Platypus, or not.

Bombala. Isn't that an interesting name? It's a sleepy little town, and our next destination.

Here's the map ...



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We'd originally planned to go via Eden and up the coast towards Bermagui, stopping somewhere that looked good overnight. But Terry's client, the whole reason for heading to Bermagui, also owns a B&B in Bombala and insisted that we come spend the night with him and his lovely wife. Who was I to argue?

We actually left Orbost pretty early this time and the road was lovely, wide and surrounded by trees, with just enough bends to keep me happy and not stressed. 

We stopped in Cann River for breakfast, passing a pretty cool looking cafe on the way into town.

Unfortunately it didn't quite deliver on it's promise once we got inside.

It did have a few interesting little things on the walls, and there was an antique shop next to it that looked full of interesting stuff, but we didn't have time to go foraging in it, you would need at least a couple of hours I think.

We hit the road again. There were a few more serious twisties along this bit, but not enough to slow me right down like the mountain had. We were still overtaken by a group on faster bikes, who we caught up with in Bombala.

This was our stop for the night, and we'd made it in time to get some lunch and spend the day wandering round.

First we met up with our host for the next few days, Tom.

And he made us coffee .. yay! Tom has restored this old building and turned it into a B&B and put in a restaurant out the back, it still has the bank in the front part though.

This was the building when it was first built, not sure what year it was but there were certainly no cars around eh.

Doesn't look much different today does it, that house next door (you can just see it in the top photo behind the horses) is even still there, it was the managers residence back in the day, and now it's where Tom and his wife live, they've put an extra story on it and redone it after it nearly burnt to the ground about 10 years ago.

Bombala is famous for one thing in particular, besides being a lovely little mountain town.

Platypus!

The town celebrates them, and their image can be found on all sorts of things. There is a sanctuary for them about 10 minutes out of town, but as I was quizzing Tom about the road to it (no more gravel for me if I could avoid it) he said that we didn't need to go all the way out there to see them, there was a family in the river at the end of the street.

Dusk and dawn are the best times to see them, that's when they come out to feed. You have be very quiet, they scare easily, you also have to be very patient. So that evening we went down to the river.

I cant believe how hard it is to be patient sometimes. Terry kept talking, I think he was getting bored. We changed our position a few times too. Then we stared at the river.

Then we stared a bit more.

Then we saw some bubbles that just disappeared, so ...

We sat and stared a bit more.

We moved again to a shallower part.

We found some ducks, but no amount of staring would bring the platypus. Aww.

Then we had dinner with Tom and went to bed pretty early. The next day we got up early and went looking again but alas, still no Platypus. Ah well we had a big days ride ahead of now, over Brown's Mountain and on to Bermagui.

Escaping the Mountain.

After two days relaxing on the top of a cold windy mountain the time came to make good our escape. We woke up pretty early to zero visibility, no wind and no rain. OK two out of three would have to do .. time to load up the bikes and see if we could find our way down the other side.

With Lakes Entrance out of the picture, the plan was to make it as far as we could each day til we got to our final destination, Bermagui on the south NSW coast. As far as we could make it each day on this trip would mean from 200 to 250km. We didn't wanna push, we were on holidays.

Here's the map for this day ...




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So slowly does it down the mountain. We'd talked to a couple who had just come up that side, and they said the cloud was only about 5 km down the side of the mountain then it cleared completely. And it did. Our first stop was at a little town called Omeo, though I couldn't remember that name and kept calling it after my favourite biscuit, Oreo.

There wasn't a real lot to this little village, the mountains were a lot more open here than on the other side, and there were more grass lands and a lot less trees. We'd been told about this cool little cuckoo clock shop, but as we'd somehow managed to lose half the day already (I don't know how we do this, we get up with the birds then it's lunch time before we even know it!) we didn't go and explore inside.

So after waiting what felt like an hour for our pies and coffee at the local bakery, and also checking out the very nice HD's that pulled up near us, we went on our merry way.

It was a lovely ride but I'm afraid the GoPro was pointed through a very dirty screen by now, and the pics just aren't good enough to show. You'll just have to take my word for it, grassy rolling hills surrounded us for much of this part of the trip. I spotted a sign for a lookout and said to Terry that I'd like to see if I can see anything there.

Turning into the turn off for it was well .. interesting is a word. You had to do a very sharp left turn then the track to the lookout doubled back to go in the opposite direction. And there was gravel. Now some of that gravel was not to bad, but at the edges it had piled up into nice lose deep piles of evilness. Of course I took the corner too wide as I nearly always do and ended up in the middle of one of those piles, Roxy just kinda sank then drifted in it and I ended up standing straddling her while she had a rest. Terry and I couldn't even pick her up because she was buried in that gravel, a nice man stopped and helped us. I love the way that people are always so ready to help while you are travelling round this country, and that's another person who I'll be eternally grateful to.

Then I got straight back onto Roxy (after checking she was OK) and made my way the 200 meters up the gravel to park and see if the lookout was worth it.

At first glance we couldn't work out where the lookout was. To us a lookout is when you are up high and looking across at amazing scenery. This one was just kinda showing us the mountain range from a flat bit of ground, you couldn't see very far at all.

While we were there those HD's we'd been looking at pulled in, one of them was a lady and that was one nice machine she was riding. She looked a bit tenuous on that gravel too and I was praying for her right up til she pulled up next to Roxy. We had a bit of a chat and they told us how nice the road we were soon to be travelling was. I didn't wanna take a pic of their bikes, I'm never quite sure how people would like that, but did get one of the our babies.

Back on the road, and we started travelling next a lovely little creek. Sorry again no pics. I could have taken one when we stopped by the side of the road once, but I didn't think of it. We'd stopped because Terry told me that my number plate was just about to fall off. Oops, as soon as I touched it, once we'd found somewhere safe to stop, it dropped to the ground. Into the saddlebags and back on the road, we only had a few more km's to go to get to Orbost, I'd risk riding without and put it back on once we were settled into a motel.

We grabbed a coffee in Orbost then rode for only two blocks to find a motel for the night. Time to relax for a while, after putting the number plate back on of course. The holes where it was attached to the bike had worn bigger and the bolts just slipped through. I put some rubber thingys in the holes first this time, some washers and re-attached it. It worked.

Oh yeah and just one other nice pic, I cant remember the name of this place, it's where we had turned off to head towards Orbost, we'd just stopped near a park to have a sit in the shade and a drink. It's amazing how much warmer the day had gotten once we left the mountain. I loved this old house and wonder what it's like inside.

White on White

And after that brief interlude, back to the adventure ...

When we left Bright it was overcast. It had rained the night before heavily, but even so it didn't look like we would get much rain and the threat of the winds over the mountain the next day made us grateful to get ahead of the worst of it.

It was about 10am when we left, our destination that day was to be Lakes Entrance.

Here's the map


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As we were leaving Bright I remember saying to Terry, "I hope that the mountain I can see ahead of us with it's head in the clouds isn't Mt Hotham." That's the mountain we were to cross over.

We turned up onto the road that leads to Mt Hotham and we started to get into the tight corners straight away. And it wasn't long before we got a little bit of rain too.

 It stopped though, and I was happily navigating my way the first real mountain twisties that I had ever encountered. It wasn't as bad as I thought, we were going up hill and I don't mind tight bends up hill. I feel like I have more control than when they are down hill.

Then the rain started again, and we could see now that this was indeed the mountain that had it's head firmly buried in the clouds. Visibility was becoming worse.

 A couple of other things were noticed, first the trees had become slowly scarcer and spindlier until they were nothing but blackened, stunted branches hugging the side of the mountain. The view would have been stunning from here if only we could have seen more than a few feet ahead.

Then Terry said .. "That's not rain .. that's sleet!" my visor had to go up not long after that because of the fogging up, and I realised that it wasn't just on the inside that I was misting up, the sleet was sticking to the outside of it too, I only opened it a crack to see through but that sleet still managed to get my cheeks and eyes and it hurt!

The other thing we'd noticed was the bright yellow and red stripped poles along the side of the road, and the sign that said "stay to the right of the snow poles" At first I didn't really understand that, once the visibility got bad I was glad of them, and now I understand what it must be like trying to get up this road once the snow has covered the road completely. Great idea.

We were crawling along at only about 20 or 30km/h by now, and I was wishing so hard for somewhere to pull over that it was almost like a dream when I came up a rise to see a hulking shadow to my left, that must be a building!

That's it, the side of the road was wide enough, I couldn't care less, for once, that we were parking the bikes on loose pebbles that were going to slide all over the place under my wheels and the stand. We stopped!! We jumped off the bikes and ran for the shelter of the locked tight building beside us. We took shelter where we found it and were grateful!

We were both freezing.

But strangely happy

and I for one was excited too ... this was snow!!!

Once the sleet stopped and the soft little flakes of snow started falling, the visibility got a bit better. We could see the sign on the building across the road, and it said 'refuge'. We headed straight over and were immensely happy to find an open door into warmth. And toilets with hand blowers to warm our frozen fingers.

At this stage we had no idea what we were going to do now, it was just nice to find somewhere out of the elements. As we were poking around another couple walked into the building. They were there for some kind of meeting or something but kindly offered to escort us up the road a bit to the two ski lodges that were open. Yay, we quickly dragged on our cold wet gear and jumped on the bikes. I was in front and could just see the tail lights of the 4WD in front of us, they went slowly, and it was only about 5 km's up the road before they turned into the driveway for the first lodgings. We thanked them for the millionth time, I cant express how grateful we were for their kindness.

And that was the last photo taken by the GoPro as we pulled into the parking area. Yep it was really snowing now.

By the time we got inside we'd decided that we could give Lakes Entrance a miss and just stay the night in a ski lodge for something different. All we wanted was somewhere warm to snuggle for the next 10 hours, and a hot shower!!

Roxy did look pretty dressed all in white, but by the time we'd booked in to the room and come back for our luggage it had started to rain as well. The snow was melting almost as soon as it hit the ground. it continued to snow for a couple of hours then it turned super cold with the rain. We didn't mind cause we had luxurious warmth all around us for the rest of the day.

It was a split level affair with the living part upstairs and the bedroom downstairs.

And great views .. when you could see them.

A break in the clouds that lasted maybe 10 minutes.

We didn't care, we had our warmers.

Now do you remember the whole reason this adventure started at the beginning of the day. We'd decided to beat the weather right .. well no one had said anything about snow! And now the weather bureau was telling us that yep those winds were still going to hit Mt Hotham the next day with a vengeance. We'd wait and see what it was like in the morning, so we slept like babes in the woods, or is that perched on the mountain tops. And woke early the next morning to ...


.. winds that were threatening to tear the whole place down. According to BOM the gusts were up to 80km/h, that was fast enough to make me think about being blown over the sides of roads and down the cliffs lining this mountain. We stayed put for another day. It was relaxing :)

A Bit Of News

I just cant hold it in any longer!! I wanted to wait til I got the posts of the holiday all done, and then I could move on to the new stuff with a sense of having completed the job before it, but, I just cant wait to share my news!!

I got a new bike! It was something I was only half toying with for a little while now, then there was a 750 Shadow for sale on the SRA forums very cheap. I thought about it a bit more seriously, then started to plan how I could do the 19hr round trip to go look at it. Then I thought about it a bit more.

Now some of you may remember me looking at a bike in December 2012, something that I liked but knew that I would never get.

This was the one.

I'd seen this years model in the bike shop much earlier this year, then when I went back a few weeks later it was gone. I'd loved the look of this years bike, it was green and I'm a bit partial to green at the best of times. This green was pretty spectacular and coupled with that blackened look on the engine and everywhere that is normally chrome on a cruiser the bike looked pretty awesome to my eyes.

As I thought about a new second hand bike that I would have to travel for 2 days to just go and look at, I also wondered why I was even considering getting rid of a bike that I'd had from new and was only 3 years old and getting a bike that was pre loved and 9 years old. Why even say goodbye to Roxy?

Roxy has been a great friend to me but, and there's often a but isn't there, I'd done a few things on her now, the last trip (write up to come very soon I promise!) had seen me do some all weather riding in twisties as well as some hard highway miles. She just isn't quite enough anymore, she's a bit of a lug to get around tight twisties, and she just doesn't have quite enough omph to overtake with confidence on the highways. Not to mention something I'd never really noticed before, as soon as you hit 110km/h she starts vibrating like crazy.

With all these thoughts in my head I decided to put off the trip to see the second hand Shadow, go down to the local bike shop and just sit on a Vulcan. See if I could touch the ground and stuff like that. The next morning that's exactly what I did, I talked to a lovely boy at the shop and he even let me sit on a fully customised Harley Sportster that was really pretty but not what I was looking for. I went home and talked to Terry about my adventure .. it all happened pretty quickly after that.

Before I knew it I was saying my last goodbye to Roxy and hoping on my very new Kawasaki Vulcan 900 custom. We left for Newcastle for the weekend the very next morning, and after having ridden a whole 4km to get used to him, I rode 800km there and back in ecstasy!!

Here he is making friends with Terry's bike at our first stop of the trip.

Yep he's the green machine. Oh I could talk for hours about how much I loved that ride and how much I love my new toy but I wont just yet. I'll save it all for a new post, I think I'm going to have to start a new blog for the new chapter in my riding adventures.

Soon I'll finish up this blog with the last few posts about our last holiday with Roxy .. it's exciting stuff!!

Actually I'm not sure how I should do this, should I just start a new blog for the new bike or change the name of this one? The White Shadow Diary doesn't really mean anything once I've finished writing about the white shadow does it .. so something has to change. What do you think?

A Weekend With SRA

Well as much of the weekend as possible anyway. Well one day of the weekend actually. But it was the important day, and we did get to go for a ride with them. Saturday was just a short ride to a place called Harrietville, about 20 mins down the road from Bright.



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We were to line all our bikes up along a back road at the camping grounds in the morning for a photo shoot.

We didn't have far to take our bikes, that's our cabin in the background. Terry was one of the first bikes there.

And my bike wasn't too far behind him, but things were already starting to get untidy.

Then another line up started ...

Still it was an impressive looking group of bikes .. who would've thought there were that many variations on the same model of bike eh. Have to admit that some of them aren't technically 'Shadows', but that was one of the main topics of the day.

The whole reason we were going for a ride that day was to get the meeting place for the AGM (Annual General Meeting). So then we rode ...

This video just doesn't seem that great to me, but anyway it shows some of the great country side. The 'twisties weren't that much I guess, at the time though I thought it was pretty awesome, it was the most I'd done to date. And I enjoyed the ride enormously!

Then we got to our venue for the meeting and lunch.

It was a pretty impressive sight seeing them filling up that car park. I have to admit I hated that gravel in there, backing the bike was proving a big challenge for me, and I'd only gotten about 3 inches back into the park before I talked one of the guys to give me a push the rest of the way .. which he did with a smile.

Cray's bike found a friend .. the same bike in a lovely orange colour scheme.

That's Big Gorilla and his bike .. the other happy chappy with him is known to all and sundry as Happycamper .. always smiling!

After the meeting and lunch we all moseyed back to the camping grounds for the afternoon entertainment ... a dart competition then the special surprise .. dummy spit competition!!

That was fun, no pics of it but I did get one of the boss checking out one of the Queensland members bike.

And that pretty well sums up what the weekend was like .. lots of fun with some good mates.

The next day, Sunday, was to be the mystery ride. Terry and I found our own breakfast with another couple of the guys. while we were eating we checked out the weather forecasts for the next day, when we would be taking off for the next part of our adventure. The forecasts didn't look good for the mountain we were to cross the next day, but the Sunday didn't look too bad. We made a decision to leave that morning.

So we said our goodbyes to everyone and watched them all take off for their great mystery adventure ride. After lining the bikes up properly for another photo.

And even getting the riders to stand still long enough to get a pic too.

We took off not long after them, on our way over Mt Hotham and our first stop for the rest of our holiday .. Lakes Entrance, right at the bottom of Australia. But more of that adventure soon.

Going South - Day 2

Well we woke up bright and early the next day .. well OK I cant lie, everyone else woke up bright and early, I crawled out of bed feeling like something that was dragging it's body from the primordial swamp .. but it was early. My back was killing me so I stole some of that serious pain relief back that I'd given away the day before, and gave the home made back rest I was using to Terry to prop up his new bags.

Then we checked out what the others were doing.

Some of them we doing heaps, the group that had ridden ahead the day before was all ready to go. Some were ready to go but ... one bike wasn't going anywhere. Yep the battery had decided overnight to just die a quite death. The NRMA was duly called again and we told the other guys to go ahead to Terry's son's coffee shop for breakfast, we'd catch them up. And so we waited ...

And waited ....

And waited a bit more ...

Finally Terry thought he should get to the cafe in case his son was worried, I also decided to tell the other guys to just go ahead to Bright, we'd see then there.

And then ...

Yep we waited some more ...

The NRMA guy musta been busy, he turned up eventually, and then told the guy there was nothing he could do, he'd have to buy a new battery. Then he gave them directions to the nearest place to buy such an item. Now I don't remember exactly how it happened, but the guy with the flat battery got his bike jump started and then he and the two others with us headed off down to town .. why I was left all alone I just cant fathom at the moment. I was though, that was OK, I needed petrol, and to let Terry know what was going on. Then I went to find them sitting out the front of the shop ... waiting ..

They didn't have a battery for a bike, but a nice man had offered to go and pick one up for us .. we just had to wait for him to get back with it.

So we waited ...

And waited ....

Then just to break things up a bit ....

We waited some more ....

The nice man really didn't take that long, he soon pulled up with a nice shiny new battery in a box. Was a matter of minutes to put it in the Shadow and then I just had to find my way to the cafe where Terry was waiting.

So after an early start .. we left Wagga at about 10:30 and finally headed on our way. Oh well it wasn't far to go that day, we could still take it easy.

Our next stop would be Wodonga.

Oh I forgot the map, sorry here ya's go ...



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Actually we ended up stopping somewhere else along the way. I cant remember the name of the town, but we all just felt the need to get off and stretch our legs. Well the girls stretched, the boys sat.

And after a short rest we were all ready for the next leg to Wodonga. I have video of this bit of the ride, but sheesh it's pretty boring. The ride wasn't boring, it's was just plain relaxing to tell the truth, my back was feeling fine and the bike was feeling fine and that just made me feel fine.

Lunch was a bit late, at an Irish pub in the main street of Wodonga.

I love a Guinness but didn't indulge, we still had a fair bit of riding to go.

No we didn't stop for a bit of a work out while we were waiting for lunch, that's just the only parking spot I could find.

After leaving the pub, I only got lost twice. Pretty good I thought considering they had blocked off the road that Google Maps had told me to take and then I had to find my way round the back roads to get onto the country street that we needed to take. I even managed to find a petrol station too. It wasn't just pure luck that while we were in the petrol station I spotted the street we were supposed to be on out the other driveway .. well there could have been a little bit of luck involved I guess.

You know I don't really remember the rest of that ride, it was pretty, there were trees, and we were starting to see mountains. But what I was looking for was the sign that said .. Bright.

As we finally entered the town I was being wildly urged by a set of enthusiastic hand signals to stop. So I stopped! I was thinking that maybe I'd missed the turn off for the camping park that were to spend the weekend in. Nope, we'd just missed a whole town, but that wasn't my fault honestly. Apparently we were supposed to pick up one of the guys who was already at the park, he'd ridden to meet us at some town that I don't remember the name of, and that he thought we were going through. But we didn't go through it.

And then finally we got back on the bikes and soon found ...

Yep that's the cabin we were to stay in for the next three nights and it had a really comfy bed .. yay!!

This was what I was looking for, peace and tranquillity, and friends to share it all with.

This is the accommodation just next to us where most of the guys stayed, and where all of the action happened over the weekend.

I'll share a bit of that with you soon I promise. I have some video that I still have to edit so it may take me a while, but hang in there I'm sure it wont take me as long as last time!