Day 1

How it all started was like this. I had to go to a 50th anniversary do for the theatre group that my missus is mixed up with and so I had to miss the piss-up for the OFAL Tourers at P.G's place, of which group I am the President, as is every other member because we're not actually a club but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I missed the piss-up but the boys made up for that by ringing me up at midnight that night to tell me everything that had been decided in my absence. Apparently they had run out of bad things to say about me behind my back so they discussed a run for the Queens Birthday long weekend and came to the conclusion that we had better go to the Alpine Rally held in the high country up the back of Mount Kosciusko, the highest and coldest place in Australia. They all gathered behind P.G. and yelled into the phone (completely out of harmony I might add) that the Alpine Rally was going to be our QBW destination and that I was as weak as piss for not coming to the booze up. And while they were at it, they reminded me how much fun they had at the "V Two Rally" while I was away at a Gospel Music Festival. This was all at midnight, remember, and I was a bit tired because the theatre thing had been a bit of fun, so I started to remind P.G. that he was a poofter and a mongrel. And then I realised I was talking to a dial tone so I went to bed.

About two hours later I was awakened by the dulcet tones of the telephone so I got out of bed and the bastards must have got stuck right into the neck oil because now they were all in harmony as they loudly told me that they had decided to go to the Alpine Rally. I suggested to P.G that I had already been informed of this momentous decision, so he said, "Oh, sorry!” and hung up.

Phil had his Bimmer 1150 GS all packed and ready to go when I arrived at his place on the Friday morning before the QBW long weekend.    So we didn't stuff around, we headed straight down the highway to Moe and then aimed up the hill to Erica. The other blokes were planning to head off later in the afternoon and were to meet us in Beechworth (Northeast Victoria) sometime that night. I don't like riding in the dark, and neither does Phil, so we decided to have a bit of an adventure on the way to Beechworth, and that's why we took the Friday off.

If you haven't ridden a motorbike up to the Thompson Dam from Moe, via Erica, then you owe it to yourself to do it. It's a great piece of windy road and offers lots of challenges from tight corners to sweepers and signs warning of "Icy Conditions Ahead", interspersed with dry bits followed by wet bits and it all adds up to a damn fine ride. At Erica we hesitated long enough for a coffee for us, and a smoke for Phil, and then we were off out to the Thompson Dam wall. Over that and onto the dirt at Beardmores and then I slowed down because it was wet and snotty and Phil speeded up because it was wet and snotty. I have a Bimmer too, but it's an 85 K100 RS not a GS and although it gets along all right, it's not a patch on the GS in the rough stuff.

I struggled along the ridge to Aberfeldy and beyond, and as we climbed higher into the mountains, so we got further into the clouds that were settling in for the day, like a mother chook hunching over her chickens. It was quite weird rolling along that trail. My earplugs eliminated any noises and the clouds blocked out any views, so I was just trundling along concentrating on staying upright. My sphincter muscle was puckered up tight like a teenager’s lips getting ready for a first kiss, my feet were ready to drop down and hold me up if I slipped and my eyes were out on stalks like a snail. I peered desperately into the mist ahead, looking for any particularly snotty bits. Don't get me wrong here, I still loved it. I love riding a motorcycle at any time and in my opinion, the road and weather conditions simply dictate that a different approach to riding is needed. Have you ever seen Valentino Rossi as he thunders into a corner, rapidly decelerating from somewhere up in the high two hundreds down to seventy or so to get around a corner, his motorcycle weaving and bucking and the back wheel seemingly dancing to a tune of its own? Well, I was doing that, but at twenty kph. (It might not look as good, but I was sure as hell riding on the same edge as him!)

Woods Point

Gaffneys Creek

It took us a couple of hours to get to Woods Point, which is probably only about 80 k's from Erica, so I was ready for a spell on arrival. We filled up at the legendary Woods Point Service Station, got into a couple of marvelous toasted ham, cheese and tomato sangers and a coffee each, and then headed off on the gravel road to Jamieson via the A1 mine, Gaffneys Creek and Knockwood. The last fifteen k's or so is a fabulous tight and twisty run on almost new bitumen and I had a brief reminisce of great times in the past as we blasted past the Kevington Hilton Hotel, one of the best bush pubs on the planet. I remember I wanted to stay there one night with my wife, and I rang in advance to book and to make sure that they had counter meals on at night. The bloke said "No worries mate, she'll be right", and when I told him that we would be coming up on the bike he said that would be good because a few other motorcyclists had booked in so it should be a great night. When we arrived, we found that about a hundred members of the "Gypsy Jokers One Per Centers” Motorcycle Club had set up out the back and they had a stereo system playing rock and blues music at about three hundred decibels per hour and they were into the grog.  But they turned out to be a great bunch of blokes and we had a good time anyway although we didn't get much sleep. Oh, and when we went in for tea and I asked the publican where the menu board was, he smiled at me and said it was Roast Lamb with vegies.

Jamieson

The next town after Jamieson is Mansfield so we stopped there for some new wet weather pants and some thicker gloves for me as I only had summer gloves with me and my old wet weather pants had shrunk alarmingly since I last wore them. Phil cut me out of them with his pocketknife and my knackers thanked him profusely and then I went in search of some new ones. Wet weather pants that is. I bought some triple extra large ones in case they shrunk like the old ones had, but I couldn't find any winter gloves. So far I had managed with the heated handgrips turned on to one, but I reckoned I would need more than that when we got up into the Alps.

We headed out of Mansfield and aimed towards Whitfield. Some of you may have read some of my previous ramblings, or may have been lucky enough to have traversed this road themselves, but, in any case, I think that it is as good as any road in the country for a motorcyclist. The signs warning of "High Motorcyclist Casualties Ahead" are a bit daunting, but in the end, I believe that it is a rider's responsibility to survive on a road and that we should ride according to the road conditions. Lets face it, the road is not a race track, but one can still have a lot of fun and still stay well within safe limits. I was pretty well funned out though, as we rolled down the hill into Whitfield, the road had been wet and the clouds were slumbering on the top of the ranges so we had been wiping mist off our visors and peering bleakly into the distance as we tippy toed our way through the sweepers and especially whilst negotiating the tight down hill off camber corners. There's none of your fancy counter steering going on then mate, I give you the drum, It's strictly go straight, jiggle around the corner a bit, repeat twice more, then gas it up and do it again at the next one.

Whitfield was cold and wet, although at least we were under the mist, not in it, so we decided to blast straight to Beechworth, our evening destination. We rolled into town just after five so I pulled up outside the first pub we found and we went in for a beer. The atmosphere inside was snug, cozy and warm and I started to thaw out after a few minutes with me bum shoved into the fireplace. We ordered a pot of beer each, and then as the clock struck 5.15.p.m., we clinked glasses in salute to the other poor bastards who were supposed to be leaving Melbourne at that time, and sunk 'em.

Beechworth

Phil and I were to stay with Gavin's, another of the OFALs, brother-in-law Lawrence and his wife, and the other guys were to meet us there later that night. So we went there and they are lovely generous folk and we had a great time and then the boys, P.G, Gavin and Bill turned up so we had a few more glasses of great time and then we all went to bed and had a snoring competition.

Day 2

We followed Lawrence along some great twisty stuff to Wodonga and then out to Tallangatta where we all filled up with juice before hitting the road to Corryong. It's called the Murray Valley Highway, although at that point it is on the other side of a mountain range from the Murray River, but who cares, it's another great motorcycle road. I worked my way up to the front of the pack and pretty soon the only bike I could see that was behind me was Gavin on the 650 Bimmer. I was watching the clouds on the top of the ranges ahead and gunning it up a bit to try and get in front of a big wet looking cloudbank on my left. The road was damp, but not wet from rain, yet, so I was staying on the safe side of falling off, but still having a bit of a go. It was a memorable ride following the road up and down and around and over bridges and through tight bits and around sweepers and then we started to make a bit of ground on some more bikes in front of us. That's like a red rag is to a bull for me, a bike in front of me, the animal takes over and I start stalking them and then we pass them and wave to the Copper over there in the bushes and he waves back and we know we're doing about 130-140 kph and so does he, but there is no way he can get out of there and after us in his four wheel drive wagon but we slow up anyway because we are almost into Corryong and I love this stuff, just love it.

We pulled up in town and had a feed and some coffee and diddled around for a while and then did some shopping for grog and stuff because, although we still had about a hundred and forty k's to go, there aren't any more shops out there between us and the rally site, apparently. Eventually we rounded everybody up and got going again, following Ian now because he's been to the rally before and knows the way. Pretty soon, we crossed the Murray River over into NSW and straight away the roads turned into shit. We are spoiled to death here in Victoria, because even the back roads are in pretty good condition, not like the goat tracks the New South Welshmen have to put up with.

There are three ways from Corryong to Kiandra which is up in the Snowy Mountains, the Alpine Way which winds up the side of Mount Kosciusko and then down past Thredbo to Jindabyne and out along the Snowy Mountains Highway. A road that winds up through the Kosciusko National park to Cabramurra, the highest township in Australia, and another road, called the Elliot way which winds it's way towards Cabramurra past rural properties before entering the National Park. The Alpine way is the longest distance and the road to Cabramurra was blocked by snow so we went along the Elliot way.

Snow fields photos

What can I say? It was awesome. The road works its way up into the mountains and then drops steeply down into a valley where we followed the Tumut river for a while and then up again, very steep here, until we turned off and rode into Cabramurra. As we worked our way up from the Tumut river Valley floor, it got colder and mistier and did I mention colder and then the sides of the road had traces of snow on them and the road was black and shiny and I thought I was going to fall on my arse any minute but we didn't and I thought Cabramurra was deserted as we slowly wandered past the steep roofed cabins and then there was a service station and a shop/tourist thing and we parked the bikes.

My first mistake was to take my helmet off. As the snow flakes drifted gently down and nested on top of my bald head, I wondered what the hell I was doing here and P.G was shivering like a dog shitting razor blades and then I saw Claude's Matchless, which I know that he has owned for twenty three years and that it has never been washed in all of that time. It looks like a wreck. I asked him later where he had got it from and he told me he had made it up out of a few paddock bikes and I knew a bit about it because he lived around the corner from where my Dad lived, many years ago. I have seen it as a 500 cc single, a 350 cc single and now as a 500 cc twin. That bloody bike has been just everywhere in this country and is a legend in Australian Motorcycling circles, like it's mad bloody owner.    And Johnny Doig's Norton (another legendary pair like Claude and the Matchy) was parked beside it and I recognised the Ducati with the sidecar on it and realised that the Monarch's Motor Cycle Club boys were here too. We went inside and enjoyed a fascinating hour walking up and down the corridors of the shop, looking at all of the old photo's taken during the construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme. Well worth the trip just to see that.

My second mistake was to go back outside because it was about twenty five degrees (Celsius) colder out there than in the shop and the sudden drop in temperature slapped me in the face and made me wonder if I had brought enough stuff to keep me warm at night. I still didn't have any winter gloves, although I had borrowed some waterproof mittens from P.G and had gone onto warp overdrive level two on the heated handgrips. Do not underestimate how good these heated handgrip thingies are. Anyway, the Monarchs were getting ready to depart and as Ian had decided to stay on at the shop and have a feed, Phil, P.G and I figured we had better follow them because they looked like they knew where they were going. We rolled out of Cabramurra and retraced our steps to get on the Kiandra road, and were back about a hundred metres or so behind the Monarchs. That was my third mistake, trying to keep up with the Monarchs. The road back to the turn off is about four kilometres and in that distance, the Monarchs on their rattly old piles of shit had completely disappeared into the distance. We pressed on any way and it was still friggin' freezing, but not as cold as Cabramurra because we had dropped a couple of hundred metres in altitude, but it was still wet and misty and the road sure felt like it was going to slide out from under me at any moment but it didn't and then we reached the junction with the Snowy Mountains highway and the road was dry and the sun came out.

About twenty K's down the road, a group of bikes and riders had pulled up into a turn off on the right and I thought that might be the turn off to the rally site so we pulled up too. Every body was just standing around yapping, a few with cans of beer in their hands, so we did some of that too and I heard a twin cylinder motor cycle approaching from where we had come. The road curves gently down a long left hand bend with miles of open vision and this thing, a GS 1150 Bimmer with a really grouse sports exhaust system, was absolutely wound out to the max. I mean over two hundred k's at least and it sounded fantastic. All the blokes stopped what they were doing and stared open mouthed at where the thing had vanished around the corner and then every body started talking at once. About two minutes later, a Police four wheel drive station wagon came gently rolling down the road at the speed limit and I bet they are still wondering why they got such a rousing cheer from all of us guys stopped on the side of the road.

We puddled down to the rally site that was only about ten k’s further on and I was surprised to find that the site straddled the highway, albeit under the highway. There is a fairly long bridge over a swiftly flowing creek there and an old homestead over looking a grassy camping area below. I had heard horror stories of the run into past Alpine Rallies and was happy to not have to do that. We had the tents up pretty quick and settled into normal rally routine which consists mainly of standing around various camp fires talking bull shit with lots of various different people from all over the country whilst trying to consume as much alcoholic beverage in as short a time as possible. Or at least that was what the bloke over at the next campfire was doing. We were just sipping along and doing all the other stuff.

Some of the highlights of the afternoon/evening were:

Day 3

Somebody had the fire going so I pinched some hot water for a brew and made a couple of jaffles for brekky then slowly packed up all my stuff. Pete finally got out of bed and complained bitterly that someone had stolen most of his beer cans during the night because he sure as hell couldn't remember drinking that many.

By about 10.30 a.m., Pete, Phil and I were ready to head off so we bid farewell to the rest of the guys. The cloud cover was really low once more and the mist was a poofteenth this side of rain. Once we got up to cruising speed and gained a bit of altitude the weather really turned shitty. It was soooo cold. And windy. But it wasn't blowing a gale or anything like that, it was gusting, and not from one direction but from everywhere at once and it was unobstructed, not that I could tell really because the cloud was so low and thick that there could have been a fleet of US battleships out there for all I knew. But it was unobstructed the day before so I presumed it still was and I was leaning into the wind so hard I just knew the wheels were going to flip out from under me at any moment and then the wind stopped and attacked from the other side and I veered over into the other lane straight into the path of an oncoming road train and then the bloody wind blew me back onto my side and that kept up for about thirty k's. I was exhausted by the time we got to the turn off so I pulled up under this great big sign that said, "Road closed because of snow". Terrific.

We had a bit of a conference and decided to press on to Jindabyne and then down the Alpine Way, which suited me because I had traveled that road at Easter and I knew how fantastic it was. The Snowy Mountains Highway is known far and wide as a fabulous bit of road and I'm sure it would be on a warm and sunny day when there weren't any cops about but on this day it was sheer bloody hell for about forty k's of misery and then we dropped down a bit and the sun came out.

It was a grouse run down to Jindabyne but we didn't stop as we had filled up in a little town just prior to that so we pressed on towards Thredbo. Just before Thredbo, the National Parks service has a toll gate set up to extract cash from the visitors but they don't normally charge you if you are travelling through. The bloke at the tollgate said traffic was not allowed past Thredbo unless they were carrying chains because the road was said to be a bit icy so we assured him that we were all carrying a full set in our saddle bags and we kept going. As we approached Charlottes Pass, the highest bit of the road there, I could see that it was all blanketed in an ominous swirling grey cloud mass. I was shitting myself a bit, but I knew that the road didn't get much higher and that it dropped really quickly on the other side so I was anticipating maybe a kilometre or so of tricky stuff. As it turned out, I worried for nothing. For some reason, the snow only sat on the ground beside the road, not on the black bitumen, so although the area was completely blanketed in snow, there was a spotlessly clean and clear black ribbon for us to follow to the down side of the mountain. We stopped at Pilots Lookout for some pics and a leak because Pete wanted to see what piss holes in the snow looked like and I tell you what, the old feller took a bit of coaxing before he'd come out from under all that warm clothing. In the end, I just had to pry all my clothes out of the way and piss out through the gap.

I have talked about the run down the mountain before, so I won't go over old ground, suffice to say that it is at least as good the second time as it was the first time.

We had to wait a bit for some toasted sangers at the Khancoban Pub, but it was worth it and it gave my toes a chance to thaw out a bit. The plan was to stay with an old mate of Pete's at a place called Eskdale, which was on the Omeo road about a hundred and fifty K's away so we filled up and started putting miles under the tyres. Once we got through Corryong it was just a reverse procedure of the day before until we got just outside of Tallangatta where we turned left for the short forty k run to the nights stop.

We were all completely stuffed and well and truly ready for a beer and a sit when we pulled up. Old Bill had a fire going in a little lean to on the back of his shed so we sat there and yapped for a while and then I made a bit of stuff up for tea which we cooked over the open fire. We had a few more beers and a yap and retired reasonably early after a nice hot shower and I stayed awake most of the night because Old Bill went to sleep and left the bloody telly on in his bedroom and eventually I got up and went outside and got me ear plugs and finally went to sleep. Pete and Phil didn't get much sleep either apparently because one or the other of 'em stayed awake trying to stop the other one from snoring. At least I don't snore, that must be my one saving graces I reckon.

Day 4

The dirt road from Lake Buffalo to Whitfield is 44 kilometres long, or there’s a shortcut across the Black Range, which is shorter by 14 k’s. The shortcut was the way we had decided to go and I waited at the turn off for the boys to roll up. Phil noticed the sign that said “Dry Weather Track Only” but he didn’t say anything and why should he, he was riding a bloody trail bike. I led the way until Phil blasted past me at twice my speed, completely ignoring the puddles and the gravel and rocks, but I just maintained a steady pace with P.G’s headlight gleaming through the moisture behind me. I had to lift my visor because it fogged up when it was down tight and it just got covered in water droplets when it was half up so I rode with the visor right up and the mist stinging my eyes and running down my neck. The surface of the road changed from gravel to clay and gravel and Phil must have got a bit of a fright because he slowed down and I caught up and passed him and then as I crested a rise in the track it turned into all clay. Greasy wet slippery snotty clay.

I probably should have guessed that it was going to be a bit tricky when, about half way in, the two four wheel drive vehicles with all of the shitty clay sprayed on their sides passed us going in the opposite direction; and the people inside looked at us with expressions of utter disbelief.

Once I got my front wheel over the top of the crest, I knew that I had no hope of stopping until I got to the bottom so I straight away thumbed the kill switch, snicked it into first and stuck my feet down. I used the clutch as a back brake by letting the clutch out until it engaged and stopped the back wheel from turning, skidding my way down the hill. There was no way, no way that I was going to touch the front brake because I knew that meant one thing and that was Ooooops, bang. I basically slid to the bottom of the hill, some hundred metres or so, using my feet as skids and with the wheels in the skinny rut that had been eroded by the constant flow of water over the past few days. And all the way down I was laughing inside my helmet, almost pissing myself because I knew Pete was behind me and that he would be cursing me in about fourteen different languages.   When I got to the bottom, I pulled her up onto the centre stand and then I took my helmet off, but I didn’t take my ear plugs out, no sir. I did take my camera out though, and then I struggled my way back up the hill. I only made it half way up before I had to lean up against a tree because I thought I might be going to have a heart attack. I could see Pete’s bike and it was upright and Pete was off it and walking around but one half of his body was black, the colour of his wet weather gear, and the other half was a sort of gooey brown and red, just like the mud on the ground. I could see he was gesticulating in my direction and I guessed what sort of stuff he would be saying, which was I had left the ear plugs in. I fair dinkum pissed meself I was laughing so much and it must have been infectious because I could hear Pete and Phil were having a bit of a giggle too so I struggled the rest of the way up the hill.

Pete was pretty good about it really, he posed nicely with the broken off mirror in his hand while I snapped away with the camera, and then he struggled manfully down the hill. It was OK for us, our bikes are only worth about three and a half gorillas Oz, but I could see that Phil wasn’t too happy about dropping his twenty odd thousand-dollar bike in the shit. Pete was following him down one of the snotty bits and his (Phil’s) back wheel decided to go in a different direction to his (Phil’s ) front wheel, and the distance under his (Phil’s) feet was increasing so he was getting up on his tippy toes trying to maintain balance. Pete reckoned Phil could have got a part with the Australian Ballet Company for that little demonstration. I did a pretty good impression of an ice skater on the way back down the hill, fired up the old girl and got going again.

There were a few more tricky bits, all down hill fortunately and pretty soon I was out on a gravel road again. The boys were a few minutes behind me, apparently Pete slipped off the side of the road and his back wheel buried itself up to the panniers in shit, but they got out unscathed and soon caught up. I had pressed on ahead because I needed to know if there was a bad bit in front of us and if so, make a decision to either press on or try and back up. I waited a while and was just about to organise a four wheel drive vehicle to go back and get the boys, when they turned up, grinning from ear to ear, both of them, in spite of the difficulties.

That was the Alpine Rally for 2002. We just diddled our way home uneventfully, a hand shake here and there as we went our separate ways, battling the long weekend traffic.