Lady on Motorbike

Our mission was to explore the Omeo Highway, but it’s a long way from Sydney so a 5 day weekend really is the ideal opportunity to visit this epic road.

Day 1 was all about escaping Sydney. With a long weekend pending, the beginning of school holidays and Sydneysiders unable to escape the country and reluctant to fly interstate due to ‘we all know what’, everyone was intending to be on the road.

We left on Thursday, the day before all the inevitable madness on the road. Even so, heading through Nowra, the traffic was, what I call ‘sticky’. Thank heavens for lane filtering allowing us to minimise the delays.

Up through Nerriga, where lunch at the pub enabled us to use one of our $25 New South Wales granted meal vouchers (‘help local business’) at the Nerriga pub. A place that had had a pretty rough year with bush fires and COVID impacting it over the last 15 months.

Across to Queanbeyan and onwards to Cooma and Jindabyne, our rest point for the night. Staying at the Kookaburra Lodge, always a good choice with one of the owners being a mad motorbiker.

Day 2, took us over the mountain, with a brief stop at the top for photos.

Much improvement to the mountain pass means that it’s not so hairy as it used to be but the twists and turns downhill still make it a challenging, if still beautiful, ride.

Check out this view!

Onwards to Tallangatta, the ‘town that moved in the 1950s’ (yes, really, read more here).

A trip around the lake, and then to our home for 2 nights in Mitta Mitta.

The point of this trip was to use an extended weekend to visit the motorbike mecca that is the Omeo Highway.

Mitta Mitta is a small village with pretty much just a shop/petrol station and a pub. Situated where Snowy Creek meets the Mitta River, it is a beautiful spot where people come for bushwalking and to relax. And for us, it is perfectly situated at one end of the Omeo Highway. We were also keen to stay in this pub, having served us so well on our way back from Tasmania two years prior.

Day 3 was all about this road. One hundred kilometres of winding mountain roads, taking us up over a mountain and along a river valley. Not a place for rookies and not really a place for hooning, but still heaps of fun. Passing the very occasional cyclist and car, the road was surprisingly quiet.

The intention was to reach the coast 233km away and turn around but the road was so technical, that 100km took over 2 hours, with a few stops along the way. the coast was too far so instead took a detour on the return.

Our return back to Mitta Mitta took us via the ski resort of Falls Creek. The road up being very technical, narrow, with sheer drops into the forest at the sides of the road. We took this one vey easy.

We found Falls Creek to be very busy. Packed in the ski season, in summer it attracts hikers, mountain bikers and day trippers at the height of summer.

Day 4 had us leaving early, due to the clocks changing and us taking advantage of the extra hour to get on the road. That came with the challenge of fog but we managed and were treated to some amazing views.

We retraced our route, back to Corryong and over the Alpine Way, this time staying in Canberra with friends for the final night.

The final day we chose to whizz back to Sydney before lunch, hoping (and we were reasonably successful) to beat the returning traffic back into the city.

Our weekend had been brilliant, over 2,000km covered. Not something we get to do very often but well worth the effort to visit this beautiful part of the world.