The South Coast of NSW

Nowra - the host, the chef and the musician. The excellent co-host Hiromi was at work when this photo was taken. 

Near the Shoalhaven River - cool moist air, dry roads, and strobe lighting courtesy of the morning sun angling through the trees. Pleasant roads on which to let the engine and tyres warm up.

Pretty hard to take a bad photo in this part of the world.  This is the country betwen Nowra and Kiama.


I followed Highway 1 through Sydney.   Freeways, tunnels, airliners taking off on a runway which goes over the road, tolls, E tags (required but alas not possessed), fumes and gritty air, roadworks, sandstone cuttings, split second glimpses of the harbour, taxis all over the place, the road brilliantly lit one moment and in black shade the next, convoys of trucks, narrow-laned busy roads, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge looking grimy and past its prime.  Highway 1 is not the way to see Sydney.

Then north through the scrubby national parks north of Sydney, on multi-lane highways which sweep through massive cuttings and across long span bridges.  Despite the natural bushland it traverses, this particular road environment is hostile, with  more of an industrial ambience than a natural one. So much of the natural environment as was visible from the road, seemed peripheral in every way to these busy mega-highways. 

The highways just north of Sydney are imposed unsympathetically on and through the landscape with no evident regard for it. The highways between Nowra and Kiama flow with the landscape. 

The enduring impression from today is of cool morning air, bucolic splendour, and the purring GS atop a winding ribbon of bitumen that Rossi and Stoner would enjoy.  Motorbike riding is generally perfectly on song only for a note or two at a time - such as a long corner at the right speed where everything comes together nicely.  Occasionally it is possible to link a series of corners.  But the roads and conditions south of Kiama this morning allowed kilometres of uninterrupted pleasure where flow, balance, speed and traction were all in harmony.  Cornering on a motorbike is one of life's pleasures.

The views left and right were constant variations on the themes in the photo below.  I was tempted to do a u-turn and line up for seconds (which of course would have entailed thirds if I was to continue north). But it occurred to me that my trip is long enough done once.