Blarney to Killarney - East Australia hills ride

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Caroanbill
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Blarney to Killarney - East Australia hills ride

Post by Caroanbill »

Day 1 Sydney to Rylstone
~350 km

A dishy, if disastrous, date has set a spark in me to see what lay across the hills of my childhood. Wolf is up for the adventure and we set out to meet and explore.

I’m a little late into Windsor, just outside Sydney, but so is Wolf and we coincide neatly. Coffee, catch-up and mount-up to top-up six clicks on in Wilberforce. The Putty Road is empty and we’re fast – my eyes are definitely “in” today and even the Milbrovale bends are dispatched with some aplomb. We’re even zippier across the hilltops to Denman to amuse our cranky café host. At least his coffee and nosh are good!

Then we slip out to Sandy Hollow and slide onto the Bylong Valley Way. Our necks crane to see the looming red sandstone teetering above the Goulburn river – and us – but it’s all drama and no danger into the Kerrabee Valley for a crank over the hairpins and new sweepers into Bylong for ginger beer. It’s the first run along this new seal and we feel like two-wheel discoverers: a new riding road is still a thrill (and we’ve a few yet to come, this ride!).

Then it’s fast through the valley until the towering rock faces of Growee Gulf, winding up a seal that’s failing as we gaze. Breaking bitumen – mere years old – adds a little spice to the tight wind up the divide to cypress and mattrush forest, scudding under black pagodas and out onto the open range into Rylstone.

The pub has lost its competition, so the price is a gouge and the room is a grunge, but there’s decent food and great local reds to come. We wander the old town to be taken for burglars at the old railway station, and rewarded with a potted history from its self-appointed warden. The locals adopt us after dinner and we’re libated and regaled by the front bar fire until sanity sends us to sleep.


Day 2 Rylstone to Tenterfield
~800km

The morning brings sheet ice on the car park and hoarfrost on the bikes. At nine a.m. our bike temperature gauges still read under zero, but, intrepid we, we set off for Mudgee with the locals’ warnings of humourless speed traps still ringing in our ears.

We swing backwards past the Ulan mine northeast through Cassilis to catch the rolling overhill run into Coolah – a swoosh down to town, unlike the bucking bumps of the western road. A quick stop at the Black Stump (an Australian bush icon) – a claim contested at Hillston, but who cares today – and we wind through Binnaway to Coonabarrabran to fill up.

Then it’s pilliga scrub and the Newell Highway to Narrabri. The forest is fine if the road is ... straight, straight, straight – and infected with B-double trucks. Narrabri has cut back all its trees to avoid liability and character: and succeeded in the latter only too well. A very basic lunch in a basic café in this basic (if bumptious) town, and we set out for another new seal.

This road wanders across dry open flats before winding up the shoulder of Mt Kaputar. The corners sweep nicely before tightening up to make wider grins, as we’re onto the mountain itself, in forest and scrub. The wattles are still a-burst with gold, so we stop in the gap to soak it in … the mountain is a small island ark holding cooler species off the heat of the plain. Off down, swinging left-right-left-right before swooping out to skate over the fresh gravel of the new seal into Bingara.

Then it’s a familiar cowpat splooch along the banks of the Gwydir river, shuddering to ABS stops as cattle clomp onto the road to surprise us. Then up, around, up and around through the callitris scrub up the range to Copetoun dam, a road that has always swung for us – woo, whoo, whoop! We stop for views of the still–empty dam and sprint north through Inverell and along the rolling ridges through Ashford to join the Bruxner Highway by the Dumaresq River.

A bravado burst around the sweeping river bends tops two hundred, before slowing to meet cattle as we belt past the Sundown backroad (not tonight, Stanthorpe) and on in the closing dark to Tenterfield.

No room at the inns, save a reasonable motel, and a wander to town to find new owners at “our” woodfire pizza joint. Still, the pizzas haven’t fallen too far down the taste tree, so we order and find a soft local Cab-Merlot to wash them down back at our suite.


Day 3 Falls and stalls
~400km

It’s a winter tablelands morning, chills swinging under grey granite and on through forest to the pink granite of Girraween National Park, on again past the winter orchards from Stanthorpe to the top of the range before dropping down into the dry Condamine River grasslands. Quickly out of Warwick and onto the open rangelands, dry yellow-brown grasses and drier scrubby gums. The country livens up and the road tightens up into the little village of Killarney, and we scoot on across the border to scout the link to the upper Clarence valley at the still-smaller village of Legume.

Back over the green border to Killarney, and the climb begins. Today we’re linking the dots, taking the high road from the Condamine River, up Spring Creek and over the main range to fall into Carney Creek. Another newly sealed connection, to add to our adventures, this time sparked by growing up nearby yet never knowing much of this high, isolated plateau – even though it’s part of the Great Divide.

The road up is as steep as main range country can be, narrow and twisting, and us nervously climbing hairpins with their own horizons, still slick with early spring water. We halt at the first falls - even here the gorge is deep and dark, and a short stroll lets Wolf marvel at the depths. On again, teetering up to the tops and a salad lunch above Queen Mary Falls on the edge of the Main Range National Park. The main falls are indeed spectacular, along a delightful upcountry forest stroll.

On, over, down into the rainforest. It is as dark and beautiful as the road is nerve-wracking. Sealed, yes … rideable? Only just! It’s a single hump of bitumen, a single lane at best and crowned so high the sides are vertiginous. The edges are a six inch drop of bitumen straight into mud, and that mud slips away verge-less down the long, almost vertical rainforest slope … there would be no way to hold a bike anywhere but the up-side of this road, so we independently decide that, if we see a car, we’ll pull right and stop! We teeter down a few hairpins and breathe enough relief on the steep but straight sections to breathe in the forest itself. Ahhhh - glorious!

We pop out into cleared country and a road we can relax on, winding around high green farms and through forest pockets to be gob-smacked by the views of Mt Wilson and Mt Lindsay. We stop to see the endless vista out over the ranges and ranges, towards the sea, across the backs of so many familiar childhood mountains, never-before-seen from this side. So high, and the wind howls around us, but even gusts can’t whip our wide smiles at being on top of this world.

The next plateau step as we start down is all New England pines and faded weatherboard cottages, idling through open paddocks and rattling across cattle grids. The local drivers clearly don’t expect two-wheeled wanderers and hurtle by sideways in sprays of gravel. Then it’s the long down – on the map this seems more fearsome than the first descent, and on the ground it’s an eight kilometre single lane ribbon - winding, winding, twisting, down. Fortunately, it has wide dry gravel verges, and though too loose to ride or stop on, the locals cheerfully pull out onto to them and, waving, leave us the seal.

We spit out down the last hairpin and drop the last near-vertical into a creek splash. More splashes and a few cattle-grid rattles, until the track becomes road again, winding through farms and down the ridges into Carney Creek and the turn north to Boonah. It’s a dull, dry, dull Brisbane Valley ride across the Cunningham Highway, behind Amberly Airbase, over to Esk ... too-early too-dull to stop.

We swing west and climb into the sun, swinging up through high forest. At last we can open throttles and swoop around, up the range to Hampton and on up the New England Highway to Crows Nest. We find a sparkling clean pub with a decent bistro – even some local red to smile over.

A whole day of new roads ... and another to follow! We retreat happily to sleep.


Day 4 Bump over Bunya
~450km

New day, new roads! We trundle along the New England Highway (it’s just a local road now) and swing down at Wutul onto Oakely Rd, then follow the flat-ish Dalby Road, to Maclagan. Our maps fail us a bit, now that NSW and Queensland motorist associations have traded cooperation for corporatisation, so we ask a local. We’re probably on the wrong road, and you can’t get there from here! Ah, well, that’s what adventure is for – we head off into tight valleys armed only with the local foreboding.

In the end, we’ve two valleys of glorious road to Rangemore and then we hit dirt – fortunately only a few kilometres, but Wolf complains anyway. My teeth are too gritted to gripe! The we hit the Bunya Mountains road .. it’s as steep up as Carney Creek Road was down, but it’s only four kilometres and there are lay-bys for buses so we can ease past slow tourists (who hires city cars for this mountain?) and climb, twist, climb, twist.

We burst out into blue on narrow high ridges with views west to yesterday. Photos and held breaths, and on and even further. The Maidenwell road pops in from the east and takes us into rainforest, climbing yet again. Bunya Mountain towers 1100 metres above the Burnett River basin, perhaps the last crown of green before north Queensland. We crawl along to savor the forest, and stop for each view when the roads pops momentarily out of its green tunnel.

We wind down another heart-in-mouth descent, until the cool green opens into dry brown and we can fly down the ridgelines to the plain. We turn onto a trunk road and Wolf’s Adventure starts to complain. We nurse it into Kingaroy – no BMW dealer and the Harley chap is cheerful but clueless. Prudence cuts short our northern meander to get to the nearest BMW guy – 160 kilometres away in Caloundra.

Still, we manage a pleasant wind down the range to Kilcoy and over the Peachester winds into Beerwah. The coastline dealer is pleasant, but the check says Wolf’s bike is indeed iffy. We’re tempted to trade on the spot for a new R1200GS Adventure, but sanity takes us north through gawdawful traffic to cook for friends at Mooloolaba.


Day 5 Flat out to flat town
~400km


We debate towing, shipping, fixing and all the bike options - and decide to ride carefully to Grafton. After all, it’s flat all the way and Wolf’s Grafton brother has trailer and garage.

And flat it is. Flat across the old swamps to the Bruce Highway, flat through the old pine plantations to Pine Rivers, flat around eastern Brisbane to the Gateway … then flat-ish to the Pacific Higway and flat along behind the Gold Coast. The new Tugun bypass is flat under the airport and flat across the river flats.

Into NSW and Sextons Hill is unflat but shortlived. Then flat along the Tweed River, flat to past the last view of very-unflat Mt Warning and flat under the Tweed coast hills in tunnels. Just for relief, it’s now flat past Billinudgel and flat across Tyagarah flat to the Byron turnoff. Up! St Helena Hill and a wind around Bangalow-Knockrow-waddayaknow to Ballina. Too much! Now it’s flat down the Richmond River and flat across Tabbimobil, then flat along the Clarence to the flat town of Grafton.

Dinner discussion brings decision: Wolf is off home, bike on brother’s trailer. The rest of the trip is Billy’s call.


Day 6 Home alone
~650km


And my call comes from the murraya hedge I want to cut down at home. So, sometime before the temperature can rise above freezing and well before the sun, I take an early legal-speed bolt down the Pacific. I’ve avoided this road so well in the past decade that it’s almost a new journey ... if a dull one.


© Bill Stanhope 2009
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captaincable
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Location: N.E. Georgia

Re: Blarney to Killarney - East Australia hills ride

Post by captaincable »

That was a very entertaining and descriptive write up, almost felt like I was along for ride. Looking forward to more.
Thank you and ride safe.
Mike
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