2025 (Not The) Snowy Ride - Day 2

 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.

We took a break to eat lunch and as we did the group of ADV bikes that had been at the servo in Bombala pulled up to do the same. Turns out they were a bunch of Kiwis who has hired Honda Transalps in Sydney and were touring around.

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.......

...... while Rick brought up the rear on his Guzzi.

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.

I stopped for a photo on the wrong side of the trail as it was the only flat enough spot to get off the bike.

Of course, two riders promptly came along! Sorry fellas!!

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....

Yeah, this was pleasant riding, being able to get along at a reasonable clip again.

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.

Rick was loving it while Thomas may have been considering his life choices here....

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! 

Tomorrow was going to be an easier day, almost a rest day with a loop ride on unloaded bikes. Climbing into some of Australia's alpine region is always stunning and I was very much looking forward to it.

DAY 3 here.

Cheers.

2025 (Not The) Snowy Ride - Day 1

Day 1 

 I recently began part time at work which has given me a bit more time off. Some of that time off finally lined up with the annual (Not The)* Snowy Ride that my brother and his mates have done every November for the last ten or fifteen years. 

*The Snowy Ride was originally a charity ride set up in the early 2000s to raise money for a kid suffering a rare cancer. 1000s of riders would attend and it got a bit out of hand with poor riding skills killing a few riders and endangering others so The Lads decided back in the day to do the ride a week early or a week after for their own safety and enjoyment.

Unfortunately, Steve had done himself a mischief on his mountain bike a week or so before the ride and was definitely not in any shape to ride a motorcycle. The other lads said I was still more than welcome to come along and with the time off, I planned to!

Rick was going as well so we decided to join forces and trailer our bikes to Sydney, thus saving us another 2000km and several days riding to and from the start point. 

We went down a few days early as Rick and Scotty were going to head off a day early and I wanted to catch up with Steve to see how he was going and fix his busted mountain bike up for him.  I also got roped into mowing his lawn as it was almost knee high with him being unable to start or even push his mower. Having Geoffrey drop around definitely helped cheer Steve up a bit too.

Those jobs done I rode off on the appointed day to the meeting point - Trappers Bakery in Goulburn. I arrived at a minute or two after the appointed 9am, the first there.  

Within two minutes or so I heard the throaty growl of an Aprillia Tuono and a KTM 1290 Super Duke. Stu and Dave had arrived and it looked like it was going to be a mostly road bike crew this year.  No problems though,  I had my dirt agenda and if I had to ride it solo,  then so be it.  I've done plenty of solo missions. 😉

Bruce turning up.

Over the next thirty minutes the rest of the crew rolled in. Greeting of old friends and meeting of some new ones over breakfast (and breakfast desert!) ensued. 

Eventually someone (Stu I guess) herded the cats out to the bikes and it was time to set off.

First stop was to be Braidwood, 85km to the south. I hadn't ridden these roads since the late '90s when Steve and I would do our biannual pilgrimage to Phillip Island for the World Super Bikes or the 500GP. I had forgotten how pretty the countryside was around here.

Braidwood was busy for a Thursday morning. I had told the lads that I was turning west here to explore some dirt roads and a river crossing.  Thomas, on Scotty's old V-Strom and Bruce on his MT09 had indicated that they would come with me. 

Cool. 

We headed out the sealed Bombay road which turned into Farrington Rd and a good crushed granite gravel surface. Crushed granite is like riding on small ball bearings - hmmm, wonder how the other guys are going on their road tyres along here.....?

Turning left into Mt Elrington Rd we were soon at the Shoalhaven river crossing. With such a picturesque crossing I faffed around for a while with my little drone, getting some footage of us crossing and re-crossing. Gotta wash the dust off the bike after all! 😁

We then proceeded to Cooma rd, turning south for a short distance before taking a left into Wallace's Gap Rd and heading east.  After a very pleasant ride along tree lined lanes we skirted the outskirts of Majors Creek, a historic gold mining town in the mid 1800s. I would have turned into town for a look but didn't want to lead the other two blokes in circles,  so I just stopped by a church on the outskirts of town for a quick photo.  

I would have loved to ride down Majors Creek mountain road but it was closed due to a land slip so we headed north east to Monga road where we turned right towards Araluen road. This was all new country to me and I thank several YouTube content creators who recently rode this area for opening my eyes to it.  It was a nice cool morning in beautiful country with interesing roads. Does it get any better?

Yes, yes it does! The drop into the Araluen Valley was narrow, twisty and bumpy - great fun on an ADV bike that can soak those bumps up. Thomas and Bruce chased me down the pass (more likely, I held them up 😆) and we soon popped out onto the open countryside around Araluen. 

Araluen itself isn’t much to see, just some widely dispersed houses and an old pub. This area was settled in the gold rushes of the mid 1800s like Majors Creek.

We didn’t stop despite the lure of the pub that had a couple of adv bikes parked out the front. No, it was too early for that and we had a long section of winding dirt road down to the south coast of NSW. 

Steve had warned me about this bit of dirt, saying that when they did it last year the first twenty kilometres or so was very twisty and constructed of loose crushed granite (ie mini ball bearings!) so I took it pretty easy. Pretty easy going into corners that is - power drifting out of them though! It was such a fun section of road, in spite of/because of the very high level of concentration required to “make progress”. I wondered how Thomas and Brucey were coping on their road tyres….

Stopping on top of a rise near a farm gate I didn’t have to wait long at all for them to arrive. 

Thomas’ years of dirt bike experience were showing and Bruce was pushing along too despite his MT09’s ABS trying to spear him into the shrubbery. We took a ten minute break here where I broke out the DJI Neo to get a few shots. I showed Bruce how it worked and he had a go at flying it too which impressed him no end with how easy it is to control!

The warm morning had turned overcast now and the humidity ramped up noticeably despite the cooler weather. We were getting closer to the coast, hence the weather change but we still had a long ride ahead of us before we hit the Princes Highway at Moruya. The dirt from here was wide and quite flowing so we were able to clip along quite quickly.

 Encountering almost zero traffic made for an enjoyable ride. What was encountered was easily dispatched.

 Rolling into Moruya I waited maybe fifteen minutes before Thomas and Bruce rolled in. 

The rest of the group - the road bike crowd - Stu, Dave, Geoffrey, Doug, Rick(ADV mounted), Richard, Zamo and Karen were coming down the Princes Highway from Batemans Bay. We didn’t know if we were ahead of or behind them but the plan was to regroup at the Narooma Hotel.

As we headed south it began to rain lightly. I was on the phone to Steve at the time and he looked at the BOM weather radar for me. A big shower was blowing in, across the coast and we were just riding into it. Good, I get to test the new Klim suit for its waterproofing! The traffic was pretty heavy along here so we just plodded along in the spray that was kicked up as the rain only lasted less than five minutes. By the time we arrived at the Narooma Hotel it was dry again.

Spying all the bikes outside the pub it was clear the others had beaten us. But not by much apparently. We grabbed a beer and took in the spectacular ocean views from this hilltop pub. Also spectacular was the pricing on the lunch menu! Nothing other than a bowl of chips was under $25. Lunch only needs to be something simple and relatively inexpensive which is why we usually stop at bakeries for lunch I guess. I decided that I wasn’t that hungry and decided to ride some more back roads down the coast instead of eating. A few of the others decided to join me and we agreed to meet the rest of the group at the Dromedary Hotel in Tilba.

Roostin' Brucey.

The back roads were wet and a bit slippery. Even the dirt was slippery with some big patches of clay to keep us on our toes. But it was worth it as the road twisted, very tightly, through dairy and hobby farm  country in the hinterland. We suddenly popped out in Tilba and joined the others who were already parked outside the pub. 

Wandering inside we were greeted by a very friendly publican in a quaint old pub….that had modern craft beer on tap! The Amber Ale was excellent!

Happy days! 

(Yes, I am a beer snob and almost can’t stand the bland mainstream beers that the big brewers had inflicted on us consumers for a century or so)

Soon after we pulled in another two groups of bikes pulled up.  The street was full of bikes.... doesn't anyone work on a Thursday any more?!

After one delicious beer here we were back on the road again.  We took a turn off the busy highway into Bermagui road. This keep us on a nice quiet road that hugs the coast.  There was almost no traffic and the road was an awesome bike road,  twisting and turning its way southward to our overnight stop at Tathra. This bit of road was so good there were no more stops,  we just enjoyed it's seemingly never ending flow.

Steve and I had stayed at the Tathra Hotel a couple of times in the late ‘90s and early 2000s on the way to/back from Phillip Island. To say I was surprised at what greeted us is an understatement! The original facade of the simple pub we knew is there but the interior and motel have been completely rebuilt with a craft beer brewery and modern, huge kitchen added. 

1999....

2003...

Yikes! 2003....

Now.

Our bikes parked up at the motel.

Too many to choose from!

Let’s just say a great night was had by all, enjoying great food washed down by a multitude of fresh beers. They have so many beers on tap that there was no way to test them all. 

I can see why the lads (and ladette - hey Karen!) stay here each year clearly, a return trip would be in order. 😉

Today was a great day on the bike. I covered 524 kilometres (325M) with a reasonable chunk of dirt (see hatching on the Ride With GPS link below).  The weather was mostly on our side and to ride so many new-to-me roads was a sheer pleasure.

I couldn't wait to see what tommorow would bring.......

DAY 2 here.

Cheers.