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RE: Cormanus goes to Texas
Day 2
I was awake way too early, so I checked in on the forum only to get tangled up in a conversation about the odd behaviour of Photobucket. Eventually, enough was enough, and I decided to try to get a few kilometres under my wheels before the worst of the heat. Just before 0730 I was on the road retracing my steps east.
Texas was busy again as I rode into the sunrise
Just outside Texas I had to make a choice about which road to take: a shorter route which would bring me out at the Kenyon Dam, or the longer way which would take me down the eastern side of the dam. I had a vague recollection that the first option promised dirt and decided I couldn’t face it first thing in the morning, so I retraced my route for around 35 kms. I’m glad I did. It’s a great bit of road and it was again very quiet. At one point I was startled by a small kangaroo heading diagonally towards the road. I realised the long grass by the road meant I may not even see a small one until it bounded in front of me. A few minutes later, I stopped to make sure a bloke fiddling with his tractor was OK. He was the mowing contractor who would be slashing a single mower’s width of grass away from either side of the road. We agreed the grass had got very long and he told me the local authority had no money for maintenance. He’d had to wait ages for work and even now he was only to cut a single width where normally he would cut two. Our leaders would have us believe otherwise, but times are quietly getting tougher for many Australians.
And he was fine; just getting set up.
A small kangaroo could easily hide in this lot before playing kamikaze with a passing motorcyclist
I took the detour into look at Kenyon Dam partly because the young lady who gave me a complimentary beer at the Stockman Hotel said it was worth a look and also because I like water and lakes and dams. Moments before I took the photo below I was joined briefly by a kangaroo, but he or she vanished before I could fire up the camera.
Kenyon Dam. The road I didn’t take would have brought me along the top of the dam wall. It looked good and I’ll try to ride if I’m ever that way again.
The CB and Kenyon Dam from the top of the dam wall. You can see how low the water level is by the height of the tree line above the surface
As I looked out over the dam I was reminded that, in Australia, water is so much more precious than gold. The weather which brings it to us is terribly fickle. Not for us an annual dumping of a large amount of snow that finds its way into rivers and dams. Nor, in this part of the world, is there any guarantee of a serious wet season where metres of rain can fall. Yet almost everywhere I rode I saw signs warning of the possibility of flooding. Measuring posts by the side of the rode give an indication of depth. Sadly, they fail to stop idiots driving into fast moving water when it floods. Clearly, when it rains properly, the whole place will become an enormous lake. Meanwhile the water level in this dam was well down with no guarantee of rain this year. Or next. Or the one after that.
Leaving the dam to return to the road, I started to get ever so slightly nervous about fuel. I needn’t have, but I was at the top of a modest hill and it was fun to put in a bit of time in angel gear.
The neutral light’s a bit of a give away.
Soon I was on the Bruxner Highway. I expected it to be strait, mostly flat and boring. It wasn’t at all. There were lots of long sweepers and next to no traffic so it was a joy to ride to Tenterfield.
Note to self: never, never, never, ever carry anything containing liquid in your top box, no matter how well secured you think it is. The water bottle I’d thought so secure, wasn’t and many things in the top box were very wet. Luckily a camera and an iPad were not.
I’m pretty sure I’ve written about Tenterfield before. It’s an agreeable town with a strong connection to the birth of the Australian federation. It was also the birthplace of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Allen_%28musician%29]Peter Allen, a musical Australian boy who fled to the US, married Liza Minnelli and wrote a song or two with Carol Bayer-Sager and others. He wrote this one about his grandfather before going on to become the subject of a musical in which he was played by Hugh Jackman. I mention this connection because there’s another amusing reference to Hugh Jackman in a subsequent link.
I had a belated breakfast (more eggs and bacon) in a quaint country restaurant before setting off down the street for the public facilities. I discovered that the recently appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Australia had an office there.
The Honourable Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce MP is also the Minister for Agriculture who, quite rightly, told Johnny Depp to pack up his dogs (Pistol and Boo) and send them home to the US or else they would have a premature introduction to their maker. That episode resulted in this brilliant report from that much loved American, John Oliver. Warning: the following program contains offensive language and death threats.
The CB had acquired some company while I was away
Heading east from Tenterfield
Then it was back to the Bruxner heading east. I was uncertain about where I’d leave it, but my next stop was Woodenbong and then I’d ride over the border on the Mt Lindesay Highway. My options were to turn off the Bruxner near Mallanganee and head north to Woodenbong, but I was tormented by memories of doing the trip in the other direction with Pterodactyl in 2014. Although the road was sealed, it was badly corrugated and one of the more uncomfortable rides I’ve had on the CB. The alternative was the longer round trip via Casino and Kyogle. The appeal of that route was tat it left open the option of missing Woodenbong and going home via Mullumbimby on the basis that the road there from Kyogle is also a delight.
This would be the third time I’d ridden the Bruxner, the first was with Pterodactyl on our second outing (see [url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3809]here); the second was returning from that ride ([url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3856&pid=56933#pid56933]here.) It’s a great road. As you head from Tenterfield across the plateau of the range, there are some great sweepers before you get into about 35 kms of winding road as you make your way over the summit and down the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range. The surface was good, there wasn’t any traffic to speak of, the bush (such of it that you can see when you’re concentrating on the road) is pretty and there are some fabulous corners. What a great way to spend an hour or so.
Settling down to work on the Bruxner
The main excitement of the Bruxner ends just short of Drake which boasts the wonderfully named Lunatic Hotel where Pterodactyl and I once had a cup of coffee and admired a couple of CB1100Rs (see [url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3809&pid=56189#pid56189]here).
In the end I rode past the turnoff to Woodenbong at Mallanganee and kept going to Casino and Kyogle. It was a longer ride, but all the fillings remained in my teeth and I let myself enjoy a spirited ride from Kyogle to Woodenbong. It’s a great bit of road and the CB was in its element. I stopped for a moment to take this photo of a mountain
At Woodenbong I refuelled the CB with ethanol-free unleaded petrol. Cormanus refuelled with a modest example of the traditional Australian meat pie and tomato sauce (ketchup).
As I mentioned, my plan had been to ride the Mt Lindesay Highway over the border to Rathdowney, turn left for Boonah and then make a run for home. At Tenterfield, though, I’d toyed with the idea of riding to Woodenbong via a back road. I’d not been able to find out much about it from the Internet; what I had read was not all that encouraging. The couple running the café where I had breakfast sealed the decision when they told me there was 100 kms of dirt. They did me a favour because I had a fabulous ride.
I looked at the map again at Woodenbong and realised the back road would allow me to ride to Stanthorpe or Warwick from where I could do the run home. What the hell? Might as well take the opportunity to ride somewhere new. So I set off west.
The road makes a good start: good surface, wide enough, pretty, but no centre line marking. It then deteriorates to a narrower track with not such a good surface. It’s still pretty, but I’d met a truck on the good bit of road and was slightly tormented by visions of arriving back in Woodenbong as a bonnet mascot.
It’s a variable road. The good bits are great and was worth the ride.
A good bit out of Woodenbong
You can see the road winding away up the hill. This was a very good bit
The CB with the Great Dividing Range in the distance. There are some lovely views from this road
At Legume (isn’t that a great name for a town) you make the choice to head south to Tenterfield and Stanthorpe or northwest to Warwick. I took the latter. The road widened and improved and I made good time, As I rode down the hill into Killarney, I saw a sign directing me to Boonah via a waterfall or three. I rode past it and on into Killarney, a country Queensland town, balancing the relative tedium of the road from Warwick to Brisbane with the possibilities of a new, unexplored road. By then it was very hot.
I turned around and went back to Spring Creek Road. It was slathered with delicious warnings about being narrow and winding and unsuitable for trucks and buses and other large conveyances. It was very pretty indeed and a good ride to the top of the range, although it is marred by an unnecessarily low speed limit which has been applied indiscriminately.
Brown’s Falls
At the top of the mountain—part of the Main Range and not far from Cunningham’s Gap—you come to a place called simply The Head. You get off the bike and walk to the lookout and look over the agreeable valley through which you are about to ride. You get there via an amazingly steep, narrow road. You learn that, if you look the other way, you’ll see where the Condamine River begins its journey into the Darling River. The Darling flows through Queensland and New South Wales before joining the Murray River on the New South Wales-Victorian border. I was at the source of the Murray-Darling: Australia’s most important river system and central to the health of its agriculture. On my very first ride with Pterodactyl we visited Wentworth, NSW, and surveyed the unprepossessing junction of those two mighty rivers (reported with pictures [url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3294&pid=47965#pid47965]here).
Off I went down the hill. It would be much, much more fun to ride up it as it’s very steep and the brakes smoke. Even going up you’d have to be very careful. It’s narrow and there are plenty of blind corners. But it’s lovely.
I’m including the next really crappy photo because if you look very closely, on the right had side of the road, you’ll see the vague image of a dingo (Australia’s native dog) which ran across the road in front of me. I’ve very seldom seen them in the wild.
Much of this area is national park and I suspect dogs are a problem as I saw a sign warning walkers of dog traps.
The steep downhill road
There’s a pretty run through the valley and, lo and behold, you reach the Boonah-Rathdowney road where you turn left. It’s not too long before you’re catapulted back into a world of wide roads, flat lands and a gradually increasing volume of traffic. You ride home through it and arrive, very hot but happy, with almost 1,050 kms on the odometer.
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