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The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Gloucester OZ

Mike.C

Mike.C

High Miler
Joined
Oct 27, 2008
Messages
982
Location
Brisbane
Well this is it, the Northern Tablelands of NSW becon with cool summer nights and warm days, rolling counrtyside and spectacular scenery all interspersed with quaint towns and major rural centres - Australia is a big country and this is just one little bit of it ......... But I am too far to fast into the story without a proper beginning, and any good story must start at the beginning so let's begin.

And what a beginning it was, several months of planning and bike setup culminated in a weekend trip to the Sunshine Coast just before Christmas (see the trip report elswhere) that would act as a proving ground for all the gear and a chance to make sure that Sally (The Minister for Fun and Finance - currently Stelvio) was confident and up to the ride. All panned out well and I had no problems with our plans.

Sunshine Coast Trip Report Here

Simply put it would be 2 days travel from Brisbane to Gloucester which is approximately 2.5 hours north west of Sydney and about 850km from Brisbane through back roads via the New England Plateau. For those in other countries, The Great Dividing Range is a line of mountainous country that runs parallel with the east coast of Australia from Melbourne in the south to north of Cairns in far north Queensland - the New England section of this range comprises the section that is north of Sydney starting jat about the famous Hunter Valley wine growing region and extending to the northern NSW towns of Grafton and Casino.

Then 3 days of exploration of the area around Gloucester known as The Barrington Tops, and 2 days back again to Brisbane with a one night stopover along the way. The route was planned to avoid the major highways as much as possible and with some off road machinery coming to the shed some time soon and plans afoot for some third world travel by Stelvio it was a good opportunity to get a taste of what might be in store....

Saddled up, mounted up, fueled up and off......
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

Leaving Queensland via The Lions Road and into the Northern Rivers area of NSW.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

Where the road takes a fantastic winding route through the sub tropical woodlands of Northern NSW, a taste of what was to come as we moved higher into the ranges.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

And some stunning scenery - right at our back door - what a playground eh??
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

We had some last minute advice from members of AIGOR (Australian Internet Guzzi Owners Register) and at 9:30pm the night before departure I was busy re-programming the Zumo with a new route to take in some better roads - advice which turned out to be spot on the money and making for a route that was to take us over country that had it all - tight twisties, fast sweepers, fast traverses through open rolling countryside and just to remind us what life could be like without motorcycling some highway sections.

Through some classic areas of dry schlerophyl forest (sorry after 4 years studying ecology I can't resist) full of stands of eucalypt that are just beautiful and fortunately largely National Park.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester O

With great roads that alternated from tight 25km hour hairpin bends to fast 55km sweepers with good road surface and predictable signage and best of all almost no traffic - on some sections we saw no cars for half an hour = BLISS!
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

The never ending scenery casued the call over the radio - 'Photo Stop' to become almost monotonous.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

But someone has to do it right?
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

Which brings us up into the Northern section of the New England.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

To the town of Dorrigo - a town born out of the timber industry at the turn of the century.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

Boasting the Worlds Smallest Motorcycle museum - just quietly I wouldn't make a special trip!
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

It only has 2 bikes (It did say smallest!) and one was the owners' Harley something or other.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

But on this ocasion he did have another semi interesting bike on display.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

By now we were more interested in sustenance and a bed, after being on the road all day, and what with the excitement of the trip and all. But we were starting to get into a rythm and the bikes were running like clockwork, revelling in the cooler temps of about 28c at the increased altitude.

The Dorrigo Hotel was built in 1925 by a peculiar system whereby the breweries (in this case Tooth and Co) went gaurantor at the bank for the loan to the new publican who then built the proposed hotel but was contracted to the brewery to supply only their product. The hotel is run by the family of the original publican to this day.

The monument in the foreground of the pic is the Dorrigo Cenotaph - nearly all towns in Australia have a monument, mostly in the centre of the main street, but often also in a central park or reserve listing the names of the local lads and sometimes girls who died in the 1st, 2nd and now more commonly also the Korean and Vietnam wars. This forms the focus of the ANZAC day formalities each year.

But for us it was the hotel and its' kitchen and bar that were the attraction.



And so endeth the first day - 439km and a great ride.

One day down - six to go - more tomorrow.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

So nice! Thank you for sharing.

I envy you the climate being, though...


(Btw, Mike, you CAN post more pictures inside one posting. I'll admit your avatar is stunning, but.. :laugh: )
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

Mike, I'll second Holt on the post. Splendid Blog. Do it again, and soon.
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 - Brisbane to Glocester OZ

When I see these pictures Mike, I have to ask my father why he came back to Holland after 3 years living in Australia. (before I was born). Ok he wasn't living in Brisbane but in Bourke in the Outback in the fifties. Maybe that's why. Overthere I guess it's a nice playground for the Stelvio. :p
For my holiday (in june??) I'm planning a trip to the Norwegian fjords (sorry Holt:huh: ). By then I have hopefully some stunnishing pictures, when the weather is good enough. I know you can catch a lot of rain on the westcoast overthere.:angry: . Maybe I'll be lucky.

As for posting more pictures in one post. I've tried that before in my posts about Sweden and the Alpes, but when I put in one image from my computerfile then push on the img button to insert this on the page and then the next image in the same way, the post will show the last put in image twice and will not show the first one.
Can someone give me a hint what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks and ciao Dolf. :)
 
Re:The 1st Ride of 2009 Brisbane to Gloucester OZ

Dolf: Burke in the fifties would have been an isolated place, probably only saw a mail and supplies truck once a week or so. And hot is not the word, more like searing - summer out there is a dangerous place, get caught in the bush without water and you die - simple as that. I'm not surprised your dad cut and ran.

Actually it is only possible to upload one photo per post to the Guzzitech server as you found out. There is a sneaky way around this involving making dummy posts to upload the photo to teh Guzzitech server and then pasting the text and link into a main post but it is quite tedious.

The other way is to host the photos off site at something like smugmug.com (for video I would use vimeo.com) and then you can have as many in a post as you like becasue they are a simple link. The benefit of this method is that if you want to post the report in multiple forums (or should that be fora? - nah I ride a Guzzi not a BMW :p ) you can just write it once and then a simple cut and paste will duplicate everything as many times as you desire.


Thanks guys - more coming.
 
The goal for day two was Gloucester a further 337km. Initially tracking west across the new england plateau to Armidale - the largest town in the area and a major rural centre then on to Uralla and Walcha.

From there the road drops down off the escarpment via a road known as Thunderbolts Way. Captain THunderbolt was a local bushranger and a bit of a ruffian, and the road that shares his name is similar, with many accidents involving high and not so high powered sports bikes over the years - we decided to take it easy. The Thunderbolts as it is commonly called, is famous among Australian east coast bikers and has two distinct sections.

The upper half has been descibed as 'an epically expansive highway that stretches from front wheel to horizon in waves of endless straights and sweepers'. What a description and pretty accurate too.

At the half way point is a lookout where we stopped for lunch.
 
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