Jase and Jess

Today we start off on our honeymoon, and as luck would have it it’s raining…..heavily…

So we don our highly attractive wet weather fashion statements and head towards the coast, we leave Canberra’s rainy weather in hope of better weather…to find ourselves riding in driving rain, low visibility and gusty wind, not the most pleasant start to a honeymoon.

Water has an innate ability to find its way into boots, socks, gloves and helmets, this meant that we experienced the kind of wet you’d feel if hoping under a shower full clothed wearing 3 kilos worth of gear….

Although starting off we felt trepidation and enthusiasm, two hours later we were feeling like angry drowned rats….

A stop off at Cooma brightened things considerably and chance to wring water from socks and gloves, a hot coffee, a steak sandwich and a chance to take stock….we decided that we were going to ride on though to brown mountain, where the rain eased into a slight coastal drizzle and made conditions quite a lot nicer to deal with, the mountain was beautiful after the rain, lush and green.

Finally we made it to our cabin, peeled off our gear and went about trying to dry it (with wildly varying degrees of success)

After a hot meal straight into an exhausted sleep ready for the next stretch.

Woke up to a clear and sunny day in Merimbula, a big and well received change from yesterday’s conditions.

This felt like the first day of our honeymoon! Slightly tired and a little bit grumpy from being kneed in the back all night by a 6”7 man used to a queen bed, I set about making coffee, so as to suppress my urge to rant and rave about said bad nights sleep….(this was to be a ongoing theme in the next 9 days)

The road though to Genoa was quite bland, but though to the Cann River was much more interesting, the road really opened out to Jases favorite type of road; fast, empty country roads, chock a block with 85-90km sweepers.

This is the kind of riding that Betty (read Jason) really loves…..

Then onto lakes entrance, and the view was stunning, from the lookout point over the cliff, we were able to see all the sand bars that made up little islands and the varying shades of blue and green in the water, it was really beautiful.

The View From Lakes Entrance

We were joined by several pelicans that soared right above our heads, unwieldy and uncoordinated buggers on land, but bizarrely graceful and elegant while flying.

The Pelicans at Lakes Entrance

We took a detour though to Cape Conran and Marlo, we had hoped to see the lighthouse that was advertised there, alas we were not able to find it, and we managed to find a beach that was pristine, with clean sand and being the middle of the week no people.

The Beach at Cape Conrad

Jason managed to take several shots of one of the native kookaburras sitting in a tree, a striking looking proud fellow, we were lucky to see him.

A friendly Kookaburra at Cape Conrad

We got to Bairnsdale just as the rain started, we roared off to Coles, and got dinner and back to the cabin before the worst hit, settled in for the night, ready for the next stretch.

This trip was quite boring; with nothing but dead straight stretches and no corners for Jase to play on, Ipod is your only friend on these stretches, making the trip slightly more interesting.

Sale was as bland as the name, so although we intended to stop, we pushed on though and kept riding.

It started to spit about 20kms outside of Yarrum , seeing the dark and foreboding clouds we pulled over to pull on our wet weather fashion statements, no less then 5 minutes down the road it started to rain really hard….close one…

We stopped for coffee at the Federal Coffee Palace, which serves the most mouth-watering coffee,

Jase also managed to scare the waitress half to death by loudly pointing out there was sesame seeds on my meal, after reassuring the waitress I wasn’t going to die on the spot, we ate the meals, which were delicious.

The rain eased off and we were on our way to Port Welshpool, after finding our accommodation (which was a lovely little cabin with a deck) we headed off to view Port Welshpools only attraction.

This attraction is called “Long Jetty” it’s a huge jetty that stretches out for what feels like forever, we were hoping to walk on the jetty, but weren’t able.

The jetty sustained a fire in 2003 and was unsafe to use or walk on, and the government had decided that it wasn’t worth fixing so the entire jetty was closed from both commercial use and public use.

The Long Jetty

We nipped into town (the town consists of a pub, post office, shop and a petrol station) to search for dinner, bought supplies and went back to the cabin for a good feed and settled in for the night, ready for the next stretch.

Up bright and early today (much to my disgust)

Yesterday we had been told about Agnes Falls which were apparently quite beautiful and “just up the road” about 30kms later we had found the falls.

Although the falls were nice the presence of cement in the falls made it a little less special for us. Jason managed to take some very flattering photos though, and it wasn’t a total bust….there were more look outs near the falls, but due to the presence of some fairy dodgy looking back packers loitering near the bike we cut out loses and revved off….

Agnes Falls

The stretch though Foster and Leongatha was stunning, smooth empty sweeping roads and fantastic scenery.

We stopped of for breakfast in Leongatha and had I experienced my first ever chilli hot chocolate….very unusual.

We started to get closer to Melbourne and the traffic and idiots on the road increased tenfold, however the ferry was well signposted and we made our way to Sorrento and onto the Queenscliffe ferry in no time.

The Queenscliff Ferry

The ferry offers storage space for cars, bikes and caravans as well as some light refreshments and coffee….

I must warm you that the coffee was so bad I have no doubt it would be able to be used quite easily as paint stripper, or some industrial insecticide, after one sip it got binned.

The highlight of the ferry trip was a pod of dolphins playing along side the boat for about 15 minutes, this included an extremely cute baby dolphin who was getting some serious air time while leaping though the water.

We fought our way though traffic to Anglesea, and found our accommodation herby known as the “seediest room in history” and went for a closer look around Anglesea.

After trying to see if the town had any attractions, and being directed by locals to “check out the Roos grazing on the golf course” we ran screaming from that town to see if there was anything else around.

We headed to Road Knight Point, where we could make out lighthouse a bit further down the road, we revved up to road to discover a stunning little lighthouse near Aireys Inlet called The Split Lighthouse, there were several lookouts which afforded us with some stunning views and mini apostle.

The Lighthouse from RoadKnight Pt - The Split Pt Lighthouse - View south from Split Pt

A quick ride back, an overpriced salad and back to the “seediest room in history” to wake up early and get the f#$k outta dodge ready for the next stretch.

After a crappy night sleep two grumpy people checked out of the “seediest room in history”

We decided to continue on hour way and head straight to Apollo Bay.

This was meant to be the best run of the entire trip, however this proved to be a horrible run, what would have normally been a bikers fantasy was a complete nightmare.

The roads were wet , slippery and dangerous and the trip was slow and tedious making for an unpleasant and scary trip down.

However once we reached Apollo Bay the sun was appearing and things were looking slightly better.

We stopped off for a coffee and some petrol at a near by service station and found a whole heap of little critters made out of scrap metal in the gardens, I especially like the chickens.

The critters from Levins Hill

We decided that we wanted to have a look at the Otway Fly Tree Top walk; it’s an incredible piece of engineering that affords a tree top view from all sides of the canopy and rainforest, it was an absolutely stunning experience.

A Yellow breasted Robin - The view from the top of the Otway Fly - A moss covered tree from the Otway Fly

From there onto the 12 Apostles at Port Campbell, this was one of the parts of the trip we were really looking forward to, and we weren’t disappointed.

The apostles really are magnificent, the sheer size, and enormity of them was extremely impressive and the violent coast line and harsh conditions made a perfect back drop for these huge pillars of stone…..Jason must of taken a least 30 shots.

The views of the 12 Apostles

From there onto the London bridge, impressive in it’s own right, it didn’t match the scale of the and sheer mass of the apostles , although we still took as many shots as time would allow…

The London Bridge

We were fighting against dusk at this point so we headed straight for our accommodation; we were treated to hours of boring straight roads and unchanging scenery, sore necks and severely aching buttocks.

We were delighted when we found that our cabin in Port Fairy was fabulous, it was large with heating and an electric blanket…bliss

We found the only food available after 8 pm in town ate it and crashed into a deep (and well deserved sleep) ready for the next stretch.

After a good nights sleep for some (the one wielding the knees) and a bad nights sleep for others (the one receiving the knees in the back all night) we set off.

Jason was distressed to find that Betty’s headlight had blown and set about trying to figure out were he could get another.

We continued further up the coast to Portland, where Jason found an Auto Pro and a really helpful Guy behind the counter who helped out with a new bulb for Betty.

We had decided to visit the seal colony out on the coast, what greeted us when we got there was a 2 and a half hour hike over several cliffs to the headland in driving rain, gusty wind and cold conditions.

Jason and I in our wet weather fashion statements were alternately being blown around the cliffs like sails or getting rained on in the most unpleasant fashion.

When we finally came across the look out we saw the rocks down below and so 30 or so seals unaware of our presence and blissfully playing in the sea and sunbaking on the rocks, it turned out to be well worth the effort to get there.

The Seals at Portland

After heading into Hamilton we refuelled; us with low quality subway, Betty with Petrol, we stacked up on supplies and headed for Halls Gap.

Shortly thereafter we came across a fork in the road both signs pointing to Halls Gap, for no particular reason Jason took us left.

This was the beginning of the most pot holed, twisty, tiny single lane goat path we we had experienced

After what SEEMED LIKE FOREVER we found Halls Gaps, though unlike most towns it didn’t have a sign post to distinguish it as such; “Halls Gaps Extreme Golf” was actually the first sign that greeted us (WTF?)

After 3 or 4 laps of the town we found our accommodation (after consulting a map) we checked in fixed ourselves basics for dinner, after the first alcoholic drink in weeks, slept the sleep of a sozzled log.

We finally got to sleep in! Bliss, although truth be known the drinks probably extended the sleep in by an hour or two…

While I lazed in bed, Jason got hold of someone’s laptop and downloaded all the photos from the camera onto his thumb drive.

Camera unencumbered we set about to explore halls gap.

Jason was looking a little like Grizzly Adams at this point, so banished to the bathroom with a razor until he shaved off the facial fungus; he came out looking cleaner and much more presentable.

We set about to see what the Grampians had to offer.

We started our adventure by heading up Mt Victoria Road, this was the “must see” area of the Grampians; this is where most of the Grampians attractions are able to be found.

After taking in the beautiful Silverband Falls we followed a narrow and wet road down to the base of the mountain which ended spitting us back onto the main road of Halls Gap

Silverback Falls

This proved to be a perfect time for lunch, as I was unwilling to head up the slippery wet bendy road, without another coffee and Jason and I could both do with some lunch.

The Grampians have some beautiful and unique shops on offer, after a quick peruse of the stores we selected some gifts for folk back home. One place in particular does the most incredible fudge, after sampling a whole mass of fudge, we decided to buy three sorts, Butterscotch, Turkish Delight, and Baileys Cowboy….absolutely delicious.

After a bite of lunch we headed to the mysterious J ward in Ararat.

J ward was a prison until 1859, and then became temporary housing for the Criminally Insane in the mid 1880s. The building was renamed J ward and housed the most depraved and dangerous men in the state.

We were given a tour and history of all the facilities of J ward, the conditions these patients lived in were truly horrific; Tiny pokey rooms with hardly any sun light, low ceilings, Beds built into the floor, no sewerage in any room (the patients were given a bucket that was emptied everyday), a prison yard with little sunlight and an incredibility creepy underground bathroom with black walls with no natural light. It’s almost impossible to think that this institution was open until 1991!

There was a whole mass of interesting displays and facts about the place, having only 2 hours honesty wasn’t enough.

There were displays of; straight jackets, an old autopsy table (quite confronting due to the stains left behind) old autopsy tools (truly archaic), A horrible looking ancient ECT machine (shock treatment), Medical Equipment that was frequently used, as well uniforms, diaries, photos and profiles on prisoners and the building itself…

J-Ward

The old prison - The underground bathroom - The newer cells

Pictures courtesy http://www.jward.ararat.net.au

Once we recovered from the incredibly creepy J ward, we hit the road again to make our way back to Halls Gap and the great mountain beyond to see such natural attractions as; The Balconies, The Pinnacle, and Mackenzie falls.

The First stop we made was at ‘The Balconies’ the lookout was simply stunning, affording us an uninterrupted view of the Grampians, the sheer mass of it was breathtaking.

The view from the Balconies, overlooking the Grampians

From the look out we headed to Mackenzie Falls, the government has just finished installing a “waterfall walk” which gives amazing views of the waterfall at all angles, from the top to the base of the falls. The experience was incredible and we sat awestruck at the base of the falls, taking it all in.

McKenzie Falls

Fighting dusk we hiked up and out of the falls, and headed to halls gap. We ate a delicious meal at the local bistro, organised things for the next day and settled into bed ready for the next (boring) stretch.

We set out early heading for Bendigo via Ararart and Maryborough, we did the long and (arse numbly) boring bit first, not stopping until we hit Maryborough.

A quick cuppa, and some very tasty baked potatoes, and we were off again.

We made very good time, but at this point Betty was in desperate need of a new front tire, we found a Yamaha dealership in town without much hassle, and while waiting for the tire to bet fitted, wandered round the city. We found an information center, based in an ancient building who where extremely obliging in helping us find our way to our accommodation.

Bendigo really is a beautiful city, gothic churches, giving way to modern buildings, where old architecture and new buildings coexist without hassle.

With the tire fitted we made tracks to our accommodation destination, “just 20km out of town” at Lake Eppolock.

There were a few problems with this situation;

1. There is no Lake; the drought had affected it badly and it had dried into a stagnant water pond almost 5 years ago.

2. the 20ks out of town amounted to over 30 Kms

3. The caravan park we were staying at was a shadow of its former self, in its death throes it was thoroughly dried out. With the lake missing so was the business, and there were no other guests besides us.

After paying for our cabin and securing a key, we set off to check out the cabin amenities and discuss what we were going to do next. After checking out the cabin, which was actually quite nice, we found that we couldn’t drink the tap water.

We walked around the site, trying to glimpse the “Lake” and decided that the situation wasn’t too bad; we’d get dinner ingredients at the on site shop and settle in for the night.

This is what Lake Eppalock has been reduced to.

The shop sold Coke, biscuits and ice-cream only, this was the straw that broke the camels back. We decided we couldn’t stay in such a depressing place, repacked our bags and rode to town for something more accommodating.

We found a fantastic room at the Best Western, right across the road from a great little Bar/Bistro, we ate well, watched a couple of movies on pay TV and climbed into bed ready for the next (boring) stretch.

After a well deserved solid nights sleep, we ended up putting off our scheduled early start and slept in until 9.

Even though it had rained lightly overnight, things didn’t look good for the rest of the day being rain free.

So after pulling on our wet weather fashion statements we rode off to the caravan park to return their key.

We decided to take the road to Heathcote that eventually links up with the Hume Highway. This road took us across the slipway that once fed Bendigo with the water from Lake Eppolock.

The sight of the dying lake broke our hearts, from what we were able to ascertain the lake used to be vast and deep and served both as a tourist attraction and supplied Bendigo with water. With the lake gone all the businesses that had relied on the lake for livelihood and income had become victim to the drought too, and most had folded.

Crossing the spill way we saw the water hadn’t even reached the dam wall, what was once was a thriving vast lake had become a stagnant pond, this was beyond depressing.

On our way from Heathcote and towards the Hume highway, we passed mile after mile of dead farmland: the trees had died and everything was black and burnt, with no or very little life on the farms we passed.

We hit the Hume highway and headed North….then the bad weather set in.

With 200kms ahead of us, things did not look promising, with Jason having to place 30 degree lean on the left just to keep Betty on a straight path. Add into the mix gusty winds, rain and wet road made it hell on wheels.

Jason needed regular stops to remain sane, and to give his arms a break, at one of these stops Jason decided to top up the oil in Betty……

About 500 metres up the road Jason released that he had neglected to replace the oil cap…..F@#k!

We then spent the next hour doing 20 in the shoulder of the Hume Highway, Looking for a small black cap…..

We thought up some alternative methods of capping the oil tank (which by now was spurting all over Jason’s pants and boots) I found a rubber stopper by the side of the road and by cutting a few grooves into it, it became a perfect make shift oil cap. And we set off….

The make-shift oil cap

About 100 meters up the road I found the original oil cap….

We battled our way to Wodonga, and set about finding our accommodation, which proved impossible. We decided to fall on the services of the Information centre in Wodonga, which is actually in Albury…..WTF? With help we found our accommodation, ordered pizza, organised gear for the next day and settled in for the night, ready for our last stretch tomorrow.

Most…boring….ride…ever…

After 9 days on the road all we wanted to do was go home, and we had a freezing day to greet us on the onset.

Grrrrr

This was followed by a sign at the Hume advising us that there was 125 kms of road works ahead, at 60 kms an hour….

Double Grrrr

This was followed by an uneventful run, with some awesome scones and not much else, we hit Canberra .