Brisbane to Wauchope
26 January 2018
Click on the map to see a Google Map of the entire trip.
Crossing the border from Queensland to New South Wales in the summertime means putting your clock forward an hour. Queensland, with good reason, declines to participate in the daylight saving adopted by other Australian states.
On Australia Day (January 26) I was in Grafton, NSW with the clock on the bike saying my normal lunch time was over due, but not yet feeling hungry enough to stop. I was also in the process of deciding to abandon the day’s plan to ride up the range to Glen Innes. I’d been out of sorts all day and I just didn’t feel like it, even though I’d originally been keen to get up on the range. It was very hot on the flat in the coastal hinterland and I hoped height would bring cooler air. But it was increasingly overcast and a check of the weather app on my phone showed rain falling all over the alternative route I was pondering.
The bike was (relatively) clean, I was hot and I didn’t want to have to do battle with my wet weather gear (which would just make things even hotter). To make matters more complicated, either alternative ride up the Great Dividing Range would mean a longer wait for food than I wanted.
On a whim I decided to go to Nana Glen, nearer the coast, where there had been a motorcycle friendly café the last time I passed through. While that would mean the slab after lunch and an overnight stay near the coast, the consolation prize was a ride up the Oxley Highway the following morning.
Australia Day’s a public holiday, and when I got to Nana Glen the café was firmly closed. I pushed on to Coramba where I found food but no fuel. That would once have worried me, but application of NoRoomToMove’s First Law of Motion and Fuel Consumption reassured me I’d be fine to get to Coffs Harbour.
NoRoomToMove's First Law of Motion and Fuel Consumption as applied to Honda's CB1100:
KR = KT/10 x 4
Where—
KR = Kilometres remaining; and
KT = Kilometres travelled
Because the CB1100's tank carries 14.6 litres of fuel and the reserve light flashes when approximately 3.6 litres remain in the tank, the formula should really be KT/11 x 3.6, but that's way too complicated to do in my head. My colleague, Pterodactyl, being naturally cautious and slightly harder on the right wrist than NoRoomToMove, so we decided on KT/11 x 3 as the multiplier to give us some margin of error.
So far so good!
Stopped for lunch at Coramba
An afternoon milestone just south of Coffs Harbour
Later in the day, after an unremarkable trip down the highway, very hot but at least dry, I pulled into Wauchope where I found a room at the Hastings Hotel. It was comfortable and clean, but it wasn’t until I lay down on the bed that I finally found the power point.
