As it had been an early night I was up early and went for a walk around. It was bloody chilly so I was rugged up in the puffy jacket and beanie. A bit of a novelty for a sub-tropical dweller. I wandered past the reception/bar/restaurant building, around some of the fancier cabins then up to the old observatory. It wasn't much of a walk but it was nice to get some exercise in.
Following on from the breakfast theme at Blinman, a free continental breakfast was laid on in the reception/ dining area. We made good use of this as did plenty of the other guests.
The plan for today..... was..... ummm......I wasn’t actually sure what to do today. There are some pretty technical tracks around Arkaroola but even unloaded I didn't want to expose Steve to anything too difficult. He has never ridden a dirt bike on dirt bike trails so I didn't want to expose him to anything too tough on a 230kg bike with a hair throttle. (We had swapped bikes two days ago and the first things I noticed about the Africa Twin was its huge, wide tank making it hard to lock on, its narrow a.f. footpegs and its very, very light throttle. This combined with it’s huge power made it tricky to control precise throttle application. The Desert X has a much more docile throttle feel which is enhanced by being able to dial the power level back in three steps when in Enduro mode. I run it at a mid power setting when on the dirt ~ 80 h.p. I think - still plenty to light up the rear wheel on dirt)
So, where to go? When looking for options I had found a .gpx file on the South Australian ADV Bike riders Facebook page that seemed to go from Arkaroola across to Leigh Creek. I had always wanted to visit Leigh Creek since I was a kid so owing to the lack of a better idea, decided on that route for today. 😉
There was no rush so I think we were on the road at about 9am. Riding out past the camping area we spotted where Adam (the crashed GS1250 rider) was camped up. It was a cool morning so he was probably still tucked up in bed.
The track was in pretty good condition with nothing difficult about it. Soon we came to the remnants of the Bolla Bollana copper mine. There was a very cool little round house with the remains of a smelter just up the hill.
The craftsmanship on the round house and the remains of the smelter was impressive. I can't fathom the suffering that cold climate Europeans must have endured trying to eek a living out of a marginal copper deposit waaaaaay up here in the ninety-percent-of-the-time oppressive heat of the driest state on the driest continent.
Tough bastards.🫡
We continued on West and the trail very rapidly became a lot more rugged. Clearly, the "Bob and Marges" (Adam Rieman description of outback caravaners) only came as far as the smelter, then went back to Arkaroola.
The hills progressively became rockier..... and steeper... both up and down. I was beginning to worry about my track selection, especially as Steve had gone quiet in the comms. This meant he was getting worried.
We came to a downhill that was a mess of loose, large rock. On the big bikes we decided it was safest to switch off and clutch it down, which we both did. That hill took us ten minutes to get down.
Shit.
Would this be too hard....?
The track moderated somewhat after this for a while.... luring us in.
After a few more loose and rocky climbs we came to an intersection. We needed to go left. Left led to a long, steep, rocky climb.
Gulp!
The beauty of having the helmet comms was that I could give Steve a running commentary of what the traction was like and which side of the track was best.
This climb has me a bit doubtful about how he would go. My advice was "give it heaps”, keep your momentum and don't stall ". Stopping would have seen him unable to start without going back down and probably dropping the bike.
He dutifully gave it heaps and came up over the crest in a cloud of roosting dust!😆
We stopped here on this barren hilltop to catch our breath and calm down. While it was a cool day we were both sweating pretty hard. 🤫
It was blowing hard up here, my buff was flying like a flag on the mirror stem, and we were soon quite cold.
Pressing on carefully it soon became apparent we were past the difficult climbs and descents.
The track now was a twisting red dirt delight. We passed the edge of a pastoral station, opening and closing the gate Steve pointed to the location of his sphincter clenching moment. 😆
We blatted along for what felt like ages until we came to the main road. There were some amazing views along here and I was so glad we did this back track.
The colours were simply stunning!
The main road was super highway dirt and we buzzed along until we hit the sealed road at Copley.
We did a lap up the main street of Copley and unimpressed, pushed on the 5km to Leigh Creek.
Leigh Creek had a very "government " planned town look about it. Like a mini Canberra or Roxby Downs with lots of roundabouts and curved roads. All the houses looked the same and it was actually tricky to find our lunch destination, the pub, as it didn't really stand out in the traditional style.
Parking up at the pub we wandered in. It was a huge room with only one other couple playing pool. We ordered a burger to share (we weren’t that hungry) and a beer - because why not?
The share burger was a good idea because it was a MONSTER. 😬 Half was fine for us mere motorcyclists. We weren't hard working miners.
We rode back to the service station where we bumped into the ADV bike group we had seen in Blinman and Arkaroola. They had been to the old Beltana township and recommended the 30km ride down there to take a look.
Steve was worried about getting back to Arkaroola to iron some blouses so we didn't go look at Beltana. No worries, it's only 2100 kilometres from home to go back and have a look.....🙄
The 144km of road home was all easy super highway back to Arkaroola.
We mostly just powered along but we did stop at some gorge along the way where we "chased" some Emu along the road.
Dropping off the higher ground gave us amazing views to the east towards Lake Frome. The last 33km into Arkaroola was the same road we did yesterday afternoon.
We were home well before dark and took a walk around, looking at the colours of the hills during the sunset.
Dinner in the restaurant turned into BBQ by the pool area as they give the chef the night off on Thursday nights. It wasn't what we were expecting but the food was tasty and plentiful and was washed down with another bottle of red. We were joined by Adam (the crashed dude) and we chatted all things motorcycling, retirement and life in general. It was a very nice night..... if a tad chilly. 🥶
Another relatively short day kilometres wise but it was action packed. Riding dirt is very demanding on one's attention.
Looks like more great fun on good dirt to me! Momentum is ya friend Steve!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was a great day out even if it wasn't a huge distance. Quite a challenge in parts.
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