RolliNG HoME

By Duncan Bennett, Member #4171

We left Part 2 of our Ride to the Rock Riding away from the Rock. Soon back in Alice Springs. No need for maintenance, all fluids replete. We were now regulars in the town – we knew where to park, what the specials were in the supermarket, where the best restaurants were, where the cheap petrol was… Unfortunately no-one had a clue about that. It was nice to have a sleep in the next day, but then serious business; the Finke. This is Australia’s premier desert race, not to be confused with Australia’s premier dessert race, and it runs on the second weekend in June. We were there a couple of weeks earlier than the race but practice makes perfect, so practice must have been on. Just a brief summary for those unfamiliar with the Finke – it runs from Alice Springs 229 km south to Finke on day 1 and returns on day 2. The track is, using plain speaking, decidedly disagreeable.

Part 3 Map – Alice Springs to Home, the dry scenic route

Down past the airport, the huge numbers of aircraft that should have been flying people to Dubai, Europe, Bangkok, Singapore, Auckland and other tourist hotspots were lined starkly up on the secondary runways. About 25 km down the road it becomes dirt, so we set up about 20 km from the start along a section of track with optimal photography conditions. Out with the Jetboil, we had a cuppa well in play before dust in the distance indicated our first practicer approacheth. And boy do they approacheth quickly.

Korey McMahon drifts past in practice – he came 4th at an average 123.4 kmh

Several practicers later, some of whom actually waved while cruising past at insane speeds, we’d had our tea and decided to get moving. Now to outline the plan for our return – south. South was as much detail as we had. Our original plan, researched over months in excruciating detail, was back into Queensland via the Plenty Highway to Boulia, then to Birdsville, then slowly east to home soaking up all that was on offer in western Queensland. As per usual, unseasonable weather in central west Queensland had ruined that plan, likely we wouldn’t have even made it into Queensland. As an aside, how many times does unseasonable weather have to occur before it becomes seasonable?

Three years running now we have had unseasonable weather, to the point where the driest and coldest months are the wettest and

wettest, and not vice versa. According to Bureau of Meteorology statistics, 68.4% of droughts are broken just before we show up, increasing to 86.8% when I’ve forgotten my umbrella. Luckily there is only one road in the Northern Territory, the Stuart Highway. Once on it you are going either north or south, it’s that simple. Our south was back down to Erldunda on the turn-off to Uluru via a small detour to the Henbury meteorite craters, and then to Kulgera. Accommodation and facilities were excellent at Kulgera, and apart from an incident during the night it would have achieved a high ranking. Surely we’ve all heard the expression “as quiet as a mouse”? Well the bloody mouse that got into our cooler bag by scaling the inside of my riding jacket and leaping on top of the fridge hadn’t, so we awoke to what sounded like a small-ish antelope crashing around. Lights and torch on, the cycle of trying to find out where it was hiding, seeing it bolt between safe-havens and missing it with the bio-weaponised toilet brush, and repeat, went on for about an hour. Eventually we all collapsed in exhaustion.

Henbury meteorite craters approximately 4000 years older than Cindy

A mere 20km south of Kulgera, we left the Northern Territory. No ceremonies with semi-naked Harley riders this time, they were last seen near Curtin Springs heading back to Queensland. After some photos it was into South Australia, voted the driest and most barren state for 2.8 million years running by States Weekly magazine.

Welcome to the Northern Territory

After 400 km or so of absolutely nothing, we took a small detour off the highway to check out the Breakaways. A geological feature rather than small children in a shop full of fragile and expensive merchandise, the spectacularness just suddenly appears – in fact there is nothing stopping the inattentive motored cyclist plummeting off the edge.

Coober Pedy doesn’t just appear suddenly; little mole hills of white dirt cover the barren landscape for a long way beforehand. Opal mining is the old skool mining in Australia – opals don’t attract large companies, so it is done by small scale operators. The landscape is like a rabbit warren, holes everywhere and lots of signs saying you will fall down one if you trespass. Not renowned for bitter cold, Coober Pedy residents live underground if they can afford to, and we managed to score a motel room bored into the side of a hill. A wander around the somewhat barren and dusty town, we ended up at the Big Winch 360 restaurant for the sunset, enhanced by the dust produced by the mining operations.

Coober Pedy sunset

The next day included one of Australia’s longest stretches of absolutely nothing, Coober Pedy to Glendambo, 260km. The emptiness. Oh the emptiness. The mind wanders, and games start to be played. A favourite game was to get Cindy a guilt wave. Out in the back blocks waving at oncoming vehicles is an Australian tradition; I remember driving 1,000 km from Darwin to Tennant Creek in January 1991 and seeing 1 car – we nearly crashed into each other waving. But there are lots of vehicles these days, so the waving can be fairly random. The guilt wave best works on Gomads, I ride up front and wave. Some oncoming Gomads are excitable wavers but others hadn’t planned to wave. These see me wave, can’t quite get the hand up before I’m past and are stricken with guilt that they didn’t wave. So Cindy gets the guilt wave. No sleep in that van tonight.

The horror. The horror.

There is little to do but put in the hard riding yards, arriving at Glendambo was truly a pleasure. Lunched up, it was onward and downward through the salt lakes to one of the bleakest towns on earth – Pimba. There is literally nothing even pretending to be a shrub out there. The reason for Pimba is a total mystery to the casual observer except possibly as the “civilian” contact for Woomera, the passing punter needed to get fuel and wasn’t allowed into the rocket testing grounds. Port Augusta, previously pronounced Portagutta, was the end of the 550 km day. This town has improved a lot over the years, we would studiously avoid staying here during our bi or tri-annual crossings from WA to Victoria and Queensland back in the 1990’s. A wander up to the Western Hotel, and we were somewhat surprised not to be able to get a table. It was a Wednesday night in Portagutta

for heaven’s sake, but the place was utterly packed. What was going on? We managed to get a small table near the bar, and then the food selection conundrum. Hmmm, Grazier’s Pie in mushy peas, or something never seen before – Salmon Laksa? You only live once (excluding all your reincarnations) so go with the Salmon Laksa. This is now in my top 5 of greatest ever meals, no wonder the place was packed.

An oil top-up away from parrot and public judgement

We had decided on the west side of the Eyre Peninsula, simply because we’d never been there before. Whyalla was Australia’s first steel town and is now on the register as our first Eyre Peninsula coffee town. Moving on, we luncheoned in the attractive sea-side town of Cowell, before pressing onto our destination town of Port Lincoln, famous for lot of reasons including racehorses and tuna. The motel selection in Port Lincoln was controversial, the Hilton. Assumed to be a Hilton before the Hilton, it certainly provided for the closest parking to the sea in the history of motels. A stroll into town past the statues to racehorse Makybe Diva and tuna fishing and Matthew Flinders, we admired one of Australia’s best natural harbours before applying ourselves to a very nice dinner.

Edgar Degas, Seriously Pissed Off Chicken, 1867, oil on stretched undergarment

Time was limited on our cruise about South Australian parts unknown because we had an engagement in Canberra. Local knowledge not currently living locally – Brisbane in fact – had been called on, apparently there was a ferry that cut the Spencer Gulf corner from Lucky Bay to Wallaroo so with a bit of googlin’ we were booked on. 12 noon departure from Lucky Bay near Cowell, about halfway back to Port Augusta. No need to rush, only 1¾ hours away so we were fairly casual waltzing around town, nibbling our way through a breakfast at an obscure Scottish family restaurant chain. Loved their egg and bacon something or other, and the brown hashes. Leaving Port Lincoln at around 80 kmh, there was a bit of a bang and it strangely felt like something had gone around the back sprocket. Surely that is not possible is the default conclusion.

He should have been targeting bottom feeders

Let’s push on and we’ll have a look at a stop somewhere. Into Tumby Bay, we stopped somewhere to have a look. Indeed it did look as though the chain had slipped a tooth, weird, but nothing seemed wrong. It looked a little loose, so time for a mild panicky chain adjustment, we had 130 km to go and only 1½ hours to do it. Firstly, find somewhere flat, out of the strong wind, and where I was unlikely to be run over. After riding around the town a few times rising panic demanded that the Tumby Bay Museum lawn be selected even though it wasn’t very flat and wasn’t much out of the wind, but I would be very unlikely to be run over. Fortunately the museum was closed, otherwise we would have been sucked in to read up on Tumby Bay’s most famous son, Peter Brinkworth. Peter invented chicken salt, and the world would still be a dark place without that. Chain adjusted in world-record time, we punched on to Lucky Bay, thankful that we’d stopped at all the little towns like Port Neill and Arno Bay on the way down to Port Lincoln. Made it to the ferry comfortably, but were horrified to discover we may not get special treatment and had to line up with everyone else. We were completely clueless about the ferry details, except that it left from Lucky Bay and motored across the Spencer Gulf to Wallaroo. Was it a “basics” ferry or with enclosed passenger seating? Café and dining or BYO? Just in case we bought some chips, although only the packaged variety and therefore lacking the local speciality of chicken salt. It all turned out well, we got our own “bikes only” deck, the ferry was well appointed for the 60 km journey, and included a pleasant lunch.

Straight off our deck and a good old pushin in front of the below-decks types, we hit the road to the night’s planned destination of Clare. This is truly an old standard place for us, and in the past 30 years we’ve never had a trip through South Australia without staying there. A lack of navigational planning saw us go a bit far north through Bute and Snowtown. We hadn’t been through Snowtown in a long time because it isn’t on the way to anywhere, but decided we’d have a look for the famous bank where 8 bodies were found in barrels in 1999. It is still there. We’ve always felt sorry for Snowtown, none of the actual murders were committed anywhere near the place, but it has always suffered the stigma of the grisly business.

Not famous for its flavoured salt

Clare was its usual self but very very cold the next morning. In fact we only made it 40 km to Burra before the frostbite settled in, so one of the shortest rides before coffee in the history of rides was the result. Coffee’d and nicely warmed up, we pressed on. The GPS was taking us to Mildura, and decided now was the time to do something completely odd. There was a perfectly good 100 kmh bitumen road available, but perhaps the parallel farm track was 100m shorter even though 30 kmh was a big ask. The road did provide a distraction though – an emu. Emus are an evolutionary experiment, is it possible something can survive with a brain that does nothing but randomly move the legs? We have literally seen them commit suicide by running from 100m off the road into the side of trucks, so we treat them with the same respect as we would a hyperactive toddler lugging a bucket of nitroglycerine.

No-one including the emu knew where the emu was heading

One of those times where the photo cannot show how ridiculously steep the GPS fastest road was

East, and only east. Except for a smidgin of south. Out here it is all about the Murray River, all roads lead to it and there isn’t much point drifting too far from it. We speared into the corner at Morgan for a stroll along the banks then cruised alongside the river to Renmark for lunch.

Just after lunch something momentous happened; we crossed into our third state, this time Victoria. It is possible to avoid Victoria out here but only if you want to go a long way around.

Even supplied with a chain to stop them wandering

Only slightly more salubrious than the NT - SA border crossing

East along the road that looks really straight when viewed from 175 km up in the thermosphere and we were into Mildura, just over a year since our previous visit which was also to do with weather avoidance. Again we’d had problems with getting accommodation, although as Cindy does all the bookings I wasn’t very aware of any problems until afterwards. This motel was a bit of a security challenge with probably the largest and most exposed to “public with prior convictions” view carpark in motel history. An Airbus A380 could have landed, loaded our bikes on, and disappeared. Fortunately the reception lady was very aligned with our concerns, and suggested parking via a very narrow alleyway right into the middle of the courtyard, both out of sight and difficult to squeeze out. A wander up to an excellent craft brewery saw out our Victorian experience.

Improving quality

There’s not many options getting to Canberra that don’t include Hay, which is just over halfway to our randomly chosen destination of Narrandera. A nice lunch in a charming main street Foodie Friends shop which also sold Cindy-distracting clothes, and we continued the easting. 96 km into the easting, we stopped for our usual 1 hour or 100 km glutes work-out, this time planning to focus on the gluteus medius because this muscle is most important for doing gear changes and rear braking. Then the gluteus medius was relegated to no priority by Cindy’s horrible realisation that she had left her back-pack in Hay. What was in it? The Rolex Submariner, jewels, credit cards? No, something even more important – my cassiterite specimen we’d bought at the Ted Elliot Mineral Centre in Georgetown Far North Queensland. Nothing for it, back we go. The assumption that Hay was a small town filled 100% with honest people who would pick it up and hand it in somewhere obvious like the Hay police station showed how wrong we could be, the honest people we spoke with unfortunately hadn’t seen it. With our 460 km day now a 660 km day and dusk merely an hour away, sobbing over lost

cassiterite wasn’t going to help avoid a collision with a kangaroo out on the Murrumbidgee plains.

Cindy sensibly took evidence before she’d even left it behind

Speed was of the essence, so with a last look at every possible place where a backpack could hide having fallen from a pannier, we easterlyed once again. No records exist of the speeds, but we arrived at Darlington Point just when the headlights were moving from niceto-have to essential. The last 60 km were about finding a vehicle that wouldn’t even flinch as it punted a roo well off the carriageway and staying right up its gluteus’s. Thanks to the big B double from me, and the big 4WD from Cindy. Fortunately, the excellent Narrandera accommodation and RSL dining across the road didn’t care about arrivals 3 hours later than communicated when making the bookings.

Third border in three days, and second Territory for the trip

A Sunday morning coffee in Wagga at a very hip café well out of sight of any light industrial areas, and we lobbed into Canberra for our son Tim and grandchildren reunion. Canberra was, as just about everyone would expect, bloody cold. Even when not riding. A day off the bikes with a visit to the fun Questacon science museum preceded a final oil top-up on both bikes without any incidents. We were then ready to continue the random movements, only this time north. Back through a border once again, this time into the micro-state of Yass Valley according to the sign.

Yass Valley quietly becomes a micro-state

Dubbo was mentioned as an option, but too far west. Maybe Bathurst? Roads heading north of there get a bit messy. Inevitably we ended up at Orange, even though it is not on the way to anywhere, all our roads seem to lead there, and all through Cowra. As it wasn’t a huge day, the Cowra Japanese Gardens were selected as the mandatory non-motorcycling activity.

OCTOBER 2022 Accommodation was impossible to find within a 3 km radius of the part of Orange with the nice restaurants and craft breweries, and the only options were eye-wateringly expensive. Never mind, suck it up. Plan for the next day was Gunnedah, closest big town to the centre route we were pioneering between the Newell Highway to the west and New England Highway to the east. The route included some iconic places such as the Black Stump, once you were beyond there you were nowhere. Back in the day the Black Stump even had a wine bar just to make the boundary between civilisation and nowhere seem more obvious, no-one could survive long without a wine bar. Another iconic spot was the slightly amusing town of Dunedoo, which has the Dinky Di Dogs Eye pie shop, and the pies there are truly worth the visit.

Hopefully Sam wasn’t captured in the middle of a namesake

Gunnedah continued the trend of struggling to find accommodation, with everywhere full, apart from a 4-star establishment that had one room left. We’d never been to Gunnedah before so didn’t realise how big it is and how nice it is. A highlight is the silo art, Dorothy Mackellar’s very famous My Country second stanza is painted on the town silos, she spent time on her family’s farm at Gunnedah so they rightfully claim her. They also claim to be Koala Capital of the World, we weren’t exactly beating koalas off with a stick so that seems a bit bogus. The end was now in sight, we continued north-east-ish via some interesting dirt roads through Barraba to Inverell for a quality luncheon, then via more interesting dirt roads to Emmaville where the planned big nonriding activity was to visit the mining museum and hopefully replace the cassiterite specimen in Cindy’s backpack, likely now on some Hay person’s engagement ring. The Emmaville museum is open all days, except Thursdays. It was Thursday, of course it bloody was. Never mind, have a small tantrum then press on to our last night at our old favourite Peter Allen Motel in Tenterfield. When my baby smiles at me I think of cassiterite, not Rio.

Dorothy’s most memorable words

We rolled in home around lunchtime. Unpacked by mid-afternoon. The-soon-to-betraded-in Aquaman and Ruby Princess deserved a loving wash for outstanding performance. Apart from a broken Ruby mudguard and minor Aquaman chain dramas nothing, literally nothing disturbed the Feng Shui or Chakras over a very memorable 10,756.8 km.