The Cormanus Chronicles: While the cat's away ...

40C!!!! I wouldn't be able to handle that in riding gear. I was down there when it was 40-41C and could barley handle it in shorts and a light T-shirt!
Eskimo blood and all that don't you know

GoldOxide_imp · Feb 18, 2019

I understand wearing the equipment for reasons other than crash safety: Sun burn! We've all been there. But still, the sauna build-up inside, particularly when there is no air movement still makes me cringe sitting here even while -8C outside and 15 cm of fresh cold snow has fallen. Maybe the sauna-effect isn't as bad Down Under?? Certainly in southern Ontario summers, the energy-sapping humidity is unavoidable.

This was very enjoyable to read. And I didn't miss ...

Cute.

Nortoon_imp · Feb 18, 2019

Always enjoy reading and viewing you riding adventures. :clap:

jitaylor_imp · Feb 19, 2019

Blooming chooch de louche.

the Ferret · Feb 19, 2019

Good stuff as always Cormanus.

Can't imagine " touring" on a 390 Duke.

Desert viper_imp · Feb 19, 2019

Great trip Cormanus! Mickey I was thinking the same thing about the Duke, especially for Josh

KiowaEagle_imp · Feb 19, 2019

Another great chronicle Cormanus! Keep them coming.

Cormanus · Feb 21, 2019

The ferret_imp said:
Good stuff as always Cormanus.

Can't imagine " touring" on a 390 Duke.

Desert viper_imp said:
Great trip Cormanus! Mickey I was thinking the same thing about the Duke, especially for Josh

Apropos the discussion elsewhere about inseam length, the main reason Valvoline has the KTM is that she makes you and me look tall, Ferret. Josh, now, is a different kettle of fish. I have to say, though, having followed them all day, they manage to get along on them pretty well and could be hard to keep up with when the road got twisty.

That, of course, may be more a reflection of my riding ability.
Day 4

[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZbapFkLEoD-NL6gZlOAqNge1ZTMdA5qL&usp=sharing]Link to map

Day 3 was a no riding day spent in Sydney.

I met Pterodactyl via a ride to the lighthouse on Sydney’s South Head. After coffee and a chat about proposed routes, I headed south through the Royal National Park to Woollongong.

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The lighthouse on South Head

From Woolongong, it was up the Macquarie Pass to the Robertson Pie Shop for a chicken and leak pie.
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Then down the Kangaroo Valley Road …
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Across the bridge …
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A short length of the busy coast road to HMAS Albatross and thence up the much quieter and more enjoyable road to Braidwood and Tarago.
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All the while keeping a leery eye on the daily build up that could produce a good soaking.
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I overnighted at the Loaded Dog Hotel in Tarago where, as I recall, Inhouse Bob had his first encounter with Vegemite.
Day 5

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[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZbapFkLEoD-NL6gZlOAqNge1ZTMdA5qL&usp=sharing]Link to map

Overnight I’d done some emailing and arranged to visit friends in Melbourne two days hence. I had a rough plan to get there which involved passing through Canberra to visit a virtual reality “Antarctica Experience”. My booking allowed me time to take a ride to the Mt Stromlo Observatory for a look. I then planned to get as far through the mountains as time would allow so I’d be two reasonable days ride from Melbourne.

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In the yard at the Loaded Dog ready to roll

The Australian Capital Territory is surrounded by wind farms. I find the huge mills strangely attractive.
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Lake Burley Griffin with the National Library in the background

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Filling in time with a side trip to the west of Canberra

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The Cotter Dam west of Canberra. Harrison Ford’s fate would have been quite different had he jumped from this one.

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[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Stroml

bservatory]Mt Stromlo Observatory

The virtual reality tour of Antarctica was interesting, partly because it was the first VR experience I’ve had. It was also a pleasant hour and a bit in air conditioning.

Leaving Canberra, I rode to Cooma along a not very exciting road, all the while watching the build up of the afternoon’s entertainment.
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In Cooma, I ate, hydrated (it was hot again) and then made my way into the mountains.

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I stopped at the Sawyers Hill Rest Hut, but I can’t remember why.
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The Kosciuszko National Park is infested with brumbies (wild horses). They’re not native to Australia and cause immense damage. To preserve the natural habitat, they should shoot the lot, but a romantic attachment to horses and a national attachment to the Banjo Patterson poem [url=https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/paterson-a-b-banjo/the-man-from-snowy-river-0001004]The Man from Snowy River makes it impossible. The plague of horses in the National Park is quietly being overtaken by a plague of deer, but that’s another story.
Signs warn motorists to look out for brumbies.
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Blow me down if I didn’t get around the next corner and meet this bloke and the 4 or 5 brumbies he was looking out for. First time I’ve met any.
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I stopped to take the photo and, as it was clear he was not going to move, rode quietly past his head. We maintained eye contact until I was safely past. I gave thanks for the gentle burble of the OEM exhaust system wondering what he might have felt about loud pipes.

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In winter this would be covered in snow

The Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme is an important source of electricity for mainland Australia. It’s currently being expanded to try to reduce the reliance on coal-fired generation. This is the entrance to one of the underground generation stations.
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Shortly after leaving the power station, nature delivered a few drops of rain, fulfilling the promise of the earlier build up. It looked as if it would be a light shower, which was not totally unwelcome, so I left my wets off. Bad call. By the time I reached O’Hares Rest Area, I was thoroughly soaked.

Luckily it was a pretty place for a rest.
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To digress for a moment, the grammarians amongst you will have noticed the oddity of O’Hares Rest Area. It should be O’Hare’s Rest Area, but the correct use of the simple apostrophe has defeated authorities in this country to the point where it’s been decreed it will not be used in its possessive sense in public nomenclature. Having, as I do, an apostrophe in my surname, it irritates the crap out of me.

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“Out came the sun and dried up all the rain”

By the time I got to the lookout with a view of the Snowy Mountains, I was hot again and largely dry.
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A notice at a look put about Australia’s first major civil aviation incident

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The Snowy Mountains

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One dousing a day is enough, and I was happy to have skipped this one. I stopped for the day at the Walwa Hotel. It did rain, but not much.

Cormanus · Feb 21, 2019

Day 6

[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZbapFkLEoD-NL6gZlOAqNge1ZTMdA5qL&usp=sharing]Link to map

It promised to be hot again and I was full of good intentions about getting on the road early. Like so many good intentions, they didn’t amount to much and it was around 0930 when I got under way.

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Walwa is on the southern bank of the Murray River which divides New South Wales and Victoria. I decided to pop over to Jingelic on the NSW side to check out a campground. I found a good one on the banks of the river next door to the pub.

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Back in Victoria, the CB inspects the Murray River.

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It’s a pretty ride west from Walwa along the banks of the Murray until you come to the man-made Lake Hume. The next couple of photos show it to be a bit short of water.
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Two letterboxes I found at the northern end of the Omeo Valley Highway

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Hiding in the shade at Mitta Mitta. It was getting very hot by then

This abandoned church at Granite Flat just south of Mitta Mitta was built from locally made bricks in 1875. For a time during the Australian Gold Rush, Granite Flat boasted about 500 miners. The last settler left the area in 1919. The last service held in the church was the funeral of one James Walsh in 1936.
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How could a motorcyclist not love a sign like this? What makes it even better is that it’s slightly misleading. It’s around 100 kilometers from Mitta Mitta to Omeo and very little of it is straight.

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Gotta love a good letterbox

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I stopped at Anglers Rest for water and something to eat. It was hot. As I finished lunch, these two bikes arrived. The bloke on the Triumph didn’t want to talk to me; but I had a pleasant enough chat with the other bloke. He had a neat ornament on the front mudguard of the Midnight Special. I think they were on the way to a big Triumph rally.
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It was still hot when I got back on the bike, but I noticed it getting cooler and cooler as I rode the 30 kms to Omeo. So much so that I stopped, put two layers in my jacket and donned heavier gloves. The weather app told me the temperature had dropped at least 15ºC.
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It didn’t rain, but it was cool and occasionally misty. I stopped for this photo which marked 100,000 kms that I had ridden on this bike. When I bought it, with 2,091 kms on the odometer, I had no idea I would spend as much time on it as I have; let alone that I’d ride it for 100,000 kms. It is thanks in no large measure to this forum and accepting an invitation from Pterodactyl that it has happened.
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Above: Misty conditions and some attractive alpine bush for the milestone photo opportunity

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Just west of the Mt Hotham township (largely deserted in summer), is this high point on the road

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Looking east from The Cross

If you follow the link to the full-size version of the following image, you will see the scar of the road I followed on the other (western) side of the valley. It is a reasonable ride to that point as the road follows the ridge to the lest in this photo.
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This photo shows the view from the western side of the valley looking back to where I took the one above.
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Soon after that, having stopped to strip out the thermal layers to deal with the rising temperatures, I set up my tent beside a stream in the Bright Caravan Park.
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To my delight, I walked out the back entrance to the park and discovered the local brewery. The woman behind the bar apologised and said the only food available was pizza or chips (fries to those in the US) as the kitchen staff were having a golf day to thank them for the efforts over the holiday season. The beer was welcome and the pizza surprisingly good.
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Day 7
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[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZbapFkLEoD-NL6gZlOAqNge1ZTMdA5qL&usp=sharing]Link to map

Heading west from Bright, I wanted to ride up the Mt Buffalo Road which comes recommended, but didn’t think I could afford the extra 2 hours it would add to my trip. Next time.

It started out cool, but that didn’t last long and I stopped after about half an hour and returned to tropical riding attire. It was hot, flat and dry to Whitfield where I stopped for coffee and food.
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After Whitfield there’s a pretty climb up the hill ...
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... until you come to top of this enormous power pylon rising above the road. It’s more spectacular when you come upon it riding from the other direction, as you feel you're about to be hurled from a mighty precipice.
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After the pylon, there’s a little more bush and then more relatively flat, straight, riding to Marysville where you get to turn left on to the glorious Reefton Spur. It’s basically too much fun to be bothered taking photos as it winds its way through a lovely eucalypt forest. There are few advisory speed signs so the rider really has to concentrate on the road to get a sense of how to take the upcoming corners. It’s a lovely ride. Thanks, Aussieflyer, for introducing me to it.
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At Reefton, one is into the outer reaches of Melbourne. It was not too far to my destination of Ferntree Gully where I would largely spend days 8 and 9.
Day 9
It was too hot to do as I’d hoped and spend the day admiring the rear end of Aussieflyer’s bike as we rode around some of outer Melbourne’s more interesting roads. Aussieflyer generously gave up his afternoon to drive me to Healsville where we had an excellent lunch and an ale or two at a local brewery. He then took me along a lovely riding road to the St Andrews Hotel, where we took in another refreshing libation and admired the few bikes that were out and about.

Then it was to his home where I got to drool (discretely) over his CB.

Great day, Aussieflyer, I’m sorry we didn’t get a ride, but that was the next best thing for sure.

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I came across a bloke from the Australian Netrider Forum who I'd not met, and I thought this was his bike. It wasn't, but it was worth using up the strorage space for a picture.
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Cormanus · Feb 28, 2019

Day 10

[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_mAJ21GQ4TSB5ZeNKD5XAhcrSiJPRQUX&usp=sharing]Link to online map. It's the same deal as the map for the outward journey: the entire second part of the ride is on the map and individual days can be toggled on and off.

Time to move on.

A visit to noroomtomove and his wife in Gippsland, Victoria would be a good first stop on the way home. My plan to ride via Walhalla was thwarted by one of the bushfires burning in a number of places in Australia.

I headed south to visit Berwick where I was born.
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Then there was a brief stretch on the freeway. The haze is smoke.
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Then I headed south, almost to Phillip Island, before turning left to run along the coast to Inverloch where I parked next to this Kawasaki. The owner told me he’d thought about buying a CB1100.
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I decided to go to Wilson’s Promontory as I’d never really visited it and rode as far as the road would allow before stopping for lunch at Tidal River where there is a memorial to Australia’s Commandos.
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The remaining photos are of parts of Wilson’s Promontory. I rode to the top of Mount Oberon, but any views were limited by the smoke haze.
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Maybe you can just make out an island in the picture below. It’s very close to the shore, but the smoke haze was such that it was hard to see.[url=https://postimg.cc/NLyhL7q7]

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noroomtomove and his wife provided an excellent meal, a very entertaining evening, and a very comfortable bed. Thank you both very much. It was appreciated.
Day 11

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[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_mAJ21GQ4TSB5ZeNKD5XAhcrSiJPRQUX&usp=sharing]Link to online map.

It was overcast with occasional showers which one could not begrudge because of the help they were giving firefighters who have had a long, hard summer in Australia in 2018-19, so noroomtomove and I drank tea, shot the breeze and then I did a bit of bike maintenance. I was a bit worried about an occasional clunking noise emanating from the region of the chain and checked it over, tightened it, and squirted on some lube.

Thanks, noroomtomove, for the use of the tools and the workshop. Great people CB1100 owners.

NRTM then led me up a very pretty road to Licola. It drizzled a bit of the way so I didn’t take any photos.

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This shot is taken at Licola. The road behind NRTM, leading to Jamieson, looks interesting on the map but is dirt for much of the way. Still, might be worth a ride someday.
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NRTM and I parted company at Stratford and I made my way to the Grand Terminus Hotel in Bairnsdale with a view to seeking out the Honda dealer in the morning. My chain was still making an unhappy noise.
Day 12

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[url=https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_mAJ21GQ4TSB5ZeNKD5XAhcrSiJPRQUX&usp=sharing]Link to online map.

The mechanic at the bike shop put the bike on the centre stand—complaining because of the weight of the luggage—had a good look at the chain and interrogated me about lubning the chain. I told him I’d done it the day before with Belray lube.

“That dry stuff?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He grunted in the way of mechanics, wheeled the bike inside onto a hoist, got his offsider to help him oik it onto the centre stand again, had a good look at the chain and then gave it a mighty bath in some other lubricant.

“Should be right now.”

I didn’t think he liked me very much, but he gave me a friendly wave as I rode off.

The day started cool and overcast and got progressively hotter as it progressed. I had a fabulous ride to Mitta Mitta along some of the roads I’d ridden on the way down and finally up the Alpine Way which takes one over the Snowy Mountains. By then it was quite late and it was cooling down quickly.

Some pictures of the southern end of the Omeo Valley Highway, one of my all time favourite rides.
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You know it’s going to be fun when you see a sign like this.
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After an excellent new road recommended by noroomtomove, I took breakfast at a café in Omeo where I was confronted by the infuriating view below.
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The road immediately to the north of Omeo passes through open country for a time. Some farmer had his herd in the ‘long paddock’. I tried—I really did—to pass by quietly, but one of the Hereford cows simply did not want to be passed and took off at a gallop up the road. Cows look awkward when they gallop and I feel guilty about making them do it so I proceeded as slowly as I could until I was able to pass it.
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Further up the road, above the snow line, in an unprecedented act of generosity, I stopped to clear some debris from the road in the hope that a fellow motorcyclist wouldn’t be undone by it.
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It really is a glorious ride.
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Further up the road, beside the banks of Lake Hume, there’s a memorial to Murray Grey. Without stopping, one could be forgiven for thinking Murray Grey was a farmer or dam builder; but, no, it is a breed of cattle.
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Even further along, on the Alpine Highway, there is a good view of the Murray No.1 hydro-electric power scheme’s water race.
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A little further along [url=https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Scammell's+Lookout/@-36.3236584,148.2003341,3a,125y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1shttps:%2F%2Fwww.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au%2F-%2Fmedia%2Fnpws%2Fimages%2Fparks%2Fkosciuszko-national-park%2Fkhancoban-area%2Fscammells-lookout%2Fscammells-lookout-03.jpg!2e7!3e27!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2Fproxy%2FFtSEuyfXiD4jDMIRRWe7i5AruUMcu0jX-EDpG6dUsRzmVPxzkvuLpTyNGdCiIeUZbqcYwbu-patTY48XKPKhi1KqV1DflLAUTP9MK7soko2NWTNd9Wfzsb9UeA3pl7XOlbMOuJ3RbLcmV3g2GPVBWLUR9BbnSQ%3Dw146-h86-k-no!7i767!8i450!4m8!1m2!2m1!1stumut+power+station!3m4!1s0x6b2330a34be2c6af:0x3949e016d16c59ae!8m2!3d-36.3236584!4d148.2003334?hl=en]Scammell’s Lookout gives a good view of the western face of the Snowy Mountains. There was no snow, but the cloud gathered ominously warning me of a possible dousing later in the ride.
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Sadly, this Siberia is not the area adjacent to the Phillip Island race circuit, but a cold spot near the highest point of the Alpine Way.
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A little further along, this sign marks a high point just before Dead Horse Gap …
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From where one gets a pleasant view down the valley towards the Threadbo Ski Village.
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From here it’s an agreeable and quick ride to Jindabyne where I decided to stop for the night. I tried two pubs. The first was full; the second was too expensive. The third turned out to be largely deserted as it was summer and I collected my key from a machine. It was a way to walk to get anything to eat and drink so I decided to ride out and pick up a pizza and a beer or two, but the rain started to fall. Seriously. The pizza place offered delivery, but not this night because the driver hadn’t turned up for work.

In the end I made do with some porridge from my camping supplies and copious cups of tea.

the Ferret · Mar 1, 2019

These reports just amaze me Cormanus. So good. BTW your bike looks great.

GoldOxide_imp · Mar 1, 2019

Great journalling Cormanus.

redbirds_imp · Mar 3, 2019

Thanks for another adventure well told and photographed George. You're the man!

Cormanus · Mar 3, 2019

Thank you all for the kind words.

As they say on the TV commercials, 'But, wait. There's more!"

GoldOxide_imp · Mar 3, 2019

... lol, but too bad you can't say, "For a limited time only, we won't just send one, but two (2) for the same low price of $19.95. Just pay separate shipping and handling."