Apsley Falls to Brisbane
15 November 2016
Click on the image for a detailed map
I woke to the gentle patter of rain on my tent. Mercifully, it wasn’t much and didn’t last long and it was dry by the time we packed our gear for a later-than-hoped-for start. I must have had the shakes as the photos I took of the camp are too blurred to post. The weather looked foreboding, so we put on our wet weather gear and made our way back to Walcha where we stopped at a motorcycle friendly café for breakfast. Walcha is a popular spot for motorcycles as it sits at the top of the Oxley Highway, considered to be one of Australia’s best motorcycle rides.
Warren, author of the blog Motorcycle Paradise and one-time CB1100 rider wrote of it thus:
The Oxley remains one of the top rides in Australia or anywhere. Some roads have lots of corners all squashed together so you spend all your time on mid change of direction rather than enjoying a radius and hang time. The tail of the dragon I am reliably told is like that and super overrated. Other roads are very photogenic, like Stelvio, which I can personally vouch is lousy to ride being just lots of u-turns connected by straights and overrated. The Oxley however is a true riders delight. Not only does it have a huge number of corners but they come at you in every sort of radius, spaced out to be well defined. The road is maintained to near perfect condition by people who themselves ride it and is low traffic not a popular route for cars, campers or trucks
While I think it unfair to say the Tail of the Dragon is “super overrated” I think the Oxley is a better road. It’s prettier, longer and way more varied. During the week, there is way less traffic too.
Sadly, perhaps, Pterodactyl and I were going nowhere near the Oxley this day. Instead we took the Armidale-Grafton Road down from the range. That is some consolation prize. It’s also a fantastic road — at least as good as the Oxley, although with slightly more traffic to contend with. On day one of this trip I rode it in the other direction so I won’t say more now, other than to mention a lesson I learned.
Pterodactyl is a better rider than me. On any section of winding road, I’d back him to get from one end to the other more quickly. For that reason I usually follow him and accept he’ll be waiting at the other end. This day, for some reason, I let him talk me into leading. At the moment I rode too quickly into a left-hand corner and swung wide getting out of it, I realised having him behind me was a source of pressure. I know this is entirely my problem. There is no pressure from Pterodactyl; however, I felt it and had to make a conscious effort to slow down the little bit necessary to get back into my comfort zone.
The lesson? If you find yourself putting yourself under pressure because you are following or being followed by a better or faster rider, get out of the situation.
We stopped in Grafton for an indifferent but welcome sandwich before saying farewell again. Pterodactyl was off to see his son on the coast while I was to head north.
I made my way north through Grafton to the Summerland Way (which another motorcycling friend of mine has renamed the Slumberland Way). It’s cruel. It’s a good, fast road through pretty countryside, but by comparison with any number of other roads in the area, it’s just not very interesting.
Another milestone shot just north of Grafton
The Summerland Way
It’s about an hour from Grafton to Casino, where I refuelled, and then another 20 minutes to Kyogle. After that the Summerland Way gets progressively more entertaining as it approaches the Border Ranges. As I’d come down on the Lions Road, I decided to complete the circle and return over the Mount Lindesay Highway which is actually a better ride, bar a section north of the border where the atrocious surface makes corners that should be sheer entertainment mildly unpleasant.
First glimpse of Mount Lindesay. The road takes you to the other side of it and between it and the Mount Barney National Park
A glimpse of Mount Lindesay from the New South Wales side of the border on a glorious section of the road
Final view of Mount Lindesay from the Queensland side of the border
The interesting bit of the road ends at Rathdowney and from there its really a bit of a slog through Beaudesert, Jimboomba and Browns Plains where the motorway starts. By then my backside was sore and I was tired. The last 100 kilometres were really quite hard work.
It was with a sense of relief that, just before 1830 I pulled into the drive at home.
I haven’t added up the distances I’ve reported in this chronicle as I’ve generally taken them straight from the maps I’ve drawn. With a bit of fiddling about here and there and the inaccuracy of the CB’s speedometer, they’ll be a little different to what I recorded on the bike.
I was away 35 days and rode 8,298.9 kilometres (5,156.7 miles).
Start
Finish. 8,298.9 kms later
I used 443 litres (117 US gallons) of fuel and averaged 5.36 litres/100 kilometres (44.08 miles/US gallon). I took 940 photos on the lanyard cam; more with my phone; and several more with another camera.
I enjoyed almost every kilometre, and particularly enjoyed it that Mrs Cormanus rode part of the way with me. Even better than that, she said she enjoyed the time on the bike as much or more than any other part of our time together.
Those sections of the trip that I shared with Pterodactyl and noroomtomove were also a great pleasure and I’ll look forward to riding with both gentlemen again soon. And AussieFlyer too, I hope.
The CB1100 performed flawlessly and continues to do everything I want of it. There may well be better touring machines, but this one will do me just fine
Thanks for sticking with me through the trip.
