Rutherglen to Home

As we didn't have a long day ahead of us, we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast before setting off for our first port of call, the morris winery. Morris are known for their fortifieds and durif and we were keen to do a little compare and contrast with campbells. We were led to believe the winery was a short distance out of town but after riding for some time we began to think we may well passed it. However, we found it and arrived just as the cellar door was opening.

The folks at Morris were very friendly, sadly they didn't have comfy big leather couches for us to lounge in, but they did make us very welcome nonetheless. Both the durif and the fortifieds were good but I think I preferred the Campbell's tokay. As we still had a good few hours riding ahead of us, and it was just after 10.00 in the morning, we didn't stay long. 

The plan was to head for Wadonga for morning tea. However, due to the exceptional bypass work recently carried out, that was considerably easier said than done. So we decided to push on to Holbrook, the big fella maintained there was a good bakery there, and he was right. The coffee was good and the pies excellent. After having our fill, the big fella suggested a short walk up the main drag to look at the submarines. Given that we were about 250 km from the nearest coast and about 400 km from the nearest port, this seemed perfectly reasonable. Turns out there are submarines in Holbrook, bloody big submarines, well one bloody big submarine, one not so big submarine, a torpedo and various other artefacts. In fact, there's a whole museum. 

me standing near the nose of the big oberon class submarine.

It seems that once upon a time Holbrook was called Germanton but during the first world war when anti german sentiment was high, the town decided to change its name. They settled on Holbrook, in honour of lieutenant Norman Holbrook, who piloted a very small and primitive submarine, in and out of the mine riddled dardanelles to sink a turkish battleship. For his efforts he not only had a town named after him but he won the victoria cross as well. 

From Holbrook to home is about 3.5 hours, but as we weren't allowed to arrive home before 3.30, to give meg time to get home from school, we decided to take a side trip to Tumut for lunch. After a very uneventful blast along the highway we turned off onto what could best be described as a little slice of motorcycle heaven. the trip from the highway to tumult was incredible. the road surface was smooth, there were undulations, sweeping bends, gorgeous, gorgeous scenery and all wrapped up in a cloudless blue sky day.

We found ourselves a cafe and sat outside to enjoy our last lunch of, yes you guessed it, burger and chips. The burger was ok, not the best of the trip, but by no means the worst, but what i did enjoy was the number of hot rods burbling up and down the street. As it turns out there was to be a huge hot rod festival in tumult that weekend and i love hot rods, don't know why, just do, i think it's a childhood thing.

The ride out of Tumut was not quite as good as the ride in but it was pretty bloody close. It was the joy of this ride, i think, that increased my disappointment with Gundagai, and when i say Gundagai, i really mean the dog on the tucker box, which, as we all know, is in fact five miles from Gundagai. This tourist attraction and place that features heavily in bush music, seems to have been pretty much forgotten and is a bit underwhelming. We did the touristy thing though and stopped for the photo op before hitting the highway for the last push to home.

the dog on the tucker box reworked to be the dog on the bmw.We turned off the highway near Yass and headed for canberra. This road is really familiar to me and it felt really strange riding on it, i had got so used to riding on roads that were completely new to me, that to now be in familiar surroundings was doing my head in, it felt in part like i hadn't been away at all. However, this feeling gradually lessened as we got closer to town and the excitement of seeing my family again took over.

This feeling of excitement grew and by the time we were riding down my street, i was grinning like like an idiot. It was this idiot like state that lead me not to notice all the welcome home notices my family, i think mostly meg, had written on the roads. What i did notice though was the finish line on the driveway and our names written on the side of the my house.

the big fella on the finish line.It was great to be home and utterly brilliant to see my family and after a few tears of joy, a hearty round of congratulations and the obligatory photos, we went inside for a well earned cup of tea and a slice of superbly decorated welcome home cake.

done and dusted out the front of my house.the fabulous and very yummy welcome home cake.the cake cutting ceremony.It was very strange when it came time to say good-bye the the big fella and narelle, it was wonderful to be home but weird to think that i wouldn't see him in the morning and that we wouldn't be riding off to somewhere new. It had been a fantastic adventure and couldn't wait to share it with my family and give them the presents i had picked up along the way. I was also looking forward to a long hot bath and the unrivalled pleasure of sleeping in my own bed.