I am headed to Mildura, Victoria to help BMW with the Growing Old Disgracefully mob at their annual rally/meeting. I leave this arvo or before sparrow fart Saturday morning. I'm not sure which highway to point the front wheel towards yet. The state of the bitumen and height of the water could be a factor in my decision. Any Murray-Darling/Riverina dwellers got any suggestions? I'm not a fan of the Hume.

Hi mate
the Princess Highway down the NSW south coast is a disgrace and really busy, but generally is flood proof. The Hume is fastest and arguable safest but the most boring trip. All the roads leading to the Newell Highway inland are absolutely screwed up, and still take huge truck volumes, but it is open. (speed cameras everywhere in NSW). The Hume is water free now, most of the water is heading inland Victoria.
Depends on your time schedule but I think you are stuck on the Hume. Any minor road cross countrying is pretty much out of the question anywhere inland NSW still.
Safe trip shag
RT

I've just spoken to a truckie who does the Newell highway route twice a week and except for a load of craters round Narrabri and Coonabarabran, he says it's open all the way down, border to border, and that I'll see heaps of evidence of something downright biblical in proportions. I don't reckon he meant a plague of locusts. Nope, but that'll follow.

I'm not taking along a GPS as I prefer the more visually plodding and plotting MAP method, and I'm on a GS on this roadtrip so the 21" front wheel will eat up its share of road damage. I'll stick to the best surfaces as I progress and so we'll see how we go. I'm due and ready for some solo moto adventure!

Good luck with the trip. Keep us updated when possible. Photos too please.

Thanks, mate. I've got my camera easily to hand in the tankbag. I'm also taking along a small laptop so I should be able to post from the roadside...and I get called a Luddite!

Just don't let those numpties in that club sign you up.
And BTW the signature you have it says John Shouldn't it be from Revolutions.

safe trip mate ......

and have fun when you get there ...

"Revolutions"

Hi GITH, how about down the Newell to Gilgandra then across on the Barrier hwy and down to Mildura thru Broken Hill..........lots of open space if your wrist needs/likes to wind a bit further around........and probably a lot less traffic, probably not good at night on the Barrier, but then neither are the Hay Plains if you're going that way. I'd love an excuse to go for a long ride like that!!! cheers, mate.

Rick G wrote:BTW the signature you have it says John. Shouldn't it be from Revolutions?

The original that I found said John 4.50, but not being a terribly savvy biblical scholar I had to look it up and discovered it was about Samaritans and brotherhood & the like. Hey, we have a bit of that going on here so it's apropos.

Nuh, no one's signing this inveterate solo traveller up to anything. As Mark Twain said something like this, so long ago..."I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member."

My first thought was to take the Broken Hill route, that was a coupla weeks ago, but the rain washed that idea clear. Now I have just two days to do the distance in, and wanted to visit me elderly Mum at some stage in Clunes, Victoria, so the long way round is out for this trip. Maybe on the return.

Cheers, big ears!

andyb wrote:Hi GITH, how about down the Newell to Gilgandra then across on the Barrier hwy and down to Mildura thru Broken Hill..........lots of open space if your rist needs/likes to wind a bit further around........and probably a lot less traffic, probly not good at night on the Barrier, but then neither are the Hay Plains if your going that way. I'd love an excuse to go for a long ride like that!!! cheers mate.

Then why not come up to our May get together it promises to be a good time, the others have been.

Then why not come up to our May get together it promises to be a good time, the others have been.[/quote]

Thanks Rick, would love to, but time and work does not allow this time around..........................one day.....

The Newell is fine. There was a 200 metre patch of roadwork 50 kms South of Coona. The rest of it is normal, as in potholes and plenty of B-Doubles to overtake. The Mid-Western highway from Wyalong toward Hay, Balranald and eventually Mildura, where I have successfully landed, has a bit more damage but nothing like 'the media' suggest. I took a few photos where the water meets (and goes over) the road in places. It is truly an inland sea as far as the eye can see round West Wyalong and etc. I'll post those pics after a bit of dinner. The Murrumbidgee at Hay is right up to below the bridge! I did a 1000km first day and about 750 today. Not bad. That F800GS is a beaut little traveller.
Cheers.

cheers gith ....clinks stubbies ...glad to hear you made it

This little beauty transported me and my gear, often at warp speed, 1750 kms in two days. Pity it's a parallel twin with chain drive....but then again...Between West Wyalong and Mildura there were many (open range) kilometres where I sat on 145-150 kph for half an hour at a stretch between cars and trucks, and she still got under just 5 litres per 100kms on mid-grade 95 octane premium! Not a drop of motor oil was used, either. The carbon-fibre Akrapovic exhaust cannister has a sweet, tight note, sorta like a boxer with that certain flattish brraaaaap note.



This is normally pasture and crop land just East of West Wyalong, New South Wales. In a couple of places it has torn up the tarmac as it reached its peak height. The roadworks were minimal.



The muddy, slow-moving Murrumbidgee River at Euston, a few kilometres East of Mildura. You can see the highwater mark in the red mud against the green grass on the embankment. These trees are usually well above waterline.

um...just running the young girl in eh ????

good to hear mate ....happy trails

great pics ....not something you see every year ....or decade even ....we live in big brown and sunburnt country .....sometimes wet, which must give hope to our farmer friends and country folks.

i must admit that our recent "new england" journeys are the first time i have seen the big brown land, green and georgeous in ...has to be 20 -30 years ,,,and the first time i have seen the murumbidgee in full flood ...thanks !!!

All that water...it stinks. No, I mean it literally stinks like stagnation. It's sitting there going no where slowly and so it has begun to rot, and fill up with larvae. I reckon I slaughtered ten thousand mozzies against the fairing, my jacket shoulders and helmet visor. The blowies and other insects land on you at every stop. The Aussie salute got a good old work-out today.

It was a great ride. The bike has just under ten thousand kilometres on it now. It was ridden to South Australia late last year on the twice-a-year BMW Australia-sponsored Safari. She's no virgin, and well and truly run in. I got off the saddle bowlegged.

I was inspired by that description and those pictures to look at some maps and try to figure out your travels GITH, I'll keep playing Lotto in the feint hope I might ride on the continent of Aus one day. The distances are almost inconcievable to us dwellers of a small island, which north to south only measures 480kms.

Still motoways aside this is fabulous biking country where a straigh mile is a local wonder. The trip log on my GPS puts the average speed of travel (car, bike, rural city) over the last 14,000kms ,at just 46kph, so I guess it's as well we don't have far to go .

Safe riding Dude!

88KE

I'm now about 800 kms from home, of a total of 3900 kms all up so far, and stopped in a motel in quaint and dusty Gunnedah, NSW for the night.

The Ulysses AGM was, well.....spaciously large, heaps to do and see, and very well organised. Too much in fact. There were about four thousand over-fifties and their spouses (some middle-aged ladies do like to wear their jeans a bit tight) and hangers-on attending in beaut little Mildura, Victoria. Somehow I managed to sell the notoriously thrifty buggers about $4000 worth of old stock BMW T-shirts in four days.

I have heard that they're the sort to come to town for a week with a $50 note in their pocket and a single shirt and they don't change either all week long....joking, some of their 'rigs' would put a B-Double to shame. I saw three wheelers (Can-Am Spyders) towing two-wheeled trailers, two wheelers towing one-wheeled trailers, two wheelers with training wheels and some form of landing gear out the sides, and two wheelers with three actual wheels - and all manner of overloaded motorbikes. Oh, and remember BMW's ill-fated R1200C cruiser? The James Bond jumps buildings somewhere in Asia-version...I saw more of them there than I have anywhere in the past ten years.

But I had fun and got to know some interesting new people, ride a whole heap of great roads in Victoria and New South Wales, eat some delish food every night and drink some very good Sunraysia region red wine, and hang out with the BMW Australia crew from Melbourne doing the hourly test rides (they had an example of every bike they sell Down Under). When we rocked up of a morning there would be thirty or so people waiting in the queue already for a chance at the K1600GT/GTL and the others. I noted that Honda, Victory, Triumph and the like had no interested test ride participants there before eight-thirty AM. That's the Beemer lovin' crowd for you! We used to joke at Daytona Bikeweek in Florida years ago that there were two alarm clocks per day: the three AM alarm was the sound of the Harleys coming back to the camping ground after the bars all closed, and the other was at six AM when the Beemer riders got up to go for a ride.

Today I got to test my mettle against the hot sun, the driving rain, and the blasting wind - all within the space of an hour.

I also met our very own 'The Mule' from Coffs Harbour, NSW who is not an terribly active user (last on back in June) but we had a good chin wag and he returned as promised wearing a very cool K100RT T-shirt which he made himself. It has a detailed screen-printed image of his bike overlaid on a BMW roundel. I took a photo of it and will post that one too.

The internet connection I'm on is crap, so I'll post some more piccies when I arrive home manana (tomorrow).

Cheers.

Glad that you enjoyed yourself. So this was a "working holiday"?

Ulysses...the jury is still out on whether I should go there.

blakey wrote:Glad that you enjoyed yourself. So this was a "working holiday"?

Ulysses...the jury is still out on whether I should go there.

The jury is in for me mate I told them where to stick their club last October. The National committee is like the Stazi, KGB and CIA all rolled into one. They are even trying to tell everybody that they are not a motorcycle club but a social club but you have to have a current bike licence to join. I was a member for a long time and the changes are definately not for the better. Half of them ride cruisers and the other half can't even ride. most are more interested in riding 15k for a latte than a 300 -400k ride.
There are a lot of friends there but I will not belong to a club that wants to control the members like they do.

Stopped at the side of the road in beautiful Speed, Victoria, population about five humans, ten chooks and a sheep and goat or two.



"The Mule's" homemade K Bike T-shirt at the Ulysses AGM.

crikey !!!

almost looks 3d

fantastic result ....verry... um ...different

cheers gith

The 3D effect is because of the lack of background on the picture of the bike.
I like the idea, but the design is a bit to big for my taste.

GITH, I guess the place is call Speed because if you don't slow down, you may miss it or, you can say I rode through this community in 3 seconds.

many small towns ...now, like that round aussie .... chook population more than humans ..giggle

Thanks for reposting, Ghost. That trip to Mildura was heaps of fun and it's good to have a back-squiz at the piccies of the floods. Man, what a different world I'm in right now. It's been -3c (28f) the past two mornings on the way to work, frost on the pumpkins, and a fifty kilometre ride from home, never goes above 5 or 6c days, but the sun is out! I'm plugged in with a 12V heated jacket liner, heated grips on high on the RT and lotsa light layers. Seattle, usually grey one day, greyer the next, and the next, and the...