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Brisbane to Phillip Island for Moto GP 2008 (Total trip 4500klm)
Work in progress Updated - 18th August
(Very) Quick Summary
Monday - Brisvegas to Singleton via New England Highway.
Tuesday - Singleton to Tumut via Putty road, Lithgow, Bathurst, Young, Cootamundra,Coolac,Gundagai and stoping over night at Tumut.
Wednesday - Across the top of the Snowy Mountain, Cooma, Boombala, Cann River, Bairnsdale ended up in Mafra (great little town) for the night.
Thursday - Final leg to island, left Mafra and headed for lakes entrance and followed coast routes to end up at San Remo.
Racing!
Friday, Saturday,Sunday - Race days
Monday - Leave the Island going the reverse route, stop for breakky along the way (its pouring rain), head to Cann River, Bomballa (its been snowing all night, ride through 4" of snow), Cooma (dinner break and lots of coffee), stop at Canberra for the night.
Tuesday - Tour around Canberra, head to Goulburn, then inland to Oberon and Jenolan caves, stay overnight do a cave tour the next morning.
Wednesday, head back to Lithgow, Putty Road, Maitland, get onto Pacific Highway and go to Nabiac, Stay the night.
Thursday, tour the Nabiac Motorcycle Museum and the head back via the Oxley highway, Wauchope, Walcha, Uralla, back to Brisbane, arrive home at around 9pm.
Friday - back to work - bad move - I'm stuffed.
Packed for 12 days travel. Everything fits onto the GPz1100..just!
Day 1
Its 7AM Monday morning, for some stupid reason I decided to leave on a Monday morning when in reality I should have left on the Sunday and got a real early start. The weather is great, not too hot and not too cold, The trip will be 2200Klm down to Philip Island in Victoria and I planed 4 days to achieve it at a comfortable pace with some sight seeing along the way. Day 1 is mainly designed to cover a large chunk of NSW in one go so that the remaining days can be used to cruise the mountains in southern NSW and East Victoria.
The trip starts by heading from my home at The Gap, Brisbane and out towards Ipswich and down the Cunningham Highway, its long, dry and no shortage of cars. The GPz1100 has been well prepared for the trip, I packed a tent, air mattress, tarp with plenty of poles, ropes, gas burner, food, clothes and two cameras. Having spent a few weeks on maintenance, I decided to take just a few basic spanners.
First stop is for a leg stretch around Warwick, soon after Stanthorpe. At Stanthorpe the road becomes the New England Highway and soon we cross the border into NSW, the route takes the GPz to Tenterfield, Glenn Innes, Guyra, Armidale and finally Tamworth. Tamworth is of note as no visit to Tamworth can exclude a visit to the Powerhouse Motorcycle Museum which is only a small collection of bikes but very well presented with a collection of beautifully restored and completely original motorcycle from all walks of life.
A small cafe in the middle of town provided an excellent lunch and soon after it was back on the road to Scone, Muswellbrook and finally arriving at around 6pm in Singleton to a hotel room with a hot shower :)
The days ride was 728klm, a big slog but well worth it to get this far south.
The Powerhouse Museum at Tamworth, a private collection that is well presented.
Day 2
Day 2 starts with a shower and breakfast, when we leave the hotel room it becomes apparent just how many other bikers are on the road to Phillip Island, STACKS! A trip up the road to the servo, a chat with a lot of fellow bikers and we head off for the famous Putty Road and our lunch stop will be Lithgow.
The weather is fantastic yet again, its not too long before we hit the first of the 'twisties' that make up much of the Putty Road, signs warning of dangers for motorcyclists are everywhere. As I travel along, a bus and truck slows us down and the number of blind bends make passing tricky at best, in frustration I decided to take a leap of faith and over take the truck on a wide corner and shortly after the bus. The road is great if you like corners and long sections (I do), it reminds me a lot of many of the sections of the Mt Mee and the Mt Nebo-Glorious roads here in Queensland, its a Mecca for all bike riders. Half way along is a servo and coffee stop, I talked to the owner and he says it lives thanks to bikers :) The road is around 155klm of curves and straights...:)
The trip to Lithgow takes us off the Putty and onto a road called the "Bells Line of road" and past the Zig Zag railway, unfortunately I did not have the time to take a trip on it... maybe next time. A few pit stops for photos and a breathtaking view of the Blue Mountains scenery (along with hundreds of other bikers stopping for shots). And we head down the road to Lithgow for fuel and lunch.
Just to spoil a good run, a truck and bus slow us down on the Putty Road... but not for long ;)
Almost everyone who was on a bike stops for the view.
Motorcycle warning signs - everywhere!
On the road to Lithgow, the scenary is fantastic!
Bathurst
Bathurst is home to Mt Panorama, a world famous race track that starts on the flat and runs up hill across the top of Mt Panorama and then back down along "Con Rod" straight, after being delayed in Bathurst with a damaged tyre on one of the bikes we had to rush along the Olympic Highway to Cowra, then onto Young and a fuel stop in Cootamundra before deviating to a back road to get across to Coolac. I must say this little bit of country road from Cottamundra to Coolac was fantastic, a hell of a lot better than the Olympic highway we had just traveled on, it was so bumpy I snapped a mount on my Gear sack!
Back to the back road!, a few times I found myself in the zone at near 180klm/hr and then slowed down when the road started to get a little bumpy for my liking, I also lost my riding companions in the rear vision mirror so I "putted" along every now and then for catch up... The light was starting to wane as the sun was dropping in the horizon so we needed to get a move on to reach Tumet at the base of the snowy mountains before nightfall. At Coolac we joined the Hume Highway and realised we had been spoiled so far in road quality, the Hume was chock full of cars and under going maintenance. At Gundagai we turned off to head to Tumut and the gentle winding roads provided a nice entrance to the small town that survives on people heading to the Snow fields high above us. The local pub provided an excellent meal and a few drinks capped off the night before heading back to the hotel room for an early start.
Day 2 was only 620klm, but it took all day with the delays we had encountered.
View from the top of Mt Panorama - Bathurst racing was a week away!
Day 3
In the morning I had a good look at the bike and realised both mounts holding the gear sack were broken (dam Olympic Highway!), I managed to find an exhaust repair place and when I told the guy what happened and where I was going he was happy to weld up the brackets to get me going for the trip.
Soon we were packed and heading up to the Snowy Mountains! It starts with some nice sweepers as you goo up but eventually the road gets windier and bumpier as you go up, there are snow related warning signs every where but our first stop was going to be Yarrongobilly Caves to do a bit of a tourist diversion. Its an interesting ride down as the road has been cut out of the side of the mountain and is a few klms of dirt down one way and a few more as you leave, the sides are shear drops so careful riding is required! After the caves its back onto the main route to our first fuel stop at Adaminaby then Cooma for lunch. The road along the top is open plains, there was no snow and it was warn and fantastic as we sped across the top, soon I discovered my handling started to feel odd, then it became obvious I had blow a fork seal and oil was spewing out everywhere! From now on, each petrol stop also featured a fork leg clean and anything else (like the front disks) that was covered in fork oil!
We were passed by many bikes and in turn we passed others all packed with gear and heading to the Island. At Cooma we stopped for lunch in a cafe on the main street and watched the passing parade as we planned the next leg between coffee and lunch.
We were planing to make Bairnsdale in VIC by tonight and had 580 kilometers to cover.
The ride down the mountain to Boombala was long with open roads and great scenery and the weather was great, as we crossed the border the Victorian police had a radar patrol and I was actually below the limit on the straights but gunning it through the curves, my companions were the opposite so when I arrived a few miles past them I stopped and waited. Joe riding behind me was pulled over at 130 and told to slow down, first and LAST warning. From there to the island we stuck to the limits as there are camera everywhere.
We stopped at Cann River for fuel and a coffee, there were hundreds and hundreds of bikes, a lot had come via the Princess Highway from Sydney. From this point the route was basically to follow the road as close to the coast and try to arrive at Bairnsdale early. We went through obrost and arrived at lakes Entrance for a snack and coffee. it was late in the afternoon but pushed onto Bairnsdale. We did not pre-book any accommodation in Victoria so when we arrived in Bairnsdale we realised the Barry Sheen ride was going to leave there tomorrow and there was no accommodation left. A trip down to Stratford down the highway was of no use but a lady at the caravan park suggested trying Maffra furthur down the road. She phoned ahead and we secured some rooms there so we were set! Its a great small town that takes pride in its history and I will add it to the stop over list next time.
The top of the snowies is basically undulating hills where little grows due to the snow. For our trip down the snow had just disappeared a few weeks earlier. But the trip back was a different story.. spell.. FU^&en COLD!
Day 4 (Last leg down).
Thursday morning saw an early start, we fueled up, had breaky and cruised onto the island following the coast as much as possible, within a few hours we were there to get a good spot and setup right next to a group that brought a huge tent and all mod cons. Through the day the number of bikes grew and the rain drizzled making the camp grounds pretty wet, lots of bikes went down as soon as they hit the grass.
TODO - Condense my 400+ photos of the racing into a web page :(
Monday - packing Up
Patches of rain blotted the weekend, on Monday morning it was time to head off and just to add excitement It started raining early Monday morning then the wind picked up as I was starting to strap my gear to the bike. We left in the pouring freezing rain, I used my wet weather gear which I bought just for the trip. The stream of bikes was continuous from the island to Cann River where the traffic split, most went via Eden, we went back up to the mountains.
I should have checked the weather report as it had started to snow Sunday night from Boombala to the highest point on the mountain. I had not ridden through snow before so it was a fascinating site heading up the mountains as the rain had now stopped (it rained for 600 klm so I was over it!) and the scenery had turned white... then it dawned on me it was snow... then it got REAL cold ( -6)... I was doing around 80-100, the road had been cleared of snow, so it was all banked on the side of the road. There were animals in the fields carry big lumps of snow on their backs, a strange site indeed. Even though the roads were slippery there were bikes passing me!, a police car was patrolling up and down the road with warning signs on the roof about the road conditions. Ahead of us were trucks with shovels on the front clearing the road, I didn't see it till it turned around just past the peak and was heading back to do another pass on the other side of the road.
It was freezing cold as we arrived in Cooma and a pizza and 3 cups of Coffee primed me for the trip to Canberra, it was late in the afternoon and getting colder. Arrive din Canberra around 9pm. In total 13 hours of riding in terrible conditions, I was wet, cold and in need of a real hot shower :)
Next trip WSB 2010! Woo Hoo - we are calling it "The Gathering of the Faithful" - Gpz900R owners form all over the country will be descending on the Island for a fantastic weekend of riding and bullshit.
Contact me for more details (email on home page).
