As the old saying goes; All work and no play makes Duncan a dull boy. However, there is absolutely no proven causative correlation between the work:play ratio and boyness dullity, so as long as some play is introduced then surely Duncan will not stand out as awkwardly boring in social situations.
The problem precis – a major conference for which I and co-authors had submitted a technical paper was on in Adelaide, South Australia from 5 – 8 November 2023. A mere 2 riding days later one of our unmissable events – the annual Compass Expeditions reunion – was in Albury on the NSW – Victorian border region. Flying down to Adelaide and back meant that by the time I got home I could not ride to Albury without doing an Iron Butt, and as I have a fear of twilight more related to kangaroos than young vampire hotties, that wasn’t going to happen. So why not just ride the whole way? Cindy can just scoot down the highway to meet me there so as not to miss any work which one of us must do. Problem solved. So onto Step 1, the route planning. Start at home, finish in Adelaide. But relentless highway is to be generally avoided while riding alone and up for some adventure, so which way to go? Strangely, the first days seem most suited to hard-core adventure riding, as the confidence needs building up, and the small roads close to home are more familiar than those in far west NSW or SA. I’ll figure those out when I get there.
Step 2, update the Packing List spreadsheet. This allows input of key variables such as time away and climactic conditions, and automatically calculates what and how many of what to pack. Some risk that the lack of meteorological rigor gets the climate inputs hopelessly wrong, such as recently in Tassie, but we are in Australia after all so can theoretically buy a pair of Stubbies or servo thongs just about anywhere. Not that they make the list.
Leaving on a Tuesday, exactly halfway through the laundry cycle, is challenging. OMG I accidentally wore my lucky underpants to work yesterday! Do I just pretend that didn’t happen and “accidentally” have them slide into the bag, or do the smallest load in the 5kg washing machine ever? Who remembers what happened, but the lucky underpants made it and were to play a big part. Anyway, up extra early due to the 1 hour time loss heading into NSW which is on daylight savings, and away by 7am. Not having Cindy along was very weird, this was the first time ever heading off by myself on a major trip. No serious riding nerves, but as Cindy is the strategy planner and organiser extraordinaire, I was worried about having to book accommodation. Find a hotel and call them, it isn’t that hard I telepathically hear you thinking. Yes, but that’s never been my job and I am not trained! I should have brought my camping gear just in case every town and village in eastern Australia is having an Elvis festival! Too late to turn around now.
Some great roads on Day 1, including White Swamp, Paddy’s Flat, and the Rocky River. Lots of quality dirt and the Rocky River Road has 1,500 corners one can practice drifties on. Progress was rapid, and the first night’s destination of Tenterfield was reached well before kangaroo o’clock.
Riding into town from the south-east, a bushfire was noted up on a ridge. No worries, it was heading away from town. Checking into the motel with an early sense of achievement – I’d booked it myself – there was time for a relax then head up the road to our usual Tenterfield haunt for dinner. Bushfire glow was noted to the west, south, and north of the town, but casually ignored because of more pressing issues involving selecting and eating an excellent dinner with wine while booking the next night’s accommodation at Coonamble, 550km away in central NSW. Back to the motel in the smoky atmosphere, Day 1 was acclaimed as a total success.
Up and ready for Day 2 by 8am, I rode about 3 km before a problem materialised in the form of volunteer emergency services people and bollards. The road south was shut due to bushfires. What about north? No, shut. What about east, it was OK yesterday? No, shut. West? Shut. You might be here for the duration, but we don’t know how long the duration is likely to be. Go to the showgrounds where all your questions will be answered was the suggestion. Back in confusion to the motel, luckily the key drop box is a basket so I could grab my key and check myself back in. Rather than ride around, let’s walk over to the showgrounds and go to the marquee where drinks and snacks and information will be flowing. I found the showground, but no marquee. No actual human beings either, and the attending dog could not articulate what was happening. OK, back to the town for a coffee and then back to the motel, maybe a good idea to book another night just in case, especially as evacuees were making an appearance from the surrounding properties. Common at the motel were guests in a state of utter confusion, and reception was closed. Download a NSW fire app, not terribly useful as it indicated roads I knew to be closed were open. Starting to worry now – I’ve booked in Coonamble for heaven’s sake, and it is already 9:30am. Back out amongst the confused guests, a couple of elderly ladies who had previously been standing on the summit of the pinnacle of confusion were in their room packing wildly. I invited myself in when they’d finished packing their smalls and asked what was going on, they said someone had told them the Mt Lindsay Highway was still open. OK, even though heading in precisely the opposite direction to Coonamble at least it was getting out of Tenterfield. First a quick trip back to the emergency services volunteers and bollards on the road south, just in case the huge plumes of smoke visible in that direction were a false alarm. Nuh, still no idea of duration so off north-east we go.
Up through Cullendore, miraculously no road closed signs encountered, and finally heading in the right direction once more from Warwick. Lunch in Inglewood after already doing about 300km for the day, a mere 467km to go. On boring highway but at high speed through Goondiwindi and Moree, at least until the roadworks on the Newell Highway came into view. With these roadworks the motoring equivalent of getting into the giant spider’s web in Lord of the Rings, Google Maps did something it has never done before – it suggested a non-highway shortcut, while bizarrely Garmin insisted I stay on the highway. If Google Maps says it’s OK, then it will surely be a smooth bitumen journey. It wasn’t, and it was instantly dirt, with some “interesting” sandy patches which made getting past farm machinery even more “interesting”.
Still, some dirt for the day was appreciated by the riding public who rolled into Coonamble just before 6pm. Very nice motel with two enormous rooms just for me, and next door was the bottle shop. Perfect. Up to the pub for dinner where a discrete celebration for being back on schedule was interrupted by booking the next night’s accommodation in Cobar, I was starting to get good at this. Back to the motel, Coonamble was voted as the best town of the trip so far, with poor old Tenterfield suffering in the judging due to trying to take me hostage.
Day 3 route plan was west for a bit to Quambone, then a bit more west and south-west to Nyngan. Quambone was a nice little town, and coffee was obtained, although only 3 of the alleged 166 residents were seen. Coffee’d, the GPS said head north on Sandy Camp Road and take a west on the Gibson Way. Sandy Camp must have described the Camp rather than the Road, which wasn’t too Sandy. I’d read a sign in Quambone that warned of water over the Gibson Way because it passes through the Macquarie Marshes, but it implied that was only after rain. The road was in reasonable condition so fun was being had, and the birdlife at the Macquarie Marsh viewing platform was impressive. Then came cows. Lots of cows. 2km of cows at 2kmh.
At the other end of the cows were the cowmen, well past being able to claim boys in their title. The chief cowman mentioned that there was water over the road a bit further on, about 400mm deep, but didn’t say how long the section was. He said that a group of motorcycles had been through recently, but didn’t specify whether they were fully kitted up physically and mentally for Dakar or were very pedestrian risk averse ‘just off their prime’ adventure riders. He then said it was OK on the right-hand side. I said I’ll go and have a look, because I definitely don’t want to have to ride back through your cows. About 1km further along there certainly was water over the road. A lot of it, and over 100m across.
The first audible “hmmm” of the day was heard by the local birdlife. Righto, let’s not take anything for granted, let’s walk it. Off with everything except undies even though that increases the chances of a bus full of young women showing up from infinitesimally small to possible/likely, and find a calibrated stick. The chief cowman was very correct, the right-hand side was way better than the left but even though there were no big rocks there were some nasty ruts and depressions heading down into a 600mm deep region. Hmmm, I’m on my own, I would have to make 4 trips across first to carry all the luggage on my head, and the consequences for dropping the bike in 600mm deep water aren’t worth thinking about. On the plus side I quite enjoy water crossings.
Nuh, back through the cows. The chief cowman seemed relieved to know that he wouldn’t have my drowned bike and corpse blocking the crossing and waved me on to Quambone. Due south onto the Oxley highway, I felt I deserved a lunch pie in Warren after the emotional strain of the morning. The afternoon was quite short to Cobar, which gave plenty of time for a good visit to the Great Cobar Museum, especially pertinent as I had done some work on the Great Cobar mine a few years ago. Down to the Great Western Hotel for dinner, the routine was becoming seamless now – order meal, get a drink, make a call to a likely looking motel in the next destination – this time Broken Hill, sit back and relax.
Day 4 was likewise not that far, only 500km and not much to slow anyone down. Except goats. The Cobar to Broken Hill Barrier Highway has more goats than anywhere else on earth, a motorist will easily see 300 goats in the 260km from Cobar to Wilcannia.
Having not hit any goats, I rolled into the Emmdale roadhouse to avoid the Wilcannia conundrum. For a bit of context, Wilcannia is a town nearly devoid of services which is extremely odd for a place where it is – the middle of nowhere. Dining, fuel, and accommodation are all potentially lacking so at least Emmdale provided enough fuel for the planned Menindee detour, with the turn-off just before Wilcannia. Off I turned as per the GPS, with the road running south of the Darling River, but I didn’t get far.
Okay, through Wilcannia and apparently required to stay on the highway to Broken Hill. Except that while crossing the Darling (I should have called Cindy at that point to say “I’m crossing the Darling, darling”) an arrowed sign appeared saying Menindee. Wow, an alternative. The GPS said yeah. And down the road is the fuel station, cards only, but the hysterical and irrational “I’m going to run out of fuel!” genie is back in the bottle. The road is runway-wide bitumen, looks like it will go all the way to Menindee. It does. For 3 km. Which is 150km short of Menindee, with the road turning to dirt/sand. But very easy sand in small parcels, no drama for the average rider.
Admittedly when riding toward things that are obviously sand dunes the average rider’s capability is suddenly far in advance of mine – mentally. This is the essence of adventure riding, it is all mental. Up and over the dune with negligible sandy spots and suddenly the mental fear turns to mental invincibility; I’ve “trained” a long time and ridden far worse so now I’m just loving it for the next 140 km.
Into Menindee for a fresh Darling River dimmies luncheon, it was out to the lakes to have a look. They are pretty big lakes and provide the water supply for Broken Hill and regulate flow into the South Australian irrigation areas. The weather when I was there was fortunately in an unusual cool spell for November, it can get bloody hot out there and the towns along the Darling River have the highest recorded temperatures in NSW – including a toasty 50.1°C in Wilcannia and 49.7°C in Menindee in January 1939. A small backward 30 minute time zone change just north of Menindee and I was into Broken Hill with the first laundry of the trip the main entertainment for the evening.
Day 5 was a mere 350km into South Australia. If you haven’t done the Barrier Highway South Australian section, then lucky you. The small localities such as Cockburn and Manna Hill look like there was some sort of apocalypse, then lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, locusts, more flies, the killing of firstborn, flies, an earthquake which knocked random building walls down, and finally Zombies who had been low-skilled graffiti vandals before they were bitten moved in with the flies. The Zombies are probably still there, and have used discarded rusty corrugated iron and broken plywood to keep themselves in the dark during the day, because you never see anyone. Which is good out there.
Another problem with the Barrier Highway is that it chews the middle of motorcycle tyres like no other section of road except perhaps for the Stuart Highway in northern South Australia. Corners just aren’t needed, it is A to B out there because nothing even resembling a hill, dale or water course exists. So with relief I rolled into Yunta for morning tea and fuel, not too far to get to a cornery-like deviation in the road from there.
Into Terowie for lunch. South Australia is a land of history, with Terowie the break of gauge town for the railways – huge in its day because trains coming from north, south, east, and west had to stop here so during the wars trains full of soldiers heading to the ports and capital cities rolled through. With the completion of the same gauge north to Peterborough, Terowie instantly became a ghost town. The only thing open was the BP servo, confirmed by two trips up and down the main street. Sandwiched up, it was onto the planned destination of Jamestown. Jamestown is a very nice little town just to the north of the South Australia Murder Belt, but we’d worry about getting through that on the next day, it was an adventure ride after all. Into a room at the back of the pub, it was a wander up to the supermarket to replace the breakfast citrus surrendered at the Oodla Wirra border quarantine station. An excellent chicken dinner and locking every door because we weren’t that far north of the Murder Belt and the day was done. Just the night to survive now.
The last outward day into Adelaide was a short one, but a detour via Burra was required to bask in the excellent copper mining history, with the Burra deposit supplying 5% of the world’s copper for 15 years from the 1840’s and boosting South Australia’s fledgling agricultural economy.
An appropriate Cornish Pastie for lunch and a quick ride down through the Murder Belt, bypassing all the hotspots, and it was into Adelaide for the conference. Three days of conferencing and then it was back to the hotel for a quick re-dress and getaway to the reunion with Cindy and the Compass crowd on Friday 10th November in Albury. The quick getaway failed with the Adelaide traffic lights, which appeared perfectly synchronised to prevent any actual traffic movement, and at last the weather was turning and it was becoming uncomfortably warm. Unsure of whether lane filtering is a thing in SA, I did it anyway and burst out onto the M1 for the quick trip to the booked accommodation in Tailem Bend. I was the only one in the Bend Abode hotel, and could free-range in pajamas through the guest kitchen and onto the back entertainment area where there was a huge TV. Up to the Riverside Hotel for an amazingly good dinner, not in my pajamas though, and back for more pajama lounging and opening every kitchen cupboard until bedtime.
Off the next day having helped myself to a good breakfast whilst still free ranging the premises in pajamas, it was onto the Mallee Highway which goes due east. It was classic highway, not very interesting, and some of the roads heading off south looked interesting. What hadn’t occurred to me was that I was on the Mallee Highway. Mallee is an aboriginal word for “bottomless sand that swallows mid-sized adventure motorcycles”, but as usual the chosen dirt road parallel to the highway started out beautifully hard packed with only a soupçon of sand, no hint of problems. So pace was up, then suddenly a 50m section of “wobble inducing” sand. Saw it too late to stop so just powered through, whoa that was a bit scary. No way I’m riding back through that, just keep going. It improved for about 100m then went up about three levels of difficulty. I immediately had ‘didn’t U-turn when I should have’ regret, not since Cape York in 2021 have I ridden in deep sand on a single track road with trees right up to the side. On that occasion I was on a 125kg Suzuki DR400 and often not terribly successful, in this case on a fully loaded bike weighing in at 250kg.
“This is very bad” was running in repeat mode through the verging-on-panic thought processor. In 4th gear at 75kmh, the bike was all over the place but with enough momentum to keep it mainly going straight-ish. Then calm descended over the wild scene. The mental upshot was thinking “just ride like you have trained to do”, with technique replacing wild hope. A corner was coming up, not sharp but with wobbly tracks through it. Weight back, steer with the footpegs, give it a bit more, be aggressive and never give up in sand. Went through easily, then through another corner, bike still wobbling wildly but that had nearly become boring by now. After 4km of it, the other end of the road appeared with its superb hard-packed surface set up to trap any people heading west. I’d made it. I hadn’t turned on my InReach tracker, so a good thing I made it or they may not have found my mallee fowl pecked corpse for days. The other key learning from the experience was that I had been wearing a lucky riding shirt, one which had done Africa, South America, and Alaska and many hard Australian rides, and also the lucky underpants. I’m not superstitious but without that combo there is no way I could have made it.
After a Lameroo coffee during which the café lady’s group conversation somehow turned to men’s hair or lack thereof, the disrespected man’s hair pushed on to Victoria and its hottest town – Ouyen. A very nice pie later and the final section through Manangatang saw contact with the Murray River which forced deviation south into the planned destination of Swan Hill.
Swan Hill, the home of laundry. Or so I thought. Is there a guest laundry? No. What about the one just down the road near where we stayed last time? What, the sleeping and toilet facility for homeless people? Don’t recommend that, but there is a brand new one just up the road which doesn’t need coins. Perfect, thanks. It would indeed have been perfect if it was just up the road, and it didn’t need coins. 1.5km isn’t just in the 35°C heat, and an ATM visit was required to get cash, and in all the organising stress one forgot to put most of the large laundry pile into the laundry bag, but never mind, the free-range pajamas can go a few more rounds starting tonight after a pleasant dinner up-town.
The reunion weekend started with a mere 350km continuation east on the north side of the Murray. Way too late into Deni for the Ute Muster but too early for lunch, it was still within the allowable time period for a caffeine at a Scottish Restaurant before continuing on to the Albury Cindy Muster. Rolling in just after 2pm, the spousal reunion was held during a trip to Kmart to find some less worn-in pajamas and the day was completed with quite a few beers and catch-ups with Compass mates. It was strange after nearly 2 weeks to be back riding with Cindy and others after so much “ride your own ride”, but the social uplift going from talking only to oneself to others who probably wished you weren’t talking was important.
The Compass Reunion was accompanied with much heat, and some of us squibbed the afternoon ride out of Yackandandah after lunch, but the dinner was great fun with all the old mates and the second place in the Photo Comp with a Rocky Creek Designs air pump prize was much appreciated. Hopefully I’ll never have to use it.
So home in convoy with Cindy, and quickly. Up to Queanbeyan to see son Tim and grandchildren, then a very large day to Coffs Harbour where I booked the accommodation while Cindy supervised me, and a final slightly shorter one with the added bonus of recovering an hour and the work trip was over with a GPS distance of 5,328.5 km. Overall a great trip with plenty of fun, terror, amusement, tears (unseen week-old roadkill carcasses bring those on), highway numb-bum and sheer riding joy.
Looking forward to more work trips, with some play.
travellingbennetts 