My Outback Adventure

[banzai]

I've taken a couple of weeks off work and on Wednesday I'm going to start a short outback adventure. The route will be something like this:

This seems like a good time of year to head to outback Queensland. Not too hot during the and it should be pretty dry. I'm not expecting the twisty mountain and forest roads of my last trip to Qld but if the roads are good and sights are worth seeing, that won't matter.

From Mudgee to Gunnedah I'll be on roads and in places I've heard of but never been to.

No idea what to look at in Lightning Ridge except for opals but that is part of the adventure. It will also be the stop for the first night after the longest day of riding.

Charleville will be about bilbys and stargazing (I love the night sky in the outback) and who knows what else. It will be the stop for the 2nd night. If I like it, I might spend an extra night and explore the area. For our non-Australian readers, this is a Bilby. Think of it as a marsupial version of a rabbit.


The third stop will be somewhere between Charleville and Moree. I'll work that out closer to the time. It must be 20 years since I I've been to Gunnedah and that was only to compete in a hillclimb. That will be the final night before a leisurely and twisty ride home.

 

[Dustin]

Can't wait to see the photos and read about your adventure! Have a great trip

 

[ballmead]

Enjoy the ride and I'll look forward to your ride report and pics.

 

[Dicko]

Charleville. Where Troy Dan's outback adventures come to life. I've been through there a few times for work. Interesting place! Enjoy the ride. I'm jealous.

 

[lytehouse]

Be safe and like the rest, can't wait to see pics from there :sport12:

 

[Hellgate]

Have fun and be safe! I'm looking forward to photos.

 

[Blanchy]

Watch out for the wildlife out there. Roos are large (see if you can get a photo of a large buck red) and Wild pigs plentiful. Hope you have an enjoyable ride.

 

[banzai]

So I set off a day earlier than originally planned.
Day 1.
Sydney was sunny but chilly when I left this morning, taking pleasure in filtering past peak hour cagers on my way to the out.
After topping up with fuel at Wilberforce I had a leisurely and very quiet run up the Putty Rd, stopping at Grey Gums for a loo break and a stretch.
The ride through Ten Mile was great, no-one holding me up and bugger all traffic coming the other way. I had the video camera running for this section and if it turns out okay I'll post it up separately. On through Jerrys Plains and into Denman for more fuel and a quick bite of lunch at the servo.
The Golden Highway must be a well travelled trucking route. The road between Denman and Merriwa is in good condition but is one lane each way for almost all of its length. Not that that was a problem today but I did go through a set of average speed cameras (for trucks) and had two Highway Patrol cars coming the other way but I was being good so had nothing to worry about. Morrow is also supposed to be the start (or end) of one of the five variants of the Virtual Solar System Drive but I couldn't find Pluto anywhere in town. Oh well! It isn't even a planet anymore.
On to The Black Stump Way, passing some nice fields fields of ripe canola, and into the town of Coolah which was supposed to have Neptune in it or nearby but I couldn't find that either. I did however discover that this town is home to the legendary "Black Stump" and I have now gone well beyond it.

Continuing onto the Mullaly-Coolah Rd and the Warrumbungles Way and I found Saturn. Yay!

Into Binnaway (Where ya really bin? Aussies should get that slightly racist joke)) and I saw this rather interesting grain silo and loader beside the railway line:

Travelling along the Warrumbungles Way I'd been getting tempting glimpses of those mountains. This is also a good road to make up a bit of time but it doesn't help average fuel consumption stats.
It was right on 4pm when I arrived in Coonabarabran so I decided to go up to Siding Springs Observatory and get the rest of the planets. But first more fuel or I wouldn't make the 50-odd km round trip.
You get nice and close to some of these ancient volcanic formations as you head into the Warrumbungles. I've seen similar formations in Queensland (Glass House Mountains) and in the Northern Territory (Kakadu).

On the way up to the observatory I passed all of the other planets, noting where to stop on my way back, and also my first live kangaroo for the day. I thought I'd read that the visitors centre was open until 5pm but it actually close at 4pm. At least I can say I've seen the sun at the centre of this virtual universe.

When I was pulling up to take the photo of the Earth there was some movement just behind it. Three large eastern grey kangaroos were there and they decided to move back up the hill a bit so I couldn't threaten them. I did get some photos though.

Planets photographed, it was time to head back into town and check into my Motel for the night. The Country Gardens Motel is good enough for my needs and the bed is comfortable.
Somehow my planned ride of 478km turned into 588km. Not that I'm complaining when almost 60 of that covered the trip up to Siding Springs that I had originally planned for tomorrow.
From here to my motel in Lightning Ridge is only supposed to be 309km. That should be a very easy ride and leave plenty of time to look around.

This link will take you to the various planet photos:
Sept2015 by Phillip Brook | Photobucket

 

[Dicko]

Nice ride report. Hope you don't see any roos on the road, especially the reds as you get further inland.

Look out for drop bears too, we had one of them run out in front of us last year on our way to the island. They're solid animals. luckily we all missed it.

Safe travels.

 

[banzai]

Day 2
Covered 355km today and only went through four towns.

I started the day by having a look at the fossil remains of the biggest ever marsupial, the Diprotodon, at the Coonabarabran Visitors Centre. You wouldn't want to run into one of these on the highway. They were as big as a rhinoceros but they died out about 20,000km.
The road heading Northwest to Baradine was surprisingly twisty and pleasant. The Warrumbungles to the left and Pilliga State Forest to the right with many sections where the forest was right up to the edge of the road. Traffic was non-existent.
Turn left after going through Baradine and head for Coonamble. More forest but this soon gave way to broad, flat farming land. In the 50-odd km of this road I only passed about 5 cars and a large herd of cattle that were grazing the long paddock. You could see them from well ahead so no danger slowing down and riding through them. The fence lines were well back from the road so in the unlikely event you go off road, you have a fair way to go before you hit anything.
After fuelling up it was off to Walgett. Light traffic, good roads and glad I had music to listen to otherwise this would have been fairly boring riding.
Late morning tea at the local bakery and off to Lightning Ridge. Just as I got to the intersection to get back onto the Castlereagh Highway, two B-Double cattle trucks rolled past. I decided staying well back would be wise until a good overtaking opportunity came up. Fortunately that wasn't far away. Again, traffic was so light that getting around the few vehicles I caught up to was no issue.

Lots of long straight sections with clear visibility for a couple of km. Lots of low scrub bush, a few farms and one big red kangaroo crossing the road about 50metres in front of me (but no drop bears) until up ahead in the distance was Stanley.

Made out of scrap metal, including some VW Beetle bodies, Stanley the Emu is the tallest thing around at 18m. Emus have spiritual significance for the local aborigines who helped with the construction and dedication of this mega-bird.

Stanley is only a couple of km from the Lightning Ridge turn-off and then another few kilometres to the town itself. The place certainly isn't glamorous but over the last century and a quarter it has produced billions of dollars worth of opal and in particular, the very rare Black Opal.
Though small, the place is well set up for tourists with several marked tourist driving trails and plenty to see thanks to a somewhat eccentric population with a colourful past. Of course, the place wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for mining so no visit is complete without a trip down one of the mines.

Each mine claim is limited to an area of 50m x 50m and they get worked fairly hard and often unsuccessfully. A lot of miners barely scrape by but when they do get lucky, the rewards can also be big. It is interesting that there are no big mining companies in town. I guess the lack of practical applications for opals doesn't have the rewards.

 

[banzai]

Day 3

Today was the longest haul of the trip. On paper it was meant to be 613km but at the end of the day I've covered 651.
I left Lightning Ridge at 8.30 and headed across the border to the tiny town of Hebel. Town? Well it had a pub, a general store (with attached house) and a camping ground. Hebel was the perfect opportunity for a quick brunch stop at the character-filled general store before hitting the really long stretches.

The further north I went, the more plentiful the roadkill, some of it quite fresh. I also had my first sighting of emus on this trip and a variety of other animals; lizards, hawks, sheep, goats, cattle and numerous types of other birds including an almost suicidal galah.
Just before Dirranbandi I turned left and headed to Bollon which is another 80km up the road and would be my first fuel stop of the day. About 40km down the road I struck this:

What the? I didn't see that on GoogleMaps. What's more there was 20km of it. I decided to keep on going and soon got the hang of the road. The dirt was very hard packed and the corrugations weren't too bad. Apart from a herd of cattle in the middle of the road, the dirt section proved quite uneventful.
252km on 14.2 litres of fuel was easily the best mileage of the ride so far.
Bollon is a previous tidy town winner and it was very tidy indeed. Apparently 300 members of the Ulysses club had been there earlier in the week. The fuel stop was sorta interesting. The servo is at the western end of the main street but there was a sign saying to go back to the general store for service and that was 400metres back east. Asked for fuel and was told someone would meet me at the pumps. That someone had been making sandwiches at the general store a few minutes earlier. It was a good thing I wanted 95 because that and diesel were all they had.
Cunnamulla is about 187km west of Bollon. The open road speed limit since I'd entered Qld was only 100km/h. No-one goes anywhere near that slow. Bollon to Cunnamulla took about 100 minutes. I did see one Highway Patrol at Cunna but that car was safely parked outside the police station when I did a lap of the town. When fuelling up in Cunnamulla a guy on a BMW GS pulled in. He calculated he only had about a quarter of a litre left in the tank. I don't know where he last got fuel but it was somewhere north of Charleville. He was also just the second rider I'd seen since The Putty Road and both were on BMWs
Cunnamulla to Charleville is just under 200km and takes you through some very sparse countryside.

In the wet season, the roads in this part of the world can be cut off for ages as water from further north slowly makes its way to South Australia. You cross numerous flood zones and beside parts of the road are ditches for guiding water away from the road surface as much as possible.
I hit Charleville almost bang on 4pm. Charleville is larger than I expected and there are a few things to see. Unfortunately I didn't and won't get to see the bilbies but I did go stargazing at the observatory. As I said in my original post, outback skies really are amazing. When booking my place for tonight,
in the carpark of the observatory I noticed these novel uses for old motorcycle fuel tanks:

Tomorrow will be a short day on the road. If I ride economically, I could probably make my destination, Roma 268km away, on one tank.

 

[Dustin]

Fantastic trip so far! I can only imagine how incredible it is to stargaze in outback Australia. Thank you for the photos, keep 'em coming

 

[Strider7]

Love the photos, Amigo!

You've got some 'Bike Of The Month' winners in there for sure!

 

[banzai]

Only a short report from today as it was a short ride and all on one road. Projected distance was 268km, actual was only 286. I would have easily made it on one tank of petrol but played it safe and filled up about 100km from Roma.
I finally hit the road about 9.30 with more beautiful weather and a warning from the motel owner that the police were having a blitz on the road to Roma. They must have been taking the morning off because I didn't see any. The roadkill however, was probably the most I'd seen on the trip. The road east folks the railway line and starts off as semi-desert. Plenty of trees but not a lot of grass
After about 100km the desert gives way to more grassland and farming areas. About 60km out from Roma there was the start of what looked like fields of young wheat.
Roma itself is surprisingly large. Coming into the centre of town they even have a KFC and McDonalds. The town (city?) is known for several things in particular. Since the 19th century it has been one of the largest centuries for beef cattle in Australia. The cattle yards here are the largest in the country. Also going back to the 19th century it is one of the countries first centres for oil and gas and it is still a large industry in this area. One of the attractions in town is called Big Rig which seems to be funded by the oil industry and gives quite a good overview of the industry in the past and into the future as there is a lot of coal seam gas still to be extracted.

The other thing that is common around here is the Bottle Tree. Endemic to the area and very common in town where they have an avenue of them dedicated to soldiers from the area who died in WW1. This monster shows how big they can get.

In another change of plans I've decided to head home in two days rather than three. There are a bit over 1100km to go so I'll be splitting it roughly in half with the next overnight stop at Narrabri.

 

[ballmead]

Very cool trip and photos Phil, keep them coming.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[banzai]

Day 5 and another clear blue sky. I'm not sure I can cope with all of this good weather.
I really should have fuelled up last night. The service stations were crap this morning. The first one I went to was half pulled up for repair work and you'd have to reverse away from the pumps to exit so I went to another one just down the road. It was bloody busy. What should have taken no more than 5 minutes ended up taking more than 15. Once I finally got back on the road all of that was forgotten as I turned south on the Carnarvon Highway towards St George.
This general lack of traffic is tough to deal with but I think I can manage.
Time for more fuel at St George and head to the border at Mungindi. On that stretch I'd been seeing a lot of pretty yellow flowers beside the road. No idea what they are but I had to get some photos.

Mungindi is one of the very few towns that straddles a border. It sits right at the western end of the wiggly bit of the Qld-NSW border. Of course, I had to get a photo and uh-oh - Houston, we have a problem.

Yes, the left hand pannier bracket was broken. The welds on one arm had failed and the quarter turn faster on another had twisted back out. Damn! That is the side where I keep my laptop so I'm glad the other two arms kept it more-or-less in place. Fortunately I have a bungee cord and some decent zip ties on board so I could affect a reasonable roadside fix.

I didn't have a big enough screwdriver to redo that quarter turn fastener so I'd have to sort that out later.
The next fuel stop was Moree. There are no fuel stations on the highway! I had to turn around and head towards the town centre, past the airport where I found a service station. Unfortunately they didn't have a big screwdriver either but while I was checking my repairs a guy pulled up for fuel with two dirt bikes in the back of his ute. He didn't have a screwdriver on him but he offered to duck home, just around the corner, and get one. Fixing that fastener took all of about 15 seconds and I am much obliged to that helpful stranger.
Narrabri is about 100km down the road from Moree. About halfway along I started seeing this range of mountains.

Certainly not in the ballpark with the mountains that Dustin has been traveling through. I think they are called Sawn Rocks and are the highest things I've seen since Wednesday morning.
If I'd arrived in Narrabri a bit earlier I was going to head about 25km west to see the Radio Telescopes at the Paul Wild Observatory. That will be first on the list for tomorrow morning and should round out the astronomical aspect of this trip quite nicely.
Narrabri, late on a Saturday afternoon is a very quiet place. You could let off the proverbial shotgun down the main street and not hit anyone.

As I took a walk around that main street I was very impressed by these signs at some of the intersections.

Makes a lot of sense to me however, when I gave way to a car, he decided to stop and give way to me. Oh Well. Either way, common sense prevailed.

558km covered today and, depending on how I feel when I get close to Sydney, tomorrow should be pretty similar.

 

[banzai]

Day 6
As I mentioned in the last report, first up today would be a trip out to the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), about 25km west of Narrabri. Pretty cool place if you like big machines and space exploration and definitely fitted in with the Solar System Ride/Siding Springs and Charleville Observatory parts of this trip.

When I arrived at the centre it was just me and a whole lot of kangaroos. In fact I had my closest on-road roo encounter for the trip when 3 of them crossed the road no more than 50 metres ahead of me. I was going slow enough that there was no danger but I couldn't be sure they weren't being followed by some mates.
The roos are generally just lazing about the site, safe and protected from harm. They don't like you getting too close though. Once I got to about 20metres from this big fella he decided it was time to get up and move away.

Time to hit the road proper and I was going for just about the quickest and most direct route home. That meant the Kamilaroi Highway through Gunnedah to Willow Tree then onto the New England Highway. Very pretty country at this time of year. I haven't been on these parts of the New England for many years and had completely forgotten what was there. The town of Murrurundi, closely surrounded by hills is particularly scenic. I should have stopped to take some photos but I was keen to get home.
Continuing through Singleton I was looking for a service station on my side of the road but only found a new motorway and with the low fuel warning having been flashing for over 30km I thought it wise to exit at Kurri Kurri and find a petrol station. 283km was, by far, the longest stint between refuels for the trip but I still had over 2 litres left in the tank and could, in theory, have made another 40km.
Past the old Oak Milk factory and onto the M1 Motorway for the sprint home. I did get a shock at one point when I looked in my mirror and saw a police paddy wagon on my tail. Fortunately they were only interested in getting to the next service centre. I had been zapped by at least three Highway Patrol radars and lasers since Muswellbrook but, though going above the limit, it obviously wasn't enough to get them excited.
I had to get off the motorway and do the Brooklyn to Berowra section of the Old Road. I love that hillclimb! I'll need a lot more of that to unsquare the tyres. I ended up riding into my driveway just after 5pm, very happy with the performance of the bike and glad to have crossed a number of interesting towns off my "must visit" list. I can safely fill in some new sections of the Australia road map that hangs in my study. One day I will complete a whole lap of the country and most of the major roads.
Bugs.

On some days they were absolutely terrible. I was having to stop and clean my visor every 100km or less. Every time I stopped, flies would swarm to the bike and my helmet to feast on the spatter field. I cleaned the headlights a couple of times as the bug splatter was seriously affecting them and did a quick clean of the fairing on the 2nd day but gave up for the rest of the trip. Tomorrow the bike and my riding gear will be getting a good clean.

Today's ride was 573km. In total over the 6 days, 3,011km. The weather was perfect, clear blue skies most of the time and maximum daytime temperatures generally in the low-to-mid 20s.

I was so glad I had a pair of decent noise reducing earbuds for listening to music out on the open road. I wouldn't use these around town but on the quiet, open roads, they really made the ride more pleasant and encouraged me to move around on the bike a bit to reduce fatigue. The throttle rocker and newish riding jacket were also worth their weight in gold. The latter being waterproof (in case I encountered rain) and having some good vents on the chest and arms for the warmer parts of the ride.

 

[Dustin]

What a great ride report! Thanks for sharing with us

 

[Oldschool]

From the Canadian that finds the AFL amusing, thanks for a great read and pictures of a country I hope to see one day! I think you need to travel and report more!