Narooma to the Adelaide Hills — 1365 km via the Snowy Mountains Highway
After five fairly intensive days volunteering at the Narooma Forest Rally, the NSW round of the EROAD Australian Rally Championship, it was time to point Black-Top Betty, my newer GSA west and make for home. I had been there as Chief Safety and Emergency Management Officer, which sounds far grander than it feels when you are mostly surrounded by very capable volunteers doing the hard work properly. It was a great event, well run, and one worth looking out for on YouTube or Foxtel if rallying is your thing.
Heading Home
I rolled out of Narooma at 3:50am, all times local, with 1365 km between me and the Adelaide Hills.
Home came at 7:00pm.
This ride had a centrepiece, though.
The Snowy Mountains Highway.
It starts at the Princes Highway and runs all the way through to the Hume, and while I had ridden parts of it before, I had never done it properly, end to end. That was the route home, and in many ways the reason for choosing this line rather than something more obvious or more forgiving.
The first hours were not glamorous.
They were dark, foggy and cold. There was a near-full moon early on, doing its best to throw a bit of silver over the coastal landscape, but it was not much use in the fog and had set by the time I reached the Monaro Plains. I kept the speed well down along the Princes Highway and into the early reaches of the Snowy Mountains Highway.
It was not a morning for heroics.
By Bemboka, at the foot of Brown Mountain, I had already realised I had underdone the layers. So there I was, parked under a streetlight, unpacking the duffle bag to drag out a woollen jumper and add another layer of cold protection.
Thank God I did.
It was well cold up top — about 2 degrees, and a little wet as well.
Brown Mountain was difficult. Fully loaded, with an old tyre on the front and a fresh one of the same model on the back, it was not the happiest of combinations. Nothing dramatic, but enough to file under “lesson learnt”.
At the top of the mountain at the Bombala turnoff, I came across three RFS units dealing with a car fire. The car itself was totalled. Whether it was a crash or a trash I do not know, although another vehicle sitting nearby, apparently unaffected, made me suspect the former.
The 80-90km/h pace stayed consistent all the way through to Adaminaby, where the light and conditions finally allowed me to start picking things up a little as well as show what kind of weather I was likely to be in for – not pleasant.
However, as things followed, the hike over the Kiandra High Plains became everything I had hoped it would be: remote, cold, beautiful, demanding and just a little bit unforgiving.
The weather joined in properly just past Kiandra, with rain starting there and becoming quite heavy as I made my way past Long Plain Road. It cleared at the bottom of the range around Blowering Reservoir, and for a moment the sun came out and the riding was excellent — still tricky in places because of the roadkill, but excellent all the same.
And on that subject, intruding wildlife was, thankfully, mostly absent in the living sense.
I saw one very alive deer near Nimmitabel but given the self-imposed speed restrictions at the time it posed no real threat. But the dead were another matter. There were recently deceased wombats, some very large Eastern Grey Kangaroos, and even an upturned echidna to dodge. All left where they fell, courtesy no doubt of truck drivers who just keep going and leave the dead and maimed on the road for the next poor mug to hit, which in the case of one large male kangaroo, I almost did as I passed on oncoming car with low beam.
Going over the top also gave me my first real glimpse of Snowy 2.0 country. I could not see the works themselves, but I saw enough utes and buses full of workers disappearing here and there into the bush to know something substantial was happening.
I also passed a mob of brumbies, calm as anything, grazing beside the road.
Beautiful beasts, no argument there. Just in the wrong habitat, unfortunately.
I fuelled at Tumut and turned for the Hume, making it in short order. From there I had one of those rare long-distance riding gifts. Looking at the satellite picture on the myRadar app through the Chigee CarPlay system, I was relieved to see that my route somehow passed under a massive thunderstorm system just hanging there north of Wagga and over another similar system just south of Narrandera.
The weather around me was foul, but through some act of divine intervention I threaded the evil needle.
Narrandera became the next proper stop. I rang the Home Secretary to explore options, including whether to overnight somewhere closer to Adelaide and deal with the rest in the morning.
I had also half-considered stopping in Mildura to catch up with a fellow Farrider for coffee, or perhaps something more substantial. But the longer-than-expected transition across the Snowy Mountains Highway, plus a must-attend appointment on Tuesday, put paid to that.
The Mildura option was abandoned and the quicker Balranald–Tooleybuc–Pinnaroo route became the plan.
Then came the obligatory stop at Hells Gate for a selfie, followed by a top up fuel stop at the BP just east of Balranald – and to get my laughing gear around something I had on the way over – a bloody awesome chilli chicken kebab.
I can now comfortably report, that having double tasted their kabab 10 days apart, that they make the best hot chilli sauced chicken kebab in the country. And as I have found both times now, it also doubles as the best long-distance biker pick-me-up yet discovered by science.
And on the subject of fatigue control, apart from a bit of yawning around dawn, I was strong all day. Coming into South Australia, some 1100km down, I was still in good spirits and properly attentive, with only a splash-and-dash at the Pinnaroo OTR required to keep things moving.
Traffic was light and mostly well behaved and the truck drivers, apart from their antipathy towards moving their fauna victims out of harms way, were mostly helpful in assisting my passing them when the rain was up and the visibility was down. There was also no need to educate any flashing drivers who felt my light set-up was too bright, which made for a welcome change.
Even the Adelaide Hills gave me a final favour: I managed to weave around the heavy rain squalls that had gone through just ahead of my arrival.
So there it was.
Narooma to the Adelaide Hills.
1365 km.
A proper end-to-end run of the Snowy Mountains Highway. Done
Fog, cold, Brown Mountain, rain, dead wombats, Snowy country, brumbies, thunderstorm dodging, one magnificent kebab, and home by seven. Done.
Storm dodging success rate: 100%.
Epic Rating: Awesome Fun.
After five fairly intensive days volunteering at the Narooma Forest Rally, the NSW round of the EROAD Australian Rally Championship, it was time to point Black-Top Betty, my newer GSA west and make for home. I had been there as Chief Safety and Emergency Management Officer, which sounds far grander than it feels when you are mostly surrounded by very capable volunteers doing the hard work properly. It was a great event, well run, and one worth looking out for on YouTube or Foxtel if rallying is your thing.
Heading Home
I rolled out of Narooma at 3:50am, all times local, with 1365 km between me and the Adelaide Hills.
Home came at 7:00pm.
This ride had a centrepiece, though.
The Snowy Mountains Highway.
It starts at the Princes Highway and runs all the way through to the Hume, and while I had ridden parts of it before, I had never done it properly, end to end. That was the route home, and in many ways the reason for choosing this line rather than something more obvious or more forgiving.
The first hours were not glamorous.
They were dark, foggy and cold. There was a near-full moon early on, doing its best to throw a bit of silver over the coastal landscape, but it was not much use in the fog and had set by the time I reached the Monaro Plains. I kept the speed well down along the Princes Highway and into the early reaches of the Snowy Mountains Highway.
It was not a morning for heroics.
By Bemboka, at the foot of Brown Mountain, I had already realised I had underdone the layers. So there I was, parked under a streetlight, unpacking the duffle bag to drag out a woollen jumper and add another layer of cold protection.
Thank God I did.
It was well cold up top — about 2 degrees, and a little wet as well.
Brown Mountain was difficult. Fully loaded, with an old tyre on the front and a fresh one of the same model on the back, it was not the happiest of combinations. Nothing dramatic, but enough to file under “lesson learnt”.
At the top of the mountain at the Bombala turnoff, I came across three RFS units dealing with a car fire. The car itself was totalled. Whether it was a crash or a trash I do not know, although another vehicle sitting nearby, apparently unaffected, made me suspect the former.
The 80-90km/h pace stayed consistent all the way through to Adaminaby, where the light and conditions finally allowed me to start picking things up a little as well as show what kind of weather I was likely to be in for – not pleasant.
However, as things followed, the hike over the Kiandra High Plains became everything I had hoped it would be: remote, cold, beautiful, demanding and just a little bit unforgiving.
The weather joined in properly just past Kiandra, with rain starting there and becoming quite heavy as I made my way past Long Plain Road. It cleared at the bottom of the range around Blowering Reservoir, and for a moment the sun came out and the riding was excellent — still tricky in places because of the roadkill, but excellent all the same.
And on that subject, intruding wildlife was, thankfully, mostly absent in the living sense.
I saw one very alive deer near Nimmitabel but given the self-imposed speed restrictions at the time it posed no real threat. But the dead were another matter. There were recently deceased wombats, some very large Eastern Grey Kangaroos, and even an upturned echidna to dodge. All left where they fell, courtesy no doubt of truck drivers who just keep going and leave the dead and maimed on the road for the next poor mug to hit, which in the case of one large male kangaroo, I almost did as I passed on oncoming car with low beam.
Going over the top also gave me my first real glimpse of Snowy 2.0 country. I could not see the works themselves, but I saw enough utes and buses full of workers disappearing here and there into the bush to know something substantial was happening.
I also passed a mob of brumbies, calm as anything, grazing beside the road.
Beautiful beasts, no argument there. Just in the wrong habitat, unfortunately.
I fuelled at Tumut and turned for the Hume, making it in short order. From there I had one of those rare long-distance riding gifts. Looking at the satellite picture on the myRadar app through the Chigee CarPlay system, I was relieved to see that my route somehow passed under a massive thunderstorm system just hanging there north of Wagga and over another similar system just south of Narrandera.
The weather around me was foul, but through some act of divine intervention I threaded the evil needle.
Narrandera became the next proper stop. I rang the Home Secretary to explore options, including whether to overnight somewhere closer to Adelaide and deal with the rest in the morning.
I had also half-considered stopping in Mildura to catch up with a fellow Farrider for coffee, or perhaps something more substantial. But the longer-than-expected transition across the Snowy Mountains Highway, plus a must-attend appointment on Tuesday, put paid to that.
The Mildura option was abandoned and the quicker Balranald–Tooleybuc–Pinnaroo route became the plan.
Then came the obligatory stop at Hells Gate for a selfie, followed by a top up fuel stop at the BP just east of Balranald – and to get my laughing gear around something I had on the way over – a bloody awesome chilli chicken kebab.
I can now comfortably report, that having double tasted their kabab 10 days apart, that they make the best hot chilli sauced chicken kebab in the country. And as I have found both times now, it also doubles as the best long-distance biker pick-me-up yet discovered by science.
And on the subject of fatigue control, apart from a bit of yawning around dawn, I was strong all day. Coming into South Australia, some 1100km down, I was still in good spirits and properly attentive, with only a splash-and-dash at the Pinnaroo OTR required to keep things moving.
Traffic was light and mostly well behaved and the truck drivers, apart from their antipathy towards moving their fauna victims out of harms way, were mostly helpful in assisting my passing them when the rain was up and the visibility was down. There was also no need to educate any flashing drivers who felt my light set-up was too bright, which made for a welcome change.
Even the Adelaide Hills gave me a final favour: I managed to weave around the heavy rain squalls that had gone through just ahead of my arrival.
So there it was.
Narooma to the Adelaide Hills.
1365 km.
A proper end-to-end run of the Snowy Mountains Highway. Done
Fog, cold, Brown Mountain, rain, dead wombats, Snowy country, brumbies, thunderstorm dodging, one magnificent kebab, and home by seven. Done.
Storm dodging success rate: 100%.
Epic Rating: Awesome Fun.
