A crowd puller, isn’t it??
The F4 Agusta…and the Hog Chrome-Boy…the blinged-to-gills R1, the Touratech 1200GS or lovely restored, glistening Ariel Square4,…..even the weird #051.
They all are…. UNTIL......
....a pair of touring-rigged posties shows up !!
It wasn’t intended that way, never thought about it…actually, it was thought just as a big laugh, but clocking about 2000km around the Snowies and Vic Alps has shown it loud and clear: EVERYONE LOVES the Postie !!
Not a photo-stop along the road when EVERY passing vehicle wanted to stop to check us out, oldies and kids, any ilk and colour…commenting, shouting, waving, GRINNING….even the local rice-boys stuck their fists out of the souped-up Datsun 120Y and gave the thumbs up….now…that would have to be the ultimate tick of approval, ay?? Fully sick, moite !!
Days later people walk up just to say hello….and stumped to see us again, this time at the top of Hotham…or the Mt.Selwyn Skifields…or joining a main road after some hours of bush tracks.
Let’s do the quick-intro then: There’s the ‘Tanker”, the CT110 RR Adventure (because of its "race-dual-headlight" mask and the XR250 auxiliary-tank holding a whopping 9.7 litres of extra juice)….and the tiny electronic pushbike-Speedo!
Invaluable piece of equipment that….as it showed the time as well.
And there’s “the other one”, the bog standard CT110 Plain Jane. Leaking oil like a piece of rusted guttering….as it turned out. Not much, but constant.
Both with a butchered Ventura rack and a piece of exquisitely shaped 8mm Marine Plywood as a “stable-table”….
Michelangelo would’ve been proud of it.
Both in good mechanical shape, fresh brake shoes, oiled brake-cables, serviced freshly, a combo of whatever tyre Aussie Post could lay their hands on cheaply enough, all classy East-Asian Dubiellis or Schonkyunlops…,decidedly no Schmickelins here !!! 8)
The Longrange-tank is still back-flooding the OEM tank and making it overflow if the tap isn’t turned off in time, drenching the bike from the seat downwards…didn’t get around to more complex engineering on that one yet.
Kills the friggin ants, anyway…
All loaded onto the trailer which sprouts rusted out bottom seams along the sides and a single-hinged tailgate (the other one rusted out and fell off ages ago), but the squeaky springs can’t be heard when caging along above 80kmh with the windows down….at least the wheel bearings are freshly packed with grease and the electrics work…. most of the time.
With the bushfires lately and all that, we decided for the “Long Way Around”, and trailer it on the Hume past Albury and well into NSW for the turnoff to Tumut, then up the Snowy Mountain Hwy
past Blowering Dam (what a sorry sight) onto the High Plains to Adaminaby….as ‘base-camp” for some two-day loops.
The hailstorm 30km short of Kiandra came out of the black….black skies, that is.
The Alpine Caravan Park proved to be as vacant as we found most of the Snowies for that week…hey, this is prime holiday season, and there isn’t a soul around ?
Strange !!
Next morning… and the skies were as a chequered as on the previous afternoon…
Packed up with some tools and bare-minimum camping gear, we set off across the High Plains, the gravel roads towards Tharwa/ Canberra.
Finally...up and going...
:jump: :jump:
Adaminaby Backcountry...
The Murrumbidgee Bridge
Heading North-East into the Namadgi National Park
One more rail, and....
Still heading north-east