Goodbye winter.

nev

Super Térrarist
Time to say goodbye to winter, and what better way of getting accustomed to the warmer weather than a ride to Qld to acclimatize.

We have a few weeks off work, so we put a bit of planning into a trip, and by a bit I mean Jo said "lets ride up to Qld" and i said "hmm.. haven't been to Broken Hill for a while".

Friday morning we were packed and set off up the Calder heading to Wentworth for the night. At about Kyneton Jo tells me over the intercom that her bike has an engine warning on the dash. Stop the bike, turn it off and on again, the warning goes away. Keep riding. 5 minutes later "the warning light is back on and the bike is misfiring occasionally". Call the BMW dealer "Is there anything we can do to diagnose this aside from plugging it into the BMW dealer equipment?" "No." So we turn around and ride back into Southbank. We got some breakfast while the techs at Southbank BMW plugged it in and pushed some buttons. They were quite busy and no time to do anything for us today aside from basic diagnosis. "the No 2 injector is throwing the error. Hard to say what it is exactly without doing further tests".

Jo said the fault hadn't Armed with RACV Total Care, we set off again but our plans had changed. I wasn't really keen on taking a bike with a potential terminal fault out into the wilderness, so I decided that we would take a more direct route north. After about an hour riding I decided Jerilderie would be our first night's stop. Jo said the bike had misfired a few times but not in the last 150km or so. Hopefully it may have just been fuel related and we had now refuelled twice more.

Flooded bushland on the Murray River between Koonoomoo and Tocumwal

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nev

Super Térrarist
Saturday morning we hit the road into the rising sun again. The Newell around Nerrandera, Forbes, Parkes is flooded and closed but there are detours in place. I decided to stear well clear of the Newell and it's detours and our 2nd day's route took us through Urana and Lockhard towards Wagga Wagga.

Bills Trough in Urana

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I wanted to avoid Wagga and head north through Coolamon but the Murrumbidgee River was flooding here as well, so we took the Olympic Way to Temora, then into Young, Cowra, Molong and Wellington before pulling up stumps in Dunedoo (pronounced dunny-doo). The beemer did misfire a few times more in the morning. At our first refuel I bought a bottle of injector cleaner and gave both bikes a healthy dose at each of the next few refuels. From about Cowra onwards the misfires/engine faults did not reoccur for the rest of the day.

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Travellers tip. The $12 chicken schnitzel and veg at the Royal Hotel in Dunedoo can probably be shared between two people.
 

nev

Super Térrarist
Sunday we headed north, Coolah, Mullaley, Gunnedah, past Lake Keepit to Manilla, north along the Fossickers Way to Bingara, then east to our lunch stop in Inverell and then to Texas, right on the QLD border for the night.


Impressive roundabout clock in Barraba

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A couple in a 1920 Dodge Brothers for neighbours.

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nev

Super Térrarist
Monday morning we finally get out of the plains and find some hills, tracking east along the border range to Stanthorpe, then hitting the Mt Lindesay Rd at Amosfield and following it to Legume. Aside from a few sections still unsealed (looks like they are sealing the last few sections of the signposted "unsealed for 15km") the rest of this road was freshly sealed, lovely corners, flat and smooth and untouched by many vehicles.

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Spring Creek Road from Killarney to Carney's Creek was the real gem of the whole trip. A tight narrow road winding through hills and valleys, signposted "no caravans or trucks". It contained a couple of very steep sections some of which were just single lane, and in the valleys the greenery and views from this meandering road were spectacular.

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