Darryl Cullen 1250S Bandit
Peter Arday ST1300
Steven Hausfeld ST1300
Jan Hausfeld CB400
Alan & Lyn Munday FJR1300
Andy & Irene Ruffy Harley Ultra
Chris Dietzel GTR1400
John Storn FJR1300
John Barratt BMW F800GS
I awoke to a beautiful morning, which was a relief after the previous night’s storm which blacked out a swath of country from Eaglehawk to Goulburn.
Our merry little band left Hume right on 8:30am and headed down the Monaro Highway and straight through Cooma before turning north onto the Snowy Mountains Highway. First stop was the bakery in Adaminaby for coffee and a pie. It was a mince pie rather than a steak one but it wasn’t too bad. At the suggestion of Al and Lyn, we sat at the picnic tables in the park opposite. One of our number got into trouble for ordering coffee ‘to drink here’ when she should have ordered it ‘to take away’. Despite this unbelievable faux pas she was allowed to take the china mug across the road and it was dutifully returned afterwards.
The Monaro was beautiful and green after an unusually wet January. It typically looks like a desert at this time of year but there is so much feed at the moment that livestock are being brought in on agistment.
The Snowy Mountains Highway north of Adaminaby is a fantastic road, with plenty of wonderful sweeping bends, a few tight ones to keep us on our toes, and a mostly smooth and wrinkle-free surface. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, which made it even more enjoyable. Despite all the signs warning us of mobs of wild horses, kangaroos, wombats, emus and park rangers, the nearest we came to disaster was a single roo that had a couple of our riders slam on the brakes.
We got stuck behind a slow boat-tower on the twisty-turnies coming down Talbingo Mountain but that was the only real obstacle to our otherwise
speedy progress and considering the other possible impediments we could have faced – tornadoes, witches, nuclear war – it wasn’t too bad. We
made an unscheduled stop at Tumut 3 Power Station, just below Talbingo Dam, for a photo shoot and continued on to Tumut.
After getting fuel and some culinary advice from the servo sheila, we headed for the Royal Hotel in Wynyard Street for lunch. Alas, it was closed. Al and Lyn came up with Plan B, which was to dine at the Woolpack Hotel, 50 metres down the street. The food was a bit slow in coming but we were sitting at a big al fresco table (outside on
the footpath, for all you who think al fresco might be al munday’s dad) in the shade of a big generous tree, so we didn’t suffer unduly.
After lunch we continued a couple of blocks north on the highway before turning right onto the Wee Jasper Road.This took us over the fast-flowing Tumut River, through the avenue of Lombardy poplars for which Tumut is justifiably famous, and past the airport, after which we turned left onto the Brungle Road.
This road starts out as a series of straights and easy curves but plunges down some steep, tight, exciting bends to Killimikat Station before meandering north to the 60 km/h zone at the small village of Brungle, situated close to the Tumut River. About 3 km past Brungle you can take a left turn to Gundagai but we continued straight ahead on the Darbalara Road.
This is a fun road but it’s so long and narrow and winding that even if you’ve ridden it plenty of times before you still start to wonder if you have somehow gotten lost. It’s pretty simple though – there’s one very obvious left turn at the locality of Darbalara and another when you hit the Gobarralong Road just near the Murrumbidgee River.
Turn left here, ride across the river on a bridge that’s little more than a long, bone-jarring cattle grid and keep going until you reach the Hume Freeway at the nondescript non-metropolis of Pettit. To avoid finishing up in Melbourne, we made a left in Pettit, turned right under the freeway and right again on the old Hume Highway, rejoining the freeway a few kilometres north at Coolac.
At the suggestion of Al and Lyn, we had a drinks break in the park at Jugiong before making our way home. My tripmeter registered 550 km for the day. Many thanks to Peter Arday for going tail-end Charlie and to Al and Lyn for all the suggestions.
Ian Paterson
