26
JUNE 2022
By Klaus Zillner, Member #4515
W
as it a New Year’s resolution or was it when fortress QLD reopened its borders? Not sure when we decided that it was time to visit the southern most state of Oz. No doubt the odd glass of red wine (or two) encouraged our decision making process. Who is “we”, you ask? Well, apart from us (Kerry and Klaus) there was another Hervey Bay couple riding a BMW, namely Paul and Anne. Paul had just purchased his brand new BMW R1250RT and had picked it up from Melbourne a few weeks earlier to test out his new steed and get used to a big tourer (coming from a Triumph Tiger 1200). We rode our trusted R1200GSA so two “triple blacks” were ready to hit the road in mid February. We did not ride in tandem all the way as Paul had taken off from Hervey Bay a couple of days earlier and would join us in Northern NSW, while Anne had decided to fly to Melbourne and join us there. After checking over our GSA and getting a fresh rear tyre (Pirelli Trail to match the front tyre) we departed the Fraser Coast on 15 February for Dalby.
TASMANIA WITH K&K Day 1 saw an uneventful ride around the Bunya Mountains with the weather being kind to us (which remained the case for most of the trip). Day 2 took us to the QLD/NSW border town of Texas. We saw firsthand the damage caused by the earlier floods along the Dumaresq River as we made our way over Mt. Pleasant into Tenterfield.
On day 3 we followed the New England Hwy southbound and turned off at Nemingha (just south of Tamworth) towards Willow Tree and rode onwards to Muswellbrook. There we teamed up with Paul again who had ridden around the Oxley Hwy and Thunderbolts Way the days before.
Day 4 was very interesting as we headed for Denman, backtracked a bit on the Golden Hwy to Sandy Hollow to follow the Bylong Valley Way via Rylstone to Kandos, all great little country towns with lots of history. Turning off at Ilford we headed for Sofala and took another back country road to Bathurst. Of course we had to “conquer” the mountain track in Bathurst with the obligatory
