DAY 2
Well, we weren't too shabby this morning but it wasn't a super-early start either. The plan for the entire trip, breakfast was to be around 8am with stands up at 9am. Today we needed to ride to breakfast at the Tathra bakery so it was a bit of a compromise. We were soon chewing on an array of pies, pasties and bacon n egg rolls, all washed down with a coffee of course.
Today we were heading to Bombala via Candelo, Wyndham and Cathcart. I hadn't ridden these roads since the late '90s and was I in for a treat! I had no recollection of the Mt Darragh road out of Wyndham to Cathcart but holy cow, it is a superbly surveyed length of twisting, turning smooth surface that had me grinning from ear to ear! I wish I had a camera rolling as the line of bikes snaking along in front looked so impressive. I will definitely return to this little patch of Oz again soon - maybe with a sports bike under me!
I did manage to stop just prior to Bombala to get a photo of this one lane bridge.
We stopped for fuel and a bite to eat in Bombala. I would have like to take a look around the town but was cognisant of the fact that I didn't know the route and we had already lost Richard, aka Speedy, not long after leaving Tathra.
We waited quite a while before he arrived. Luckily he has done The Snowy Ride quite a few times and knew the route. I grabbed a sandwich to stash in my bags for lunch later on as the guys chatted to a couple of other riders who were parked up at the service station.
Checking my tyres I noticed that I must have had the big Duke leant over a ways along the Mt Darragh rd section as the front knobby was used pretty much right to the edge. Pretty impressive grip for what is quite a hard compound rubber on a full-on off road capable tyre, under 300+ kilograms of bike, gear and rider!
Once Richard arrived we mounted up and headed out the Delegate road. The countryside was more open along here with rolling green hillsides. Through Delegate and onto the Bonang road for a bit and the road was getting tighter and twistier. Twenty two kilometres out of Delegate Thomas, Rick and I turned off onto McKillops Bridge road. We were going to tackle the dirt across to Omeo while the road riders would head further south to come back north to Omeo along the Great Alpine road from Bruthen.
McKillops Bridge road proved to be quite a long ride along a fairly narrow but well surfaced gravel road. Plenty of concentration was required, especially as some of the views were very distracting.
There were a couple of little communities waaaay out here too which surprised me. They consisted of just a few houses and the odd tennis court. Surely, it would be a hell of a lonely existence. Peaceful though I guess.
Being Australia, there was plenty of road kill too.
After quite a while (this dirt riding is relatively slow going) we arrived at McKillops Bridge. Some history on the bridge can be found here.
I faffed around with the drone to get a bit of "follow me" footage. I was hoping the Neo wouldn't play up as the bridge is very high and I wasn't sure how much wind was out there in the open.
It decided to lose me about half way across though. When I rode back it was hovering in the middle of the bridge at about 8ft and comically swinging too and fro as if looking for me. I jumped off the bike and stuck my hand under it. It promptly landed as if nothing was wrong! Phew!
After eating we mounted up and headed west again. I followed Thomas across.......
Once off the bridge I took up navigation duties again. Conveniently, this kept me out of the dust.....
Stu had warned me to be careful as we climbed out from McKillops Bridge as the road is very narrow, winding and has significant drop offs into the valley.
He wasn't wrong!
So I took it pretty carefully and luckily the only other traffic we saw were motorcycles. I really don't know how two cars or a truck would pass each other along here.
The road twisted its way up the mountains and I managed to find one place where I could pull over to take in the view and get a half decent photo of the valley.
Eventually the road opened out onto grassy hillsides and we could relax for a bit. How easy is riding on sealed roads?!!
We soon came to the intersection of Snowy river road, where we took a moment to stretch the legs and grab a drink of water.
Snowy river road alternated dirt/sealed for a bit before we turned left onto Limestone road. This road would take us to Benambra, then our overnight destination of Omeo. But first there would be a couple more hours of this....
and this.....
The road got much more narrow and winding but the surface was good. It just meant slow going for a while. I decided to stop at Native Dog Flat camping area to take a break. I had camped here in about 2017(I think) with the kids and some friends. I recall plenty of ADV bikes rolling past during those days camped here. Now I was finally back here and on a bike of my own!
Rick and Thomas were enjoying the riding and the scenery too. I was glad as I had dragged them a long way off the beaten path!
After a break we got going again. The road changed in a fairly significant-for-us kind of way. It had clearly just been graded and resurfaced after the winter and unfortunately for us there was a thick coating of loose stone on it.
I could feel the bike moving around a bit but at least I had proper off road tyres on and while we were climbing it was kind of fun to roost out of the corners.
Unfortunately, what goes up must come down! There were some quite steep descents into tight, slow corners. These took some effort to negotiate and I was glad I was on good off road rubber. Safely off the mountain I waited at the next intersection for the guys to catch up.
Yeah, I waited quite a while actually. Eventually the lads rolled up. Thomas had had an "excursion" into the drainage ditch along the side of the road on one of the steep, loose downhill sections as he was on 50/50 tyres and the bike just wouldn't stop or turn! Luckily for him the ditch caught him, otherwise he was going over the side apparently!
It wasn't that far to Benambra and there were no turns so I dropped back to tail end charlie to get some shots of the guys. Geeze, its a bit dusty back there!
Rick's Guzzi sounds amazing and I happily sat by his shoulder for a while just listening to it's throaty growl.
He was probably wondering WTF I was up to....
I was dead keen to have a beer at the Benambra Hotel and it didn't take much arm twisting to get the guys to stop.
As we didn't have far to go we stopped here for a while. I used this time to convince the lads that there was just one more dirt road that we needed to ride. I didn't even know it existed until Steve mentioned it to me yesterday. Apparently he has seen it in several YouTube vids that some ADV riders have posted up.
They agreed to take a look, so not far out of Benambra we took a right turn onto Parish Boundary road. It looked to be a straight road on the map but it turned out to be this awesome ribbon of dirt that climbed and dove, weaved and wound it's way across several hills.
I was soo glad we did this road!
It was bloody windy up here though. I almost got blown off the track while trying to catch up to the guys. Even the hawk was struggling with the wind!
The last few kilometres into Omeo were sealed. I think we were all cooked from the concentration required today so it was very welcome. I noted that someone was getting a slow down into Melbourne on this Friday afternoon (the contrail). The only way to lose time is to arc around the sky as the air traffic controllers in this country seem to not like using holding patterns. It must look bad in their delay stats....
Rick and I headed for fuel before the pub. We wanted to be ready for anything tomorrow!
The Golden Age hotel is a great place to stay with great food and a selection of craft beers on tap. We were staying here for two nights which gave us a chance to sample different menu options, which after seeing the steaks that came out for some of the guys put the steak at the top of my list for tomorrow - not that there was anything wrong with the slow cooked lamb that I had tonight.
It was "only" 356 kilometres on the bikes today but many of those kilometres were high concentration, so there was no need to be rocked to sleep tonight!
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