The Cormanus Chronicles: Carnarvon Gorge

[Cormanus]

Day 6

[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1YPdFl_mvKBKzDOjC1qPJKOqvhs6Fs--r&usp=sharing]Map here

The day’s plan was to deliver KLR_Al to Cooroy where she oped to find cheap accommodation in reasonable proximity to Noosa, a premier Australian resort town. When I bought the CB1100 and joined this forum, I was living in the hinterland of the Noosa shire. I miss it. The local riding was so much better than being in a city.

We left Gayndah reasonably early and, again, had an uneventful trip.



View of the South Burnett Highway. The last is a great view as you begin the descent to the plain.

Well … almost uneventful. A short while after we turned off the A3 onto the Kilkivan Tansey Road, a passing 4-wheel drive spat a rock at me. It hit me precisely on the end of the middle finger of my right hand. Hard. It hurt. A lot. Is it shameful to confess I wanted to stop the bike, sit by the side of the road and blubber? As it turned out I didn’t as KLR_Al was in front of me and there was nowhere to pass. Anyway, what good would it have done?

We kept going to Gympie a town of which I am not hugely fond except for Emelia’s Café. I’ve written of it before in these chronicles, having been there with both Pterodactyl and GrahamT. The proprietor, Giovanni, was an Italian gentleman and rider of a Ducati and a MotoGuzzi. He was often grumpy, bit always happy to talk motorcycles. Last time I was there with GrahamT, I learned he’d died tragically.

Giovanni and Pterodactyl outside Emelia’s Café in 2015

What with the finger and not having had breakfast and all, I was really looking forward to Emelia’s. But, of course, it was not to be. First there was nowhere to park. Then it looked like the café had changed hands. Whatever, it was clearly being renovated.

Hungry and exceedingly grumpy by then I suggested we push on along the lovely ride through Cedar Creek. It was a glorious change from the flat, fast South Burnett. The grass was a glorious green, the water in the dam sparkled and corners abounded. KLR_Al commented on how different it was to the previous day’s ride; much more like France.

At Kin Kin we stopped at the Black Ant Café which had undergone something of a transformation since I was there last. The food looked delicious and I was looking forward to a ciabatta roll of some sort until the officious proprietor told us they were available only to be taken away. We could not buy a roll and a cup of coffee and sit and eat it in the café. Apparently we could have a table only if:
[li]we were prepared to order food from the a la carte menu; or[/li] [li]we were having coffee and a cake.
[/li] Coffee and a cake: OK. Coffee and a roll: No. Go figure. Even now, sometime later, I can’t find any logic in the rule. Somehow I managed to swallow the indignities of the morning and made do with a coffee and cake. The roll would have been much better.

The twisties in the middle of the stretch of road between Kin Kin and Pomona were every bit as much fun as I remembered and we soon arrived intact in Cooroy. I refuelled and said farewell to KLR_Al. I pointed my nose to the hinterland, and some fabulous roads on the final leg home.

There’s only one photo: from the steep and glorious descent on the Bellthorpe Range Road.


Epilogue
Another enjoyable trip on the CB1100. As it turns out it was the final one in this strange, COVID-afflicted year, 2020. I guess I did well to manage 3. An injury will keep me off the bike for the rest of the year, but I’m hoping to get rolling again later in January 2021. Pandemic permitting, of course.

For the numerically minded I travelled 2,286.4 kms; used 125.17 litres of fuel at an average of 5.06 L/100kms. You can’t reduce fun to a number.