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.

swan hill to rutherglen

A nice slow start to the day today, as we had a short one of 350km. So a sleep in was called for followed by a walk and breakfast which is exactly what we did before pulling out for rutherglen.

The riding this morning was nothing short of superb, big blue sky, ideal temperature and most imortantly, no wind. Not far from swan hill we came across lake boga, the home of the catalina and apparently, the sailing capital of the region. However given the state of the lake rigging up seemed a little pointless.

the less than full, lake boga

Echuca was our first stop for morning tea and a wander through the historical bit of the town for a squizz at the boats and the wharf. The wind picked up for the trip to yarrawonga but it was still very pleasant as was the lunch we had there. We did look for the crothers brothers factory (a small, inrependent, cordial and softdrink manufacturer) but sadly we couldn't find them and even more sad is the fact that they will cease trading when the last brother retires.

a couple of the lod river boats at echuca

After food and fuel it was off to rutherglen and the necessary wine tasting that goes along with being in the town. Our first port of call was campbells, where i was subjected to the extemely arduous task of sampling a variety of tokays on behalf of my mother-in-law. Joan the things i put myself through for you. I hope you appreciate it.

wal and i forcing ourselves to sample some very fine tokay, all for the benefit of my mother-in-law you understand.

Sadly we had to leave campbells to find somewhere to stay before we were incapable of going anywhere. After a brief stop at the visitor information place we were sorted and we checked in. Our choice of accommodation was based on a highly complex series of calculations, which when boiled down, essentially hinged on which was closest to a wine tasting facility.

Once ensconsed, we toddled across the road to have a crack at the local fare, which was pretty good but not as good campbells. From there the next highly imoprtant task was finding somewhere for dinner. After a short stroll through town the decision was made, the poachers paradise, which cooked my steak brilliantly, but the big fella was less convinced about the well being of lamb chop in his mixed grill. To add to this we had to wait over one hour and ten minutes. When wal pointed out the sorry state of the chop they handled it professionally and refunded him the cost of his meal.

for some reason wal thought it was a good idea for me to stand under this sign. frankly, i'm beginning to worry about him.

Tommorow we leave via the morris winery and then we head home which feels a little weird. On one hand i miss my family desperately and can't wait to see them and to see how much they've changed and grown. On the other, this has been an incredible experience and we have seen some amazingly beautiful places and met some awesome people and we have barely scratched the surface. I will also miss the feeling of waking up in the morning and thinking "where will we go today? which is a feeling that everyone should experience at least once in their life.

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-36.0525,146.4556&ll=-36.0525,146.4556&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

victor harbour to swan hill

The sun was shining when we left victor harbour it was however still extremely windy so our decision to abandon the coast road was justified. We were buffeted by stupidly srong cross winds for the first 50km but then we turned east and they became tail winds and all was good.

Our first stop was lameroo for morning tea. There's something about this part of the world and town names lameroo, manangatang, chinkapook and ouyan where had a fantastic lunch of mallee lamb, not sure what mallee lamb is but it was brilliant. So was the vanilla slice that came next, it was so fresh we had to wait for it to be iced.

the mallee deli, home of mallee lamb wrap

the very fresh and very delicious vanilla slice

After that it was on to swan hill where we promptly found a place to stay and had a walk around to see the sights. This is where we found murray the cod who sadly thought it necessary to eat the big fella, they do say live bait is better.

We also found a fantastic place for dinner, a restaurant just out thre front of the motel we are staying in and it is run by international students. The food was wonderful and ridiculously cheap.

tomorrow is a very short day to remark where we intend to hit the wineries.

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-35.3474,143.5626&ll=-35.3474,143.5626&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

victor harbour

As the plan was to stay in victor we had a fairly slow start to the day until we looked outside. It was sunny and not that windy so we decided to take advantage of this and get out and do a bit of sightseeing while the weather held. During a conversation with the folks who run the motel, we found out there was a pod of southern wright whales bobbing about just off the beach at middleton. So we had a look around victor and then headed to middleton for some whale action. It's not quite what we got. It turns out that southern wright whales are the sloths of the whale community and a hard day for them consists of lolling about and occassionally waving a tail or filpper. Still, they are whales, they are big and they were very close to shore.

granite island, there is a horse drawn tram that goes across the jetty to the island, just not on the day we were there

victor harbour

the whales at middleton

We could see the weather coming so we decided to head for the safety of the motel and mooch about victor on foot. Victor harbour is not a very big place and it didn't take long to wander around and by then it was time to stop for an award winning coffee (their words not mine). Then back to the room for a bit of blog work stopping at reception to check which of the two fish and chip shops was the best for lunch.

After a few minutes of intense blog work, hunger overcame us and we had to go for lunch of fish, chips and beer, then back to the room for more beer and then a couple of games of pool. Life really is tough. During what could only be described as exceptionally ordinary pool playing, we got to talking to philip, the guy who runs the motel, and when he found out that wal's mum was just up the road, he offered wal the use of his 4wd. These guys really are very generous. I mean really, really generous, philip also took us for a drive around the local area so we could see the coast from bluff, which is a local headland. He also took us around the foreshore. So next time you're in victor harbour stay at the apollon.

victor harbour as seen from the bluff

Dinner is sorted already, the local pub have a steak and red wine offer, a bit too good to pass up really.

Tomorrow, all things being equal, we will head to swan hill, then to rutherglen, where we will probably drink too much and the home on friday which will be very exciting indeed.

adelaide to victor harbour

After a fantastic weekend of sight seeing, eating and drinking the plan was to drop my bike off at the bmw place, have a bit of a poke around while it was being worked on, then head down to victor harbour for the evening.

waterfall gully, adelaide

Things were looking good, i managed to get to the bmw place on time and without getting lost, they lent me a brand new 800 road bike to get around on (it had 17km on the clock), wal turned up and we were off sight seeing with the first port of call wal's uncle's place to say hello and have a cup of tea. While there we did a quick revise of the plan in that we would go and have a look at the beach and depending on how long my bike was going to be, maybe go to harndorf.

The plan was sound but there was one, small, seemingly insignificant detail, that stimied the whole thing. The weather.

On the road out to brighton things started to look a bit grim and by the time we got there it was bogging down and blowing a gale. There was nothing else for it, we had to find a cafe and console ourselves with coffee and cake. From the safety of the cafe we devised plan 37b, that was we would just go back to town, park the bikes, and stay under cover.

rememberance arch, brighton beach

The ride back into town was not very pleasant but by the time we got there the weather had changed again, promting wal to comment that if i didn't like the weather i should just wait 10 minutes. We wandered around for a while, had some lunch and did a spot of shopping. The guys fom bmw then called to say my ike was ready so we were mobile once again.

I have to say the guys had done a geat job, thanks ben and the team, my bike was purring like a kitten and for the first time ever it was cleaner than wals. This sadly didn't last very long as about 25 minutes into our trip to victor we rode into the worst weather either i, with my limited riding experience, or wal, with his somewhat more extensive experience, had ever ridden in, or would care to ride in again. It was also some of the worst weather south australia has seen for a while. It was utterly, utterly diabolical. Torrential rain, some hail and wind gusts of 90kmph while riding knobby tyres on the road, triffic stuff and bloody scary. There were two instances where we had to stop as the rain was so heavy it was impssible to see.

By the time we got to victor our suits were soaked, our gloves were soaked and we were very cold. Fortunately however, the gortex suit liners did their job and we were dry. We headed for the first motel we saw and they were lovely, they had room and despite wal dripping all over the reception, they very kindly offered us some space under cover for our bikes. After checking we set about rigging up a system for drying the suits as quickly as possible. From there it was hot showers all round and another review of our plans.

improvised suit drying rack. it was very effective

It appeared that there was another huge front due to come through tomorrow and as niether of us wanted to go through that again we decided we would spend two nights in victor, not do the great ocean road which was due to have shocking weather for the rest of the week, and come home via the murray to avoid the worst of it.

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-35.552,138.6218&ll=-35.552,138.6218&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1