Lady on Motorbike

Days 3 and 4 had us turning back north but the fun continued with a touch of sadness in the mountains.

We left Holbrook and headed towards Albury. Turning onto the Riverina Highway, we reached Lake Hume, a huge reservoir on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, man made about 60 years ago. Nothing extraordinary in that except, at the northern end, there appears to be a forest of dead trees – why they haven’t rotted away is anyone’s guess but they haven’t and that makes quite the interesting view from the edge.

From there we meandered back towards Corryong, then found ourselves on the Elliot Way.

This road started off easy enough, the most exciting thing (and sad) was the confronting sight of a dead brumby at the side of the road. For those not in the know, a brumby is a wild horse which lives in Australia, descended from lost or escaped horses and there are many in the Snowy Mountains although hard to spot. Sadly, this one had the misfortune of being hit by a truck.

We then passed a sign ‘End of B Double Route’ which basically signified the start of narrow, descending winding road. This was, I confess, a little unexpected and nerve wracking for me, considering my recent incident. However, there wasn’t much I could do about it so I gritted my teeth and took the road very carefully, concentrating on skills I knew but hadn’t yet mastered, and everything was ok.

And it turned out to be heaps of fun, a narrow winding road weaving its way down into the valley to be greeted by a few campers keen to get away from it all, together – the serenity only broken up by pesky motorbikes.

Back onto the Snowy Mountains Highway, we peaked 1,500 metres – packed hard with snow in the winter but really quite pleasant in the summer.

The rest of the journey was the return of the day before, we did spot some real live brumbies, grazing near the road (much better that way) and then there was this thing, found in Adaminaby. A big trout. It’s an Aussie thing, big things, there’s even a Wikipedia page on it…here.

Overnight in Cooma before turning our noses north and back towards Sydney. Easter Monday is not a great time to be on the roads going back into Sydney but we managed to have some fun making our way to the coast. The highlight on this route is the stretch between Tarago and Nowra, a road of every quality from smooth wide tarmac-ed surfaces to rickety one-laned bridges.

We arrived back in Sydney after having covered around 1,700km in 4 days and me feeling like I have regained some of my lost confidence. I still have some work to do, especially in super slow riding but I will get there. I am determined because there really is so much fun to had out there on two wheels, particularly in my own back yard and what could be better than that?

 

 

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