The Cormanus Chronicles: Remembering Jake and Elwood

[GoldOxide_imp]

Ohhh, I really like this one...

Day 6 — Omeo to Omeo
[url=https://postimages.org/]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1ABt-HMtcUT7QB20xDoDdA61uMte9GP0&usp=sharing]Master map #1

It’s a little-known fact that my rides are largely unplanned. I mean, there’s a general idea of where I might go, but weather, an unexpected detour, or even a whim might mean I end up somewhere totally unexpected. As the planning had been left to me, it follows there were no real plans for Day 6. We were to meet AussieFlyer at the close of play on Day 7, but there was almost no reasonable ride we could do that would leave us with another decent day’s riding. What do you do when you’re sitting at the start of one of the best motorcycle roads in the country with excellent roads to ride over not one but two mountains?

Yeah. I know. A loop.

We faffed around waiting for the local petrol station to open, filled up, ate breakfast and drank a cup of coffee before retracing our path up the Omeo Highway. Well … NoRoomtoMove wasn’t, but that’s a mere detail.

Forty six kms up the road a little after Anglers Rest we turned onto the Bogong High Plains Road and climbed to Falls Creek ski resort at 1,780 meters. Approaching the town of Falls Creek from the west, the road is spectacular, winding around a dam. The Tasmanian bloke had described it as having a surface like a racetrack. It was a glorious day, too, just to make the experience better.



NoRoomtoMove leads us up onto the Bongong HighPlains


Rocky Creek Storage at Falls Creek.


A breather at Falls Creek

Then down the mountain, past the town of Mt Beauty before climbing again over the Tawonga Gap and descending to the town of Bright. There we found petrol, but no coffee, so we made do with a cooling ice cream. Well, it was hot, wasn’t it?


The road down to Mount Beauty is a … beauty!

The final leg of the loop — if loops can have — took us over Mount Hotham. It’s a fabulous ride up from the western side as, after winding around a ridge for some time, you pop out onto a razorback ridge for the final few kilometres. A miscalculation would result in a long, long slide down a steep hill. I don’t think you’d make it back.

Mount Hotham’s over there somewhere




The road winds around a ridge to the right of these photographs and then makes its way back to the centre of the shot. You can see the scar of the road on the mountain in the centre.




there are killjoys everywhere.



At the top of the road, the sign above claims the title of the highest coach road in Australia at 1,845 metres. Writing this, I went looking for the picture and, initially, couldn’t find it. That led me to the internet which told me that, the highest point of Australia accessible by road is 1,849 metres at a scenic look out at Falls Creek. That pips the highest point on the Hotham road which is said to be 1,840 metres. How does that align with the 1,845 metres shown here? I don’t know who to believe any more. Suffice it to say, low though Australia’s mountains are compared to their international competitors, this is as high as you can get on a road in Australia.

We rolled down the hill, stopping at a lookout, where we failed to see Mt Kosciuszko for cloud cover, before returning to the Golden Age Hotel for a quiet night.

Smart people park their bikes in the shade

Very enjoyable reading, fun to see the group grow.
"The Outback"...a name that likely brings up images of desolate areas, reddish landscapes and long, lonely roads. Just started watching "The Tourist" on Netflix. Opening scene:


Hmmm...twisty, foresty roads are fun, but I love long, straight, seemingly endless roads with no traffic, no signs, and a lot of nothin'. Allows the mind to wander. I think I would enjoy riding Australia east to west, but if I ever get to visit, I'm sure the days will be spent with my sister and doing local excursions around Adelaide. Still, one can dream...

So have you, Cormanus? Have you ever had the opp to ride "out back"?

Come to Utah. We have far more of the long, straight, endless roads than we do the twisty type. Such is life in the desert.

I love Utah! Playing with the idea of retirement days in St. George or Tucson. We get lots of the lonely roads in eastern OR as well. But The Outback...to me that seems on another level.

Australia overlay


Contour of The Outback


If my guestimates are close at all, The Outback would be like stretching Utah from Ohio to coastal California, from Minnesota to the Rio Grande.

Apologies, Cormanus, if I took your trip off course...I'm just admiring the wonderful expanse of Australia.

I love Utah! Playing with the idea of retirement days in St. George or Tucson. We get lots of the lonely roads in eastern OR as well. But The Outback...to me that seems on another level.

Australia overlay


Contour of The Outback


If my guestimates are close at all, The Outback would be like stretching Utah from Ohio to coastal California, from Minnesota to the Rio Grande.

Apologies, Cormanus, if I took your trip off course...I'm just admiring the wonderful expanse of Australia.
To boot, Australia can call itself its own continent.

[Cormanus]

Day 7 — Omeo to Thornton
[url=https://postimages.org/]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1ABt-HMtcUT7QB20xDoDdA61uMte9GP0&usp=sharing]Master map #1

We rugged up for the early morning chill and made our way back over Mount Hotham. That explains — if, indeed, any explanation is called for — why we rode an anti-clockwise loop the previous day. More fuel from the same service station in Bright, before breakfast at the Cherry Walk Café right opposite the pub where we’d met AussieFlyer in 2018.

Heading down the western side of Mount Hotham. Right of these posts is a long, nearly vertical drop.




Men at work, down under — see what I did there?




A couple of well maintained machines outside the Cherry Walk Café

Have I mentioned that I have a love-hate relationship with GPS? It had been OK this trip, but let me down badly today. That’s code for I didn’t program the bloody thing properly. So we spent time on dirt roads that I would have preferred to avoid before getting back on the asphalt somewhere near Docker.

Hot, flat through the King Valley until Whitfield after which the road climbs over a minor mountain I don’t know the name of. That made the trip both interesting and a little cooler till we returned to the plateau and the straightish ride to Jamieson where we refuelled and had a cup of tea.

This was the starting point for the new road the bloke at the Golden Age Hotel had told us about. Sixty-three kilometres to Eildon. Bliss: corners, undulations, little to no traffic, lovely Australian bush. Pterodactyl took the lead and wasn’t sighted again until we found him leaning nonchalantly against his bike at the other end.


There’s a bridge ever so slightly right of centre. Cross over that for 63 kms of riding fun.




The Pterodactyl had long disappeared. NoRoomtoMove and I made our way more sedately along this lovely road.

We went in search of accommodation in Eildon and stopped outside outside the first motel we found. I’ve been thinking for days about how to describe what happened next.

“Right, you bastards,” announced NoRoomtoMove, “I’ve had enough of you and your peg scraping, your crappy corners and your even worse jokes. I’m going home!”

The howl of a CB1100 exhaust shattered the silence of Eildon. Pterodactyl and I looked at one another, puzzled. What had we done?

Nah. It wasn’t like that at all. We needed some drama so I made it up. NoRoomtoMove simply announced he’d been ruminating. He’d decided another night in a motel was not appealing and more relevantly, he was not confident he had enough juice in the tank for a big ride the following day. We suggested he stayed and headed home in the morning as it had been a long, hot day. No, he said, he’d put up in a pub somewhere nearer home. Pterodactyl and I waved farewell. He looked at me and said, “he’ll go home.”

Back on the bikes and off to the Rubicon Hotel in Thornton where AussieFlyer would be able to find us in the morning.

NoRoomtoMove sent a message at 20:30 saying he’d made it home.

So much for the band.

[GoldOxide_imp]

Interesting end to the last chapter, Cormanus.

[Cormanus]

Day 8 — Thornton to Walwa
[url=https://postimg.cc/gLJC5q88]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1ABt-HMtcUT7QB20xDoDdA61uMte9GP0&usp=sharing]Master map #1

Having received a text from AussieFlyer that he was on the way, Pterodactyl and I leapt into action. Briefly. We made a cup of tea and then sat around talking.

AussieFlyer arrived and it was not long before we were under way to introduce him to the Eildon – Jamieson Road. As we turned onto it, I waved him past. By the 7th corner he’d vanished and was cooling his heels when we finally arrived at the petrol station. We didn’t tell him we’d stopped at a lookout and taken lots of photos.



Where’d he go?

We retraced our route to Myrtleford, stopping at the Hobbledehoy Distillery and Café for coffee and avoiding yesterday’s gravel. The flat, straight bits were flat and straight and hot; the other bits were fun.





The lovely still at the Hobbledeyhoy Distillery & Café

Fuel at Myrtleford after which I do not want to record the conversation I had with the GPS when it persistently took me places I did not want to go. I seriously considered stopping at Tallangatta for the night as it was getting on, but the other two wanted to keep going. A quick call to the Walwa Hotel assured me we’d have somewhere to sleep.

Back in 2016 on a day when Pterodactly was famously caught out by a dud K&N oil filter, and I met NoRoomtoMove for the first time, we rode through Walwa in the pouring rain to be confronted with a road closed sign. Pterodactyl assured me it was now open and sealed all the way through. In spite of my reservations, I pushed on past the Granya Gap road (always a fun ride). We turned and I was not totally thrilled to be greeted by a sign telling me the road ahead was in diabolical condition and to drive with great care.

Bits of the road were indeed in poor condition, but the rest of it was a hell of a lot of fun and in reasonable condition. It was a great 80 kms or so to finish off an excellent day. The first drink was very welcome indeed.

A corner on the Shelley Road through Guys Forest

Did I say something about finishing off the day? Ha! No such luck. Having de-parched our throats and unloaded our gear, we moved the bikes to the back of the hotel. AussieFlyer thought his rear tyre looked a tad shiny. Indeed he realized it was caused by a light coating of oil. Turned out the recently rebuilt rear shock absorber had blown a seal. Oil was dribbling down the piston.

Bikes at Walwa. It is possible to discern a tiny splash of orange at the bottom of the rear shocker on AussieFlyer’s bike. It was a piece of rage strategically placed to prevent more oil dripping on the tyre and to see how bad the leak might be.

If I hadn’t had other, event free, trips to Walwa, I’d be wondering whether Cormanus, Walwa, leaking oil and rear tyres went together.

At that stage of the day, there was nothing to be done, but eat, cool down and tell the sort of tall tales reserved for riders of the Honda CB1100. The morning and a phone call would sort out the next steps.

And the band was again a trio.

[Cormanus]

Day 9 — Walkwa to Boorowa
[url=https://postimages.org/]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1TYCxvZiWMQORjl44JNaaO6Lz8Cf3hvo&ll=-31.23867797585635%2C149.97528875&z=6]Master Map #2

Having spent some of the preceding day pondering routes to delight Aussie Flyer, I was a little disappointed to learn that the cloth he’d tied around the offending shock absorber was soaked. His suspension man had good and bad news. The good news? The shocker could be rebuilt. The bad: a gentle return home on a nice, flat, mind-numbingly boring highway was now in AussieFlyer’s plans for the day.

Was it just to get even that AussieFlyer inspected my rear tyre and said, “That looks a bit worn.”

“It’ll get me home.”

“Mmm.”

To make sure he had no fun at all getting to said highway, Pterodactyl and I decided to supervise his ride along the pretty and curvaceous Murray River Road. Not even plenty of leaf litter could dampen our enthusiasm.







Still corners okay.


The bridge across the Hume Dam


It’s a poor photo shot over my shoulder, but one can see part of the Hume Dam that contains the Murray River on the NSW-Victorian Border.

At Bonegilla we had coffee.


Then to Wodonga to get AussieFlyer on the freeway.


Realising that we were the only ones left to do the job, Pterodactyl and I ripped back along the Murray Valley Highway (B400), over the Granya Gap, into New South Wales, along a couple of slightly unexpected backroads and on to Gundagai where we refuelled.

I must have been despondent about the band. I took no more photos except a couple of this guy I’d been chasing all afternoon

By early evening we were at the Boorowa Hotel, a favourite watering hole and resting place. My rear tyre was, to use a technical term, stuffed.

The band was again a duet.

[GoldOxide_imp]

Day 9 — Walkwa to Boorowa
[url=https://postimages.org/]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1TYCxvZiWMQORjl44JNaaO6Lz8Cf3hvo&ll=-31.23867797585635%2C149.97528875&z=6]Master Map #2

Having spent some of the preceding day pondering routes to delight Aussie Flyer, I was a little disappointed to learn that the cloth he’d tied around the offending shock absorber was soaked. His suspension man had good and bad news. The good news? The shocker could be rebuilt. The bad: a gentle return home on a nice, flat, mind-numbingly boring highway was now in AussieFlyer’s plans for the day.

Was it just to get even that AussieFlyer inspected my rear tyre and said, “That looks a bit worn.”

“It’ll get me home.”

“Mmm.”

To make sure he had no fun at all getting to said highway, Pterodactyl and I decided to supervise his ride along the pretty and curvaceous Murray River Road. Not even plenty of leaf litter could dampen our enthusiasm.







Still corners okay.


The bridge across the Hume Dam


It’s a poor photo shot over my shoulder, but one can see part of the Hume Dam that contains the Murray River on the NSW-Victorian Border.

At Bonegilla we had coffee.


Then to Wodonga to get AussieFlyer on the freeway.


Realising that we were the only ones left to do the job, Pterodactyl and I ripped back along the Murray Valley Highway (B400), over the Granya Gap, into New South Wales, along a couple of slightly unexpected backroads and on to Gundagai where we refuelled.

I must have been despondent about the band. I took no more photos except a couple of this guy I’d been chasing all afternoon

By early evening we were at the Boorowa Hotel, a favourite watering hole and resting place. My rear tyre was, to use a technical term, stuffed.

The band was again a duet.

Excellent, Cormanus.

[peterbaron]

Day 9 — Walkwa to Boorowa
[url=https://postimages.org/]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1TYCxvZiWMQORjl44JNaaO6Lz8Cf3hvo&ll=-31.23867797585635%2C149.97528875&z=6]Master Map #2

Having spent some of the preceding day pondering routes to delight Aussie Flyer, I was a little disappointed to learn that the cloth he’d tied around the offending shock absorber was soaked. His suspension man had good and bad news. The good news? The shocker could be rebuilt. The bad: a gentle return home on a nice, flat, mind-numbingly boring highway was now in AussieFlyer’s plans for the day.

Was it just to get even that AussieFlyer inspected my rear tyre and said, “That looks a bit worn.”

“It’ll get me home.”

“Mmm.”

To make sure he had no fun at all getting to said highway, Pterodactyl and I decided to supervise his ride along the pretty and curvaceous Murray River Road. Not even plenty of leaf litter could dampen our enthusiasm.







Still corners okay.


The bridge across the Hume Dam


It’s a poor photo shot over my shoulder, but one can see part of the Hume Dam that contains the Murray River on the NSW-Victorian Border.

At Bonegilla we had coffee.


Then to Wodonga to get AussieFlyer on the freeway.


Realising that we were the only ones left to do the job, Pterodactyl and I ripped back along the Murray Valley Highway (B400), over the Granya Gap, into New South Wales, along a couple of slightly unexpected backroads and on to Gundagai where we refuelled.

I must have been despondent about the band. I took no more photos except a couple of this guy I’d been chasing all afternoon

By early evening we were at the Boorowa Hotel, a favourite watering hole and resting place. My rear tyre was, to use a technical term, stuffed.

The band was again a duet.

Is this AussieFlyer bike? I like it

[GoldOxide_imp]

Day 9 — Walkwa to Boorowa
[url=https://postimages.org/]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1TYCxvZiWMQORjl44JNaaO6Lz8Cf3hvo&ll=-31.23867797585635%2C149.97528875&z=6]Master Map #2

Having spent some of the preceding day pondering routes to delight Aussie Flyer, I was a little disappointed to learn that the cloth he’d tied around the offending shock absorber was soaked. His suspension man had good and bad news. The good news? The shocker could be rebuilt. The bad: a gentle return home on a nice, flat, mind-numbingly boring highway was now in AussieFlyer’s plans for the day.

Was it just to get even that AussieFlyer inspected my rear tyre and said, “That looks a bit worn.”

“It’ll get me home.”

“Mmm.”

To make sure he had no fun at all getting to said highway, Pterodactyl and I decided to supervise his ride along the pretty and curvaceous Murray River Road. Not even plenty of leaf litter could dampen our enthusiasm.







Still corners okay.


The bridge across the Hume Dam


It’s a poor photo shot over my shoulder, but one can see part of the Hume Dam that contains the Murray River on the NSW-Victorian Border.

At Bonegilla we had coffee.


Then to Wodonga to get AussieFlyer on the freeway.


Realising that we were the only ones left to do the job, Pterodactyl and I ripped back along the Murray Valley Highway (B400), over the Granya Gap, into New South Wales, along a couple of slightly unexpected backroads and on to Gundagai where we refuelled.

I must have been despondent about the band. I took no more photos except a couple of this guy I’d been chasing all afternoon

By early evening we were at the Boorowa Hotel, a favourite watering hole and resting place. My rear tyre was, to use a technical term, stuffed.

The band was again a duet.

This is very much a "Ferret-like" eye for riding photography.

[pdedse]

Day 7 — Omeo to Thornton
[url=https://postimages.org/]
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1ABt-HMtcUT7QB20xDoDdA61uMte9GP0&usp=sharing]Master map #1

We rugged up for the early morning chill and made our way back over Mount Hotham. That explains — if, indeed, any explanation is called for — why we rode an anti-clockwise loop the previous day. More fuel from the same service station in Bright, before breakfast at the Cherry Walk Café right opposite the pub where we’d met AussieFlyer in 2018.

Heading down the western side of Mount Hotham. Right of these posts is a long, nearly vertical drop.




Men at work, down under — see what I did there?




A couple of well maintained machines outside the Cherry Walk Café

Have I mentioned that I have a love-hate relationship with GPS? It had been OK this trip, but let me down badly today. That’s code for I didn’t program the bloody thing properly. So we spent time on dirt roads that I would have preferred to avoid before getting back on the asphalt somewhere near Docker.

Hot, flat through the King Valley until Whitfield after which the road climbs over a minor mountain I don’t know the name of. That made the trip both interesting and a little cooler till we returned to the plateau and the straightish ride to Jamieson where we refuelled and had a cup of tea.

This was the starting point for the new road the bloke at the Golden Age Hotel had told us about. Sixty-three kilometres to Eildon. Bliss: corners, undulations, little to no traffic, lovely Australian bush. Pterodactyl took the lead and wasn’t sighted again until we found him leaning nonchalantly against his bike at the other end.


There’s a bridge ever so slightly right of centre. Cross over that for 63 kms of riding fun.




The Pterodactyl had long disappeared. NoRoomtoMove and I made our way more sedately along this lovely road.

We went in search of accommodation in Eildon and stopped outside outside the first motel we found. I’ve been thinking for days about how to describe what happened next.

“Right, you bastards,” announced NoRoomtoMove, “I’ve had enough of you and your peg scraping, your crappy corners and your even worse jokes. I’m going home!”

The howl of a CB1100 exhaust shattered the silence of Eildon. Pterodactyl and I looked at one another, puzzled. What had we done?

Nah. It wasn’t like that at all. We needed some drama so I made it up. NoRoomtoMove simply announced he’d been ruminating. He’d decided another night in a motel was not appealing and more relevantly, he was not confident he had enough juice in the tank for a big ride the following day. We suggested he stayed and headed home in the morning as it had been a long, hot day. No, he said, he’d put up in a pub somewhere nearer home. Pterodactyl and I waved farewell. He looked at me and said, “he’ll go home.”

Back on the bikes and off to the Rubicon Hotel in Thornton where AussieFlyer would be able to find us in the morning.

NoRoomtoMove sent a message at 20:30 saying he’d made it home.

So much for the band.

Yeah, I saw...and now I'll have that tune in my head for the next hour

Wonderful Days 7-9. With some of the photos with band members in front of you riding on the left side of the road, I find myself involuntarily looking or leaning right to get back on the "right side of the road".

Very enjoyable trip musings and photos.

[GoldOxide_imp]

Men At Work got alotta air play in Canada during their prime years.

Perhaps, songs like that were over-played (at the time).