd and do some laundry etc. Kath and Jesse took us out to some Grill place that I can’t remember the name of and then we crashed in our city apartment for the night.

pic 1 We took loads of sign photos
pic 2 We took loads of roadkill photos
pic 3 I appear to defy gravity in this photo. Or was I dancing?
pic 4 Us and Tony and Sue the owners of "Willie" I had washed him that day
pic 5 It's a sign!
pic 6 Can't get over the size of the gas bottles here! How do you lift them?

[Akzle]

pics or it didn't happen....

[gijoe1313]

Loverly jubbly! Thanks for doing a ride report and including so much detail! Perhaps not too much to have a map of your travels posted up?

Keep up the good riding and keep it safe out there!

[Laava]

pics or it didn't happen....

Done.

Loverly jubbly! Thanks for doing a ride report and including so much detail! Perhaps not too much to have a map of your travels posted up?

Keep up the good riding and keep it safe out there!

Is that easy? I will investimigate!

[Maha]

Aussies use Gas Bottle lifting Wombats Al....like the one in the first pic (or is that Roo?)...who seems to be very tied of lifting all those gas bottle in the heat of the day.

[Laava]

Oh yeah, true, like the ones that will flip your car over backwards in one of the other sign pics!

[Laava]

Part Two

Day 5, Tue, We had to go and find a laundry to dry our now wet belongings as the drier function of the machine we used was way beyond our comprehension. So we crashed a backpackers and jammed all our stuff in their drier and went to a yuppy breakfast spot with wifi while we waited. After sufficient coffee and croissants had been quaffed we grabbed our laundry in plastic bags and scooted back to the apartment keeping an eye out behind us in case we left an undie trail. We wandered into Mel city via the botanical gardens and jumped on one of the free buses only to hop off again a couple of stops later. After cris crossing the river a couple of times we sadly ended up losing our camera which was a shame because even though we had 2 we had only been using this one so lost all our photos! Also now it had started to rain and we went to the cops in vain hopes of getting it back, although it didn’t pan out. So, a bit dampened now, in more ways than one, we headed back to Toorak Rd and grabbed our stuff. We rode in the rain to the port where we had an uneventful boarding on the Spirit of Tasmania. It is well set up and after we had dumped our stuff in the cabin, we got out camera 2 and headed to the bar to get ready for the 7.30 sailing. Of course it was dark so not much to be seen really apart from the restaurant catering for hungry travellers.

Day 6, Wed, at 5.50am we got a wake up call that told us to be ready at our vehicles at 6.30. We did a basic breakfast first while peering outside at Devonport, our first glimpse of Tassie. Wasn’t long before we were outside, powering off on Willie towards Launceston, or Lonnie as the locals call it. We stopped in Lonnie for our usual late breakfast/early lunch and I yelled out “ Jackpot!” or somesuch at the guy, outside the café, emptying the parking meters loudly with a big avalanche of coins. Got a laugh out of some touristy backpacker types sitting there too! We did our usual blasting the horn as we stopped at the info centre much to Jo’s embarrassment! Eventually we found SH1 south and followed it to Campbell Town for cuppatea and left turn over lightly raining hills to the coast and a town called Swansea that supplied me with an awesome meat pastie! We booked some accommodation, from there, at White Beach near Port Arthur and then set off in that direction. We followed the Tasman Highway to Sorrell and then the Arthur Highway to White Beach stopping to check out a few of the landmarks such as the tessalated rocks and Eaglehawk Neck which has a spectacular coastline. Not to mention many awesome motorcycling corners! We stayed in a small cabin at White Beach and had dinner at a pub at Port Arthur where the prison is. We had a look over the prison but didn’t go in as it was latish and we were on a time constraint! We spotted some critters that looked like tiny wallabies [rabbit size] and Jo spent some time snapping pics of them. At dinner, some locals from Hobart got chatting but didn’t know what the critters were which surprised us a bit, Turns out they are pademelons. We rode the 10km back to White Beach in the dark very slowly to avoid hitting the pig sized wombats that lurk in the bushes waiting for motorbikes.

Day 7, Thurs, Had a wander on the beach in the morning and had to imagine what it would normally look like without all the heaps of seaweed piled up. Also had to imagine what the oysters that came out of the enormous shells on the beach would taste like. Almost found out when we got nearer to Hobart and went past an oyster farm. Of course we went in and I had a half dozen oysters for breakfast. Jo passed me ¾ of her bacon and egg pie as well! So now we were heading to Hobart and although we were to turn to the north and avoid Hobart altogether, Bitch-face had other ideas and had us take some wrong turns and steer us ever closer to disaster! Using common sense and the moss on the trees approach, we soon had the whole plot steered to New Norfolk where we found a most interesting home bakery to imbibe of the usual doughnuts and cuppatea. The next stretch of road from New Norfolk to Strahan through Queenstown is without doubt the best bit of road we did in Straya. It was about 140km and started off rural but had loads of corners and climbed up into the mountains where there is a huge hydro power scheme with inter linking canals etc and lots of twisty roads up hill and down valley before rising up into alpine territory. It was getting a bit nippy as well but it was spectacular, very south islandish. Near the end the road drops down into Queenstown and it is a series of tight smooth turns that you can see through most of the way. After a couple of turns I was starting to scrape the footpegs on the road and although I could tell Jo was nervous about the noise, by the bottom she was happily snapping photos mid corner! I should add that the pegs have been lowered on this bike, peg scraping is not my usual style at all! Another 40km or so of similar roads and we were in Strahan which is a beautiful little seaside town well worth a visit. Macquarie Harbour here was one of the least accessible places in Tassie and had a prison at Sarah Is which still draws tourists. The entrance to the harbour is called Hells Gates and for a good reason. I wanted to do a boat trip here but time etc etc. We had tea at the pub and wandered home to our cabin in the drizzle.

Day 8, Friday, It was raining in the morning so we had a breakfast at the local shop and tried to tell the campground ladies about the telly being on in the cabin beside ours. “Cabin 1? That telly just comes on by itself and no-one knows why!” Spooky?
On went the rain suits and we headed off, up north through Zeehan to Roseberry where we sat wet in the bakery for a bit, chatted to some maori bloke about how all the locals were getting sick from all the heavy metals from the mines. Nice! Then on to cradle mountain where we crashed the national parks barrier and rode up in the rain and cold to the viewpoint which is surprisingly spectacular! Very much like the Ruwenzori Mts in Uganda I had visited with the very thick wet moss. Heading further north the rain stopped and we arrived in Devonport mostly dry and sat in the Info centre with wifi before feeding our faces on the water front prior to boarding for Victoria. We boarded with about 10 cops doing a motorbike tour from WA and a couple of larrikins from Vic who told me all their best hooning stories. Jo read her book.

pic 1, The sign said no vehicles on jetty.
pic 2, Tessalated rocks near Port Arthur, Tasmania
pic 3, Natural rock arch near Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania
pic 4, Doo Town near Eaglehawk Neck. All the homes had names like, Dr Doolittle, Doo f*** All, etc
pic 5, White Beach near Port Arthur, normally has no weed on beach. Storm action the week before

[Laava]

pic 1, MamaJo is in her element on the beach collecting shells. Guess who had the camera?
pic 2, Our rig and another sign
pic 3,Obligatory photo of Tassie road showing BitchFace in her Tupperware container with iceblock sticks and tape holding it together. Hell yeah!
pic 4, Part of the massively impressive Tassie Hydro scheme
pic 5, Some of the stunning scenery on the Lyell Highway, New Norfolk to Strahan[strawn]

[Laava]

pic 1, Strahan, loved it and want to go back. Could live in a place like this.
pic 2, This crab in the Strahan Hotel is huge, the black part of it's claw will cover your face
pic 3, Make up your mind! Where are we going?
pic 4, Part of the tussocky, scrubby, swampy ground of the Cradle Mt National Park
pic 5, The ferry from Devonport to Melbourne

[colonel]

Sounds like to much fun. Now time to stop rubbing it in

[Laava]

Yep,fun alright!

[Laava]

Part Three

Day 9, Sat, We awoke to the same old drill at 5.50am and struggled down to our bike where we loaded up and headed out of the hold onto the wharf at Melbourne. Being so early we were surprised to find a café open and even better, they had wifi. So we coffeed and ate and surfed and watch the lycra clad peletons zooming this way and that and the early morning melbournites going out for the paper or voiding the dog or whatever they all do.
Leaving Melbourne we struck the M1 taking us to Geelong, Torquay and the Great Ocean Road. This had been recommended to us by Tony and others so was a must do. Once on the GOR we had only to pass about 3 cars and then had the road to ourselves amazingly! I made the most of this in places but we still stopped as needed to take photos etc. We must have stopped somewhere for cuppatea but I can’t remember where. We did however take the time to check out the 12 apostles in all their glory and it was a perfect day for it as well with no clouds and not too hot. We did a late lunch in Port Campbell and then headed north through Cobden and Camperdown where we went past the racetrack. I tried to make a weak joke of Camperdown racetrack 12 miles long doo dah doo dah etc but through the medium of helmet talking at speed, the humour was lost and Jo just shook her head. She does that a lot!
We continued on, unamused, through Lismore and Skipton to Beaufort where I tried to book us into the local campground. Full. School Holidays. So he booked us through to Lake Burumbeet campground where we had a great cabin plus lake. However the sound of banjos was not far away and the people running the place were very hillbilly in a very unattractive way. The lady had long fingernails that were unmanicured and looked like rams horns. Thank goodness she didn’t smile and spoil the effect! I am sure I heard her husband thing say “ahyuck!” Had dinner at the Burumbeet pub where the semifinal AFL match was happening. We got chatting with the locals about that which was cool and then headed in the direction of the dueling banjos to bed.

Day 10, Sunday, Headed off to Ballarat for brekkie and to get some oil to top Willie up. Found a supercheep and then a cafe in the middle of town. n.b In VIC you can park on the footpaths no prob, in NSW they will gut you like a fish! So we parked on the footpath, notably NOT blaring the horn in the process. Jo was getting very embarrassed by this recurring problem. The café was run by a charismatic greek dude and his mum who took our orders and asked us to sit down. I guess we were a bit untidy. The bloke said to me, ‘You from NZ?” and when I replied he said, “I can tell from your accents. Yours is not too thick but she sounds like she is straight outta the bush mate!” How people get away with these comments is amazing! I do not possess this gift!
The food was good and we had some chat with rude man before boarding Willie for the big day ahead. We followed the Midland Highway from Creswick up through Daylesford and Campbell narrowly missing Castlemaine to head to Maldon where we had an iced coffee and wandered around the quaint old shops. Loads of people come to Maldon probably because frankly the surrounding countryside is a bit boring. There was a constant stream of motorbikes and classic cars. Also there is a fire watch tower on the hill at Maldon which you can climb most of to get fantastic views for many kms in every directon. Maldon is the place we should have stayed in but we continued on northward joining up with the Loddon valley highway to Kerang where we booked a cabin for the night and bought some food to eat at home in comfort. Kerang is in an area that was totally flooded recently and there was only the township above water. The campground lady had cool photos taken from the air which looked a bit touch and go as to whether it was wise staying there at that time. It is in the Murray Valley beside the Loddon river.

Day 11, Monday, We left Kerang and followed the Murray Valley Highway SE for a bit through Cohuna, Leitchville and Gunbower to Echuca [achoo-car] which was another of those lovely towns you wish you had stayed in. Banjo free! We had a slap up brekkie with wifi on the upstairs balcony of some historic place and then wandered up into the old historic steam boat landing, on the Murray River, where you can still get a paddle boat cruise. Leaving Echuca, we were heading for Barmah through some forestry but as it was printed on the crease of the map, I followed the signs to Barham instead which took us NE in the wrong direction. We were on a gravel road which I was expecting and had a close one ploughing into bulldust. Fright over we continued on up the wrong way, unaware, stopping to take some photos of and then rescue [chase off road] a frilly neck lizard. Soon we were back on the seal and it started to dawn that we were not where we expected to be! Sure enough we were back at Kerang nearly!
We backtracked a little and then headed for Deniliquin miles off course, and then set sail for Finley and then Berrigan detouring south on the Yarrawonga Rd to Yarrawonga!
We were now back on the Murray Valley Highway and headed east through Yarrawonga alongside Lake Mulwala to Bundalong, Noorong Central and Rutherglen stopping for the night in Albury/ Wodonga. We had an awesome thai feed at the local in Albury and that was it for the day!

Day 12,Tuesday, Leaving Albury we went east through Wodonga around the south shores of Lake Hume through Tallangatta, still on the Murray Valley Highway to Koetong, Corryong and Towong and then northward on the Tooma Rd through Tooma to Tumbarumba, on to Batlow and Tumut [Chewmit] for a much deserved cuppatea. Now we had some backroads ahead of us. We took the Wee Jasper Rd which goes from Tumut to Yass. It started off sealed and rural, then went unsealed and rural. Then it got narrow. Bear in mind this is a logging road so we were on the watch for logging trucks! Then it narrowed still further! The bridges were the usual wooden hobnailed affairs, one way and flooded after rain. We met a truck shortly after one of these and basically had to ride in the ditch to avoid him and then suck on his dust for the next min or so. Just when we though things were bearable the surface turned to clay. Hard packed red clay. Soon there were rocks jutting up through it which was OK but best avoided if possible due to the sharp edges. Then it started to get a bit wet. Had it rained here? Soon it was also just a cutting rounding some high bluffs and also one lane had become a generous description. We encountered one ute going in the opposite direction and pressed on for some time thankfully passing through the forest valley to Wee Jasper where we took a breath of fresh air and some photos of a bridge. Yass bound, we saw some kangaroos on the side of the road that eluded Jos snapping camera, and we stormed along for a bit back on sealed roads to Yass for cuppatea and directional negotiations. [A regular occurrence] So, Hume Highway it was and we headed east to Goulburn for the night utterly stuffed

Day 13, Wednesday, This was to be our final day on the bike and again following Tony’s advice we set off toward the Blue Mts oop norf through Taralga towards Oberon where we cuppateaed and found the road to Jenolan Caves. This road got real interesting as we approached from the south and the views just got more and more spectacular all the way down the valley until we reached the caves. What a stunning piece of Australia! We didn’t spend as much time as we could have marching around the area but it was chocka with sightseers already. The road northwards out of the gorge was just as spectacular and soon we were back in rural Aussie heading towards Lithgow where we would find our last objective, Bells Line Of Road. Which is a mighty strange name for a road. It goes from Lithgow to North Richmond in Sydney. It started off with a series of tight sweeping uphill corners on a smooth surface and was hard to keep the speed down I can tell you! In fact, Jo could probably tell you too! Soon though, we had to stop at the Mt Tomah Botanical Gardens which was quite a find in what is essentially alpine country. We had ice cream or similar there and spent a while wandering about before heading off for the final leg back to Tony and Sue’s place. Once we reached North Richmond it was time to let Bitch Face take over and boy did she act up! We kept turning off certain roads only to rejoin them minutes later and as we got closer we seemed to be doing a lot of unnecessary detours! With 2.5kms to go we were steered through the gates of Rockall Cemetary which was huge and had a very high essence of “You shouldn’t be in here!” At one point another touring bike like ours went past us in the opposite direction and the people gave us a kind of confused wave! I bet they had a sat nav device as well! Apparently we popped out the other side and soon we parked outside Tony and Sues house where I had to give a final blast on the horns of Decibell! “I thought I recognized that sound!” Tony said as he and Sue came out to greet us.
Thanks are not enough for these folk and we very look forward to reciprocating the deal for them soon! Come on guys!
We had done 5100km in 11 days of riding. The V Strom never missed a beat and had no issues apart from rider induced ones such as the horn blasting.

pic 1,Great Ocean Rd, You can see it in the distance, it WAS great!
pic 2, One of the beaches we stopped at, this one to get ice creams cos we needed new sticks for Bitch Face
pic 3, Stairs down to the beach near the Twelve Apostles
pic 4, One of the Twelve Apostles with waves crashing on another, obscured one.
pic 5, Same again

[phill-k]

bloody good read - thanks

[Laava]

pic 1, Lake Burrumbeet, see the fisherman?
pic 2, Victoria seemed to have thousands of hectares of this yellow crop. I never found out if it was mustard or rape seed
pic 3, Is that a face?
pic 4, The view from the fire watch tower at Maldon. Note the yellow paddocks and residual flooding.
pic 5, Fire watch tower

[Laava]

pic 1, Abandoned chevy truck with a for sale sign. The sign was nearly as old as the truck
pic 2, Echuca, a real classic old Aussie town
pic 3, Steamboat cruises on the Murray river, Echuca
pic 4, This guy looks a little thirsty!
pic 5, And this guy got all pissy at having his photo taken!