The Great Ocean Road

The great ocean road or GOR for short is one of those iconic roads that is a must visit for every motorcyclist as well as tourist and locals alike. It has amazing beach lines, winding mountainous roads with magnificent views, forested sections that wind uphill and down dale with bend after glorious bend. The GOR starts at Geelong and ends at Warnambool and was built by the returned service men or diggers as we call em here after world war 1, for us motorcyclists it starts proper from Torquay until Port Campbell. The GOR is on just about every motorcyclists list of roads to do before they die and fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it I've managed to ride it 4 times. If your planning on visiting Australia and want to know where to ride then this is a great start.

There are also some great feeder roads to and from the GOR through the Otways ranges national park. The views up in the Otways is spectacular, one can look to one side and see stunning valleys that reach out to the sea and on the other sweeping vistas and forested hillside stretching for miles, absolute beauty with winding roads in between. This is a motorcycling paradise.

Starting from Torquay and heading to Anglesea is more or less gentle sweepers and a few tight corners thrown in which is but a taste of whats to come. From Anglesea to Lorne the tightness of the corners intensifies as the ocean views come thick and fast with mountain views on the right hand side to counter. Lorne is one of the larger and more touristy towns, I prefer smaller places and less crowded, like Apollo bay.

One must look out for the numerous tour buses that frequent this road as well as star struck international visitors trolling along at super low speed. There are quite a few turn out lanes for slower vehicles but from my limited experience on this road most drivers seem to think that they are for other drivers and won't pull over and use them. Feel free to honk and flash your lights at them for such selfish driving.

From Lorne to Apollo bay the traffic seems a little lighter at times with still the same superb twists and turns along the coastline. There are plenty of spots to stop along the way for photos of the scenery.  Apollo bay is a small little town, be careful as you cant get fuel here after 10pm and according to tarsnakes this is one of the most expensive places around for premium fuel.

Apollo Bay Main Street

Once out of Apollo bay the road winds its way up into the hills and forests leaving the beaches and coastline behind. Winding through hilly forested farming land it comes out to the sleepy little hamlet of Lavers Hill. Turning left at Lavers Hill takes you to Port Campbell following the GOR and turning right takes you up through to Gellibrand or Beech Forest also some fantastic riding.

Make sure to stop off at 'the shoppe' for a home made hamburger, it's one of the best I've ever had.

After Lavers Hill the road winds its way through lush forests and beautiful hilly farmland away from the coastline but eventually winds it way back down to the sea again near the 12 Apostles and Port Campbell.

The road becomes a lot straighter out near Port Campbell but there are still some good corners to be had and spectacular views. One can take a helicopter flight over the 12 Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge or you can just park up and and wander down to one of the many walkways constructed for tourists to take in the views.

Looking East along the 12 Apostles

Looking West along the 12 Apostles

 

Just a short 5 minute trip up the road from the twelve apostles is Loch Ard Gorge named after the the Ship aptly named Loch Ard, which run aground and sunk here killing all but 2 passengers.

Loch Ard Gorge

Not long after Loch Ard gorge you come to Port Campbell which is effectively the end of the road for riding the twisties in this part. The road continues out to warnambool but the road becomes fairly straight after this. There's good accommodation and fuel available in Port Campbell with a pretty little beach right at the centre of town.

One of the great riding roads in Australia if you get the chance, which is only ruined by the fact that there are so many tourists on this road. Best to ride it during the weekdays if possible as there is generally less traffic.

Port Campbell

Slaying Arthurs Pass, New Zealand 2014

Ahh good old New Zealand it just keeps giving and giving even though our trip was months ago(feels like years now). I had some unused footage that I captured laying around doing nothing so I managed to cobble this together. If you love rock music turn it up real loud(unless you live in Germany and YouTube has blocked the song so just put on Motley Crue's Kick start my heart).

Don't believe everything you read in bike magazines....

One of the magazine subscriptions I read is Australian Motorcycle News which has some good articles and news and events on all things motorcycle. But a couple of issues ago I came across an article in the AMCN rides that I couldn't believe made it in there.


AMCN have a section called AMCN rides which is a write up on good bike roads to ride on. This particular article was on a section of road I know all to well. Its the Lachlan valley way.




Here's one of the pages blatantly stolen from the issue showing the route.








I grew up and lived in Forbes for 28 years in the central west of NSW. Now I can assure you that the rides/roads they have listed to ride here are some pretty crap and straights roads that would bore the shit out of most hardcore touring bike riders.  Yeah the way to fight the boredom is either drink yourself stupid until you see dead people or ride somewhere more interesting. The road from Forbes to West Wyalong and beyond is completely straight with only a couple of gentle bends which has lots of trucks on it as its a main arterial route between Melbourne and Brisbane, and the Lachlan valley way to Lake Cargellico is also a fairly boring run most of this area is flat and straight with not that many hills about.

If you want to know where the best roads in this area is for bike riding you need to go east of Forbes anywhere between Cowra, Wyangala Dam, Canowindra, Mandurama. Towards Orange you have the highest peak between the blue mountains and the western NSW border, Mt Canobolas at 1395m(4577ft) not one of the highest peaks by any stretch of the imagination but its high enough to get snow up here every winter. The surrounding areas are very hilly which makes for good road bike riding as you get that uphill down dale effect, not a twisty stretch but a road with nice flowing curves.

The map below shows some of the better roads in this area, with some twisties between Cowra, Wyangala and Woodstock, with the other roads nice hilly flowing roads. The road between Canowindra and Mandurama is a bit of a favourite back road of mine.



Along the way on this route is the little town of Eugowra which has recently had a lot of cool murals painted on the the sides of the buildings in the middle of town, a little like the town of Sheffield in Tasmania.

One good thing AMCN did touch on though was the McFeeters motor museum in Forbes which is on the Newell Highway just over the bridge near lake Forbes. The museum houses plenty of classic cars and a few bikes. If you want to go to a bike museum go to Nabiac instead as you can't beat the motorcycle museum there but if your riding past its well worth a stop. They have a cafe on the side with great sausage rolls and pretty good coffee too. There's also a working bee hive out the side that you can actually taste honey straight off the honeycomb which was fantastic.

Model T ford, this car photograghed was the same car that we used to take us to and from our wedding reception and photos.

Model A ford, which they had several

MV

GSXR & Katana early 80's

It's not all boring straight roads out west, you just need to know where to go to find the good motorcycle roads, because there are miles and miles of straight boring crap out that way, and lifes way too short to have a crap ride.

A nowhere ride

Yesterday I was busy mowing and gardening and several bikes rode past whilst I was busy cutting down branches out the front. It's double points long weekend here which means the cops virtually take your license for doing 1 kmh over the limit. So I resisted the temptation, then a few more bikes went by. Did I mention it was a fantastic day for riding. Then the missus and kids got in the car and went to church. Was I gonna stand here all day doing boring chores all by myself or was I going for a ride?

Bugger this it's to good of a day to waste doing chores and no riding. So I quickly cleaned up and got the bike out. I wasn't going to go on a long ride as the minister of finance and warfare would be back in an hour and a half.

So I just went for a short ride locally. I happened to find myself out the front of Yamaha Australia HQ which is only 10 minutes from where I live. This is where my bike came from(factory in Japan excluded).

Blogger Meet up

I've been away on holidays with the family and during this time I've been trying to post up a couple of blogs but have had to wait until I got back to the civilised world for a couple of reasons. For starters free wifi in this country is abysmal and blogging from a tablet really sucks ass. My phone's internet connection wasn't up to the task of blogging. When I was using the fablet for some stupid reason all the photos got deleted from the post before I could publish, it doesn't seem terribly blogger friendly when pictures are involved and the cursor seems to jump to random spots. Frustrating to say the least. Give me a PC any day.

Anyway I managed with my feeble internet and computer skills to get a comment and email through to Jules from the fabulous Tarsnakes Motorcycle touring blog and a phone call later a meeting had been arranged.

Jules and his Fabulous wife Mrs T rocked up at the bakery in Apollo Bay smack bang on time as scheduled. I'll finally get to see the ZX-14 in the flesh and what a beast it is. Jules had just fitted a GPS to it. That would be a great accessory on the R1. I forgot to ask how it goes with gloves on, does it operate the same or is it a bit cumbersome?

Tarsnake's Beast, the Mighty ZX-14

I was a little nervous at first as we've never met before and only exchanged emails and comments on each others blogs. Jules and I hit it off right from the word go and I could have talked bikes for the whole day(to the disappointment of the girls). Jules is very knowledgeable about bikes in general and had some excellent local knowledge that came in handy for our trip down to Port Campbell and back. Mate the home made hamburger at the shoppe in Lavers Hill has to be the best I've ever had. Thanks for the tip.

The below photo was blatantly stolen from Tarsnakes blog.

Jules & Mrs T it was a pleasure to chat with you over a coffee. An hour and a half flew by. Two of the nicest people you could hope to meet. Maybe one day we will have a chance to get out on the bikes together. If your ever up this way, give us a yell and its our shout for the coffees and we could show you around.

Mr & Mrs T

Bee's, Beers and Magpies

'WTF is that' I thought to myself as I watched bushpig on his triumph riding in front of me as he rode into darkish cloud that was floating across the road. It suddenly dawned on me it was a swarm of bee's. I had about 2 seconds before I would be engulfed by the bee swarm. The only thing I could think of doing was ducking down under the small screen on the R1. Did I happen to mention that R1's have a very small screen, as I went through I could see bee's bouncing around in all directions. As quickly as I rode into the bee swarm I was out again. I checked around and there were bee bits everywhere but no stingers in me. I checked over bushpig and he was all good as well. All this only 5 minutes into the ride.

Fridays ride was just a quick one up into the blue mountains via the bells line of road. We decided on having some lunch at the Mt Victoria pub. There wasn't a lot of traffic as it was a week day which suited us perfectly.  Temps up near Mt Bell were a little on the chilly side but that didn't worry me at all.

A great place to give the newly rebuilt rear shock a test. It was immediately clear to me that the rear shock was working how it was supposed to, feeling firm and soaking up bumps and staying firm under acceleration out of corners and not pogoing around.

In fact it felt so good that I could now see that the front suspension couldn't cope with the back being fixed. I might have to upgrade the front too.

As we entered Bell and rounded the corner where the road meets the Mt Vic turn off I heard a squawking noise of a bird then followed by a clunk on the back of my helmet. I was getting dive bombed by a bloody magpie. The little bastard. For the non Aussie readers the Australian magpie is an aggressive little black and white coloured bird that during the spring time will dive bomb anyone unmercifully if one happens to wander too close to its nest.






We stopped in Lithgow for a fuel top up and came back via the great western highway up Mt Victoria. It's sad to see that they have now fitted average speed cameras on the Mt Vic section of road. We were soon stopped at the pub for a quick lunch of wedges and a beer(only one of course).

Bushpig multitasking

We had soon headed back across to the bells line again but this time I was riding the trumpy and bushpig was on the R1. I followed in comfort, with the trumpy's upright seating postion and reach up to the bars not down, it sure has some grunt out of the corners and it soaks up the bumps well too. The R1 out in front looked tiny in comparison. As we approached the intersection at bell I saw the shadow of a bird and then another clunk on the back of my helmet again. That friggin magpie was back again. We stopped in for a couple of photos near Mt Charles and then continued on.

Bells Line at Mt Charles

Mt Banks

Sydney Skyline in back ground

It's only a short ride back to Sydney from here of about 1 hour. A short but good ride just before my annual leave kicks in with a trip of the great ocean road coming up, pity it won't be on the bike though.