Heading West

I turned left today.  I have finished with north for the time being and I really will only be needing west for the next few weeks.

The mainland beaches of far north Queensland are very ordinary. Exhibit A:

Rex Lookout north of Cairns.
Hang-waiting is the same the world over.

Someone's day ended badly between Port Douglas and Mossman yesterday. Single vehicle accident, perfect weather, dry roads, light traffic.  Thought of you Griggsy when the helicopter landed in the middle of the highway to medevac the injured occupants.  You must have flown quite a few similar missions.  I find it heartening in Australian society the lengths we go to look after each other in emergency situations.  Three different emergency services were in attendance. Traffic was held up in both directions for over an hour, ending up stretching 3-4kms in both directions.  Occupants were out of their cars roaming around and chatting to total strangers as they do on such occasions. There was not a murmur of complaint. 

The Daintree is a big river, and deep within its adjacent rainforest a decent espresso can be found.

Road signs in the Daintree are unlike those found in our capital cities.

The first warns of the cassowary, which while not an apex predator, is apparently an apex nuisance with little road sense. As the sign shows, it is prone to standing on its own foot and cannot get out of the way. The second sign is more interesting, and I must confess I was unaware that if you keep one set of wheels on a concrete causeway in fast flowing water, the other half of the car will float. That is good to know.

When you get out west of the Great Dividing Range they try to scare you with pictures of cows eating cars. I didn’t buy it for a minute.

I mean, I saw something that looked like a cow only thinner, with no horns and its ears on upside down, yet it steadfastly refused to even sniff the GS.

A cow-like creature refusing to eat my motorbike as advertised,  having been given opportunity.

But back to the Daintree for a moment. They do tree canopies over roads very well there. Moisture is ever present in all its forms. The non-stop winter south easterly blows moist warm air onto the coast and mountains, creating huge banks of cloud which envelop the higher peaks and ridges. The humidity is very high, and there is slowly swirling mist in unexpected places in the forest and roads through it. Dampness pervades all. Despite a willing wind, complete cloud cover and drizzle, the temperature was steady around 28-29C.

At a look out which presents panoramic views of the southern coast and hinterland of the Daintree, is a sign.

I think I had a bit of a feel for the language, and certainly for the people, and I took the sign as a command. So I had a bit of a wahluoogideegah myself. It felt good. Coming from Melbourne I am of course much more familiar with the Wurrundjeri tongue, which I often dream in.

Tropical rainforest doesn’t follow any of the rules for plants. For example the old rule of one plant one stem/trunk is out the window. All manner of unholy liaisons must go on under cover of the mists deep in the jungle, probably at night, producing plants with features of many species but somehow all living off the one stem or trunk. Someone should sort this out.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
There is a section of 20kms or so of curves which climbs up between Mossman and Mount Molloy to the Atherton Tableland. This stretch should be in the top 10 rides in Australia. It was unexpected, uncrowded and exhilarating.
 
Once on the Atherton Tableland the road continues to climb to over 3,000 feet above sea level. This is magnificent country. The coastal hills and mountains dry out the moist air from the sea, and all that remains of it are huge banks of cumulus now to the east like a fat doona over the mountain tops. The tableland has rich red soil, pasture which attracts fat shiny cattle from all over and cool air. It got down to 20C as I rode through the undulating curves on virtually uninhabited roads. The cattle are all blue ribbon specimens, the towns look prosperous, the farm houses do not bespeak struggling, and it’s enough to make you want to be a farmer.
 

But continuing west of the Great Dividing Range, and it is quite a different story. Even the gum trees bespeak struggling. The moisture-laden winds which are so generous to the coast and extended hinterland, have nothing left past a certain point inland. It shows. There were no clouds, there was no visible moisture anywhere, the temperature climbed to 32C, the wind died, the roads were long and straight. Once again, I was in a different place.

There is a species of ant which lives in large colonies, and constructs amazing anthills in which they reside. Because of the need for warmth early and late in the day, and the need to avoid the midday heat, these ants construct their huge dwellings on a long and narrow floor plan, cunningly oriented north/south so that it presents its smallest aspect to the cruel midday sun.

These ants should come and conduct a few workshops between Mount Garnet and Georgetown. The ant attitude here seems to be north shmorth, let’s just slap her together and move in - the bigger the better. There is no pride in workmanship here.

They should not be proud of this blob, maximising as it does heat retention from the sun at noon.

Of course ants vary in motivation and needs just as we do. I did spot this modest adobe abode away from all the others.  These ants are probably a bit alternative, a bit arty, and have a relation who is an architect. But alas, they also appear cavalier as to the location of north, magnetic or true.

An hour from sunset I refuelled in Mount Surprise. The main surprise was that there was no mountain. It was flat as something really flat (simile fatigue - I'm sure it will pass).


As I rode west totally blinded by the setting sun, using only the GPS to stay on the road, there was a short straight which went north and allowed me for a moment to look to my left and savour the splendour of the late afternoon sun west of the Great Divide. These were the colours.

Mossman to the Daintree, a wet world of mists and wildly imaginative vegetation. Cape Tribulation to the cool richness of the Atherton Tableland. All capped off with the relentlessly sun-punished beauty of the landscape west of the Great Divide.

It was a good day.

(This was written yesterday and posted today, Saturday).

The Bruce Highway Finally Delivers

Today I rode from 10am to Townsville.

I woke in Proserpine to steady rain and high humidity which the locals assured me was unseasonal.  Nothing rustles in this humid environment.

50kms north of Townsville, the rain stopped, the sky turned blue and the temperature leapt from 22 degrees to 30 degrees C where it stayed for the rest of the day.

I rode into Bowen for breakfast at the Horseshoe Bay Cafe, and was greeted with scenes like this:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I did have my fruit Liz, in the form of sliced strawberries on thick white French Toast with health syrup.

Riding around Bowen with my summer gloves on, jacket undone, visor up, all liners removed and thermals packed away, the mighty GS purring quietly (due to BMW engineering and my efficient earplugs), Raybans doing their job, warm air flowing therapeutically over me, it occurred to me that to describe this would take a really long sentence. Seems I was right.

I have finally left the gravitational pull of Victoria. I am in a different place.

But believe it or not, that miserable Bruce Highway, notwithstanding its close proximity to coast like this to inspire it could only manage dust, brown grass, occasional uninteresting trees and pretty ordinary hills. This highway just doesn’t try.

However the girls at the Gumlu Fruit and Vege Chev try and succeed, and provided a bargain priced banana and a chat.

This was in contrast to a morning tea I had in a very small town south of Rockhampton the other day. Having established that a bus load of tourists had bought all the fresh apple pies (I wasn’t going to eat one Liz, I was going to bring it home for you), I ordered a black tea and a banana. “That’ll be a dollar and five cents,” I was told, in a tone which dissuaded me from entering negotiations with a view to rounding down to the nearest dollar. An excellent banana was produced after payment, together with a mug of black tea. After refusing sugar, and clarifying that the sort of black tea I wanted was without milk, I was asked if it was strong enough. I nodded affirmatively, and the server picked up the tea bag, strained it between forefinger and thumb into my cup, and took it out the back. I don’t know whether they peg them out to dry or have them dry cleaned for re-use or what, but $1.05 buys only a banana and the use of the tea bag at that establishment. It seemed that property in the tea bag did not pass to me upon payment as I had supposed it might. Tea bag hire I suppose you could call it. I must look into this.

As I approached Townsville, the mountains to the west suddenly became spectacular, and the sights more interesting. A steady 15-20 knot sou-easterly blows in from the sea for most of winter from what I can gather, and when that moisture hits the mountains it creates mist, low stratus and rain which affects the aesthetics and vegetation in the immediate area, in a good way.

Then north to more blue skies, which can make even the old Bruce Highway look tolerable.

I decided to stop and have a closer look at one of the roadside memorials to traffic accident victims. The white posts outnumber them up here, but not by a lot.

His name was Nick, and this is how some of those close to him chose to honour his memory.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

It was a sad site, in many ways.

On to Townsville and a cabin looking over the sea to Magnetic Island.

The GS parked outside the reception office of the caravan park where I stayed in Townsville

Caught up with John and Heather (tanned nomads) who decided Townsville was preferable to Geelong for the winter.  Who could argue with that?

Thanks for lunch, breakfast and good company.

Now this is what I call a swimming pool. Northcote heated outdoor pool, even with its ducks, suddenly appears, well, less.

Solar heated seawater pool

Castle Hill is in the middle of Townsville. Views of and from respectively.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
North today to Cairns and possibly beyond.
 
(This was written yesterday, and posted today)

The Bruce Highway.

The Bruce Highway and the landscape through which it passes are not things of beauty. There is a lot of this:

I rode 720 kms today (this post written Tuesday and sent Wednesday).  Grey overcast skies, rain and a solid sou' easterly wind were the order of the day.  The Bruce Highway is the last resting place for a lot of roos.  I rode on in hope that today would be a quiet day on that front, which it was.  I did see a couple of  young roos on a park in the middle of Agnes Water, but they were clearly town residents and don't count.

At a roadside rest area 130kms or so south of Mackay, I met Greg, sheltering from the rain and pondering where to camp for the night.  I rode a further 250kms for the day from the rest area, and Greg decided against pedalling on to St Lawrence due to considerations of daylight and a dirt road. St Lawrence was 14kms away. 

Greg left Perth 9 months ago on a pushbike odyssey.  He has a further 8 months or so on the road.  Apart from ticking off the compass extremities of the country (the easternmost point at Byron Bay, the most southerly point in Tasmania, the tip of Cape York and some point around Shark Bay in WA), Greg has wandered down every side road which has taken his fancy, and even a few which have not.  He has not shied away from dirt roads, alpine hill climbs or remote areas.

He carries all the gear he needs to camp every night.

 He made a casing to completely enclose his chain, sprockets and derailleur, to keep the dust out.  Excellent idea.  I hope you are taking notes Alan H.

And the final touch is a nose cone on the whole rig which Greg has found to produce less wind resistance than the plastic water bottle which it replaced. Everything I know about aerodynamics says he has to be right.  But unlike those very expensive  single purpose nosecones on propeller hubs on light aircraft, you can wash your face and do your dishes in the blue model.

Greg has done some other long bike rides - I think this is his fourth.  But I gather none quite as long as this.  I don't know what his mission is, or even if he has one.  But I sensed he was very contented on the road he has chosen to travel.

My ride is the antithesis of Greg's ride in just about every way.  Yet there was also some common ground. 

My plan for the day had been to ride from 1770 to Mackay (I know, this time/space thing is messing with my head too).  There are joys in not planning ahead when on the road, but finding out that there is a mining expo in Mackay and that every bed, cabin and camp site for miles around is booked out, is not one of them. 

I did take the time to photograph the Hotel Whitsunday in Mackay, which is a place of some pleasant memories for me.  Sadly, age has not treated it well.  I didn't linger.  Revisiting towns in which you once lived, after some decades, is like seeing an old friend who refuses to recognise you.  Good places are worth revisiting.  Good times don't have geographical coordinates. 

There being no room at the inn, and a marked absence of guiding stars, I made the decision as dusk fell to ride another 120kms to Proserpine, where courtesy of a Google search on the iPhone, I had a bed booked for the night. Having ridden 600kms already, this was not plan A.  Riding a motorbike at night is not fun and should be avoided.  The world narrows to the road ahead.  Left and right of the highway was reduced to the occasional sniff of sugar cane and roadkill.  It rained for most of this ride. Oncoming road trains were flanked by a bow wave of water and road grime, which was a bit like flying through a cloud at night, but with white posts to your left and traffic on a reciprocal heading 2 metres to the right. 

Pleasure in a meal is at least in part a function of how hungry you are and how well earned it was.  The fresh red emperor and excellent salad which I managed to procure just before the kitchen closed in Proserpine was a significant pleasure on both counts.

The Town of 1770

Look it up. There is a town called 1770.  I arrived in 1770 around 1850 in 2010 on the 1200. 


I left Brisbane early this morning with Rob A accompanying me on his ex-police Honda motorbike.  We cruised around the hills to the north west of Brisbane for 200kms or so, before parting ways at Nambour. Plenty of time for a few coffees and a lot of curves. 

The distinctive profile of the Glasshouse Mountains under a gloomy layer of strato-cumulus.

In the township of Maleny (in the hills behind the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast) we spotted a solution to luggage space for the serious tourer.

A detail of this bike suggests that my BMW is possibly over-maintained.

A necessarily brief (I arrived late afternoon and had 140kms to go before sunset) but delicious afternoon tea was had at Bargara.  Thanks Jill.

Living on the coast of Queensland isn't all ocean panoramas, palm trees and exotic tropical plants, but this bit was.

Byron Bay

Gardens around Byron Bay do not need watering.

Everyone up here seems pretty pleased with where they chose to live.

                                    

Wategos, Byron Bay.

The easternmost point of Australia, the nicest prawns from Brunswick Heads, the freshest white bread from the local bakery, and the tastiest sauce available on the day.

There was a house reportedly worth $8m immediately behind where we sat feasting on our prawn sangers.  We didn't give it a second look.

                                    

You know what they say a picture's worth, so I'll spare you the thousand words.

Mt Warning, from Wategos, Cape Byron

Wategos point break, Julian Rocks in the distance.

Cape Byron Lighthouse, from Belongil Beach.

The hinterland between Ballina and Tweed Heads.

Thanks Brian and Susie for a most relaxing stay in Bangalow.

The North Coast of NSW

It finally feels as though I am closer to the equator. But it was otherwise yesterday morning.

I departed Newcastle in Melbourne conditions - rain and 11 degrees C.  The rain and low cloud persisted for about 150kms.  Then as if riding out from under a roof, I emerged from under the distinct northern edge of the dark cloud mass to blue skies.  The temperature climbed slowly with every km north, and settled down at a pleasant 18C for the last couple of hundred kms.  I was in the big river country, home of rivers such at the Clarence, Richmond and Macleay.  The paddocks are knee deep in springy tangled grass, the western horizon a silhouette of mountain ranges shaped like nothing in Victoria, and the sweet smell of sugar cane fills the air.

Evidence that I am getting closer to the equator

One of the pleasures of travelling alone is that other travellers seem to feel entirely comfortable striking up a conversation with a solitary motorbike rider.  Take Max for example, who I met at a roadside rest area just south of Kempsey, having a cup of tea with his wife.  Max wanted to talk 'Beemers', which he apparently rode for many years.  Max proudly told me that his membership number in the Ulysses Motorbike Club was 844.  I know very little of this club, but the context suggested he was a very early member.  And so Max and I talked Beemers and others things for a while. 

Max, Ulysses Club Member # 844

Others engage in more economical forms of communication.  When passing through Sydney, I was parked in multi-lane traffic at lights and could see a big Kawasaki in my rear vision mirror.  The rider was studying the back of my bike, which includes on the top box my blog address (containing the words 'R1200GS around Australia').   When the traffic moved again, he accelerated hard and passed me in an adjacent lane.  Continuing to look straight ahead, he simply bipped his horn and gave me a thumbs up with his gloved left hand as he disappeared in the Sydney way, lane splitting, accelerating and braking hard, for some illusory time gains, or possibly just for fun.

Max recommended that I sample a pie at Fredo's pie shop at Frederickton, just north of Kempsey.  I did sample the equivalent of a party pie, which left me somewhere between indifferent and regretful.  Interestingly Fredo's boasts crocodile pies amongst its fare.

Now I am not entirely persuaded by the whole karma thing.  But it does seem to me that as I intend to wade through a few rivers up in the Gulf country checking depth before crossing on the bike, it ill-behoves me to eat the mortal remains of the deceased brethren of the verymuchalive keepers of the water holes and river crossings.  While not necessarily guaranteeing me immunity from crocattack, it just might be that in the grand  scheme of things, blessed are the croc pie rejecters.

This is serious big river country.  Photos below are possibly of the Clarence, the Macleay and the Richmond Rivers (in no particular order), or some other rivers.

Dusk arrived earlier than expected and I found myself losing daylight some 30kms south of Bangalow.  I initially concluded that I had taken too many breaks during the day which had put me behind schedule, before more astutely concluding that dusk could be deferred a little longer by changing my raybans and tinted visor for their clear counterparts.

The day ended with the GS gliding over smooth concrete roads beside wide dark rivers, the air heavy with a heady blend of  moist evening air, sugar cane sweetness and rich green grass.

The cosy environment of the snug helmet, my warm gloves, the ambient sounds softened by efficient earplugs,  the thermal layers doing their job nicely, the engine smooth and powerful, the soothing rhythm of the bike leaning and sweeping around bends as if on autopilot, powerful yet gentle G forces alternating left and right, all meant that as the target 620kms for the day approached, the only regret was that there were no more kms to ride until tomorrow.

                           

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.