The aim of today was to make some distance towards the Snowy
Mountains and Wagga Wagga was the destination.
The day started off quite cool – 13C. The locals were
complaining about the temperature plummeting and being frozen!
Found a petrol station in town and filled up to make it to
Mildura. The road and scenery between Broken Hill and Wentworth was
unremarkable other than it was good enough to make some decent progress. About
half way between the two the landscape changed from red earth and bush to
something greener. This was being appreciated by the increasing numbers of
goats grazing along the roadside – flocks of them! Saw my first emus on the
trip too.
Although it’s in New South Wales, Broken Hill runs on Central Time,
half an hour behind Eastern Time. 40km out of town there’s a sign marking the
change in time zone and the GPS detects it right on the spot.
When the last bar of my fuel gauge started flashing and
indicating 50km range remaining I had a WTF moment: the GPS said the next fuel
was in Wentworth – 60km away! That would have made only 270km out of a tank.
When I filled up this morning they were all out of 95 (and diesel) and I couldn’t
be bothered to find another servo so I filled up with 91 Octane. Between that
and making handy progress it had decimated my fuel consumption. Wind off the
throttle, tuck everything in behind the fairing and hope the two numbers trend
across each other. After 10km they do and I make it to Wentworth very relieved:
you don’t want to run out of fuel out here – better fuel management required!
 |
| Darling River |
Wentworth marks the start of ’civilisation’ again: the next
town with fuel is only 10km away, and the next is the same. Wentworth sits on
the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers and the land surrounding the town is cultivated with fruit
farms and table grape vineyards. Heading towards Hay this tends to pastureland.
Long straight stretches of road with some sweeping bends
lead towards Hay. My GPS crashed a couple of times and as I was fiddling with
it to get it back to life a car snuck up and passed me, not going much faster
than me but enough. Within 10km I could still see him ahead of me when I saw
red flashing lights emerge from a rest stop and pull him over. The cop had his
ticket machine out when I passed them: thanks for passing me mate!
Stopped for lunch at the Riverina Hotel in Hay – excellent $13
lunch specials. Got chatting to an old boy who owned the Can-Am parked outside.
He’d toured all over Oz on an FJR then again on the Can-Am – gave me some good
tips on routes & destinations. Had to ask him the attraction of the three
wheeler: he explained that he just got too old to pick up the FJR if he dropped
it so went for something he couldn’t drop. Fair enough I think.
Good distance touring road out of Hay (although the speed
limit is 100kph for most of it – what’s with that?) and made it to Wagga Wagga
feeling good so I decided to push on to Tumut – it was less than 100km away. I
know I’d be just about there when it would be getting dark but it would be
better to start from there tomorrow.
Half way between Wagga Wagga and Tumut I leave the highway
and hit the winding, undulating road
through the hills. The light was fading quite quickly and I want to make it as
close to Tumut as I can before having to stop for fuel. The GPS shows next
petrol is at Abelong 20km from Tumut, gauge shows I can make that with 20km to
spare. I get to Abelong and find out that petrol station closed years ago and the
local tells me the nearest is fuel is in Tumut! It’s dark and I’m running on
fumes to get to Tumut. The Shell station was a welcome sight and I put 21L of
fuel into a 21L tank. I’d got 372km out of the tank on the run into Tumut
compared to 270km on the road out of Broken Hill.
Found a very pleasant motel a short stumble from the centre
of town, which for a Saturday night is very quiet. 11.5 hours of riding today –
a solid effort my daughter might say. I’m tired and one beer has me buzzing so
naturally, I have a few more.
Time to plan a day riding through the mountains ....
No comments:
Post a Comment