Sofala

Chapter 3: Sofala, so good
December 31

Travelling with a pillion is very different from travelling alone. There are compromises to be made on speed and distance travelled, on whether or not to ride at night, on how long and when to stop.

Juliette didn't mind at all riding at night - for which I was glad. When the moon is full and the air is soft and warm, when miles slip by and darkness envelopes the tiny helmeted worlds, when the strong beam of the headlight shows the way... this is wonderful.

Fuel consumption over the entire trip averaged 5.6 litres per 100 kms, but this often went up to 6 or a little more when I sat on 120. Its oil usage was less predictable. Sometimes she'd use half a litre in just 200 kms, and at other times she'd do 800 kms without needing a top-up. Once in the searing heat of the return journey, when the air temperature reached almost 50 degrees, she used a full litre of oil in just 200 kms, after which I reduced my speed that day considerably.

The bike's comparatively low fuel range meant having to stop every two hours, which is not a bad thing, but sometimes in outback Australia the fuel stops don't come regularly, and there were times when we'd have to refuel after just 150 kms because the next available petrol would have been 100 kms further on, too far for the V50. There are many stretches where I wouldn't have been able to tour at night even if I'd wanted to, because most outback petrol stations close in the evening and don't open again until morning. Through some parts of inland Australia one needs a special reason to ride at night in any case; kangaroos abound. In fact, they often suddenly abound right out of the bush and onto the road. There are some stretches, including 200 kilometres each side of Wilcannia, on which night riding is almost suicidal.

The V50II is an extremely comfortable tourer, even two-up (particularly when the pillion is Juliette-sized). The highish bars suit an uprightish position, but it's possible to lean forward, rest my chest on the tankbag, snap on the cruise control, and grip the bars close to the instrument binnacle. This means I could change position, even for a few kilometres, and that always helps ease any potential soreness. The V50 has no fairing, of course, but wind pressure isn't a problem at legal speeds. And on the entire trip we had just one drop of rain, which fell from an extremely errant, lone dark cloud, which had somehow got lost in the blueness of the sky.

THe blue sky of Australia changes its intensity from horizon to zenith. Wheatfields near Grenfell.

The blue sky of Australia changes its density and intensity from horizon to zenith. Directly above it's deeper, gloriously blue. The blue of the sky above is my favourite of all colours. Towards the horizon the blue is paler, whiter. The graduation is so, well - gradual, that it's wonderful to look at. Seldom did we have any clouds other than high cirrus or strato-cumulous on the trip. And except for the last two hellishly hot days of the return journey, the temperature was just always on the right side of perfect.

We toured with a T-shirt underneath a long-sleeved cotton overshirt, and then a leather jacket and woollen or cotton scarf. We each wore jeans and leather overpants. I wear 10 year-old Johnny Reb bike boots; Juliette wore her Doc Martens. Only twice did we don the thermal oversuits - and that was to be today.

Bathurst

Our campsite this night had been not far out of Bathurst, beside a creek called the Winburndale Rivulet on a very minor road leading, eventually, through the mountain villages of Wattle Flat (yes, Wattle Flat's a mountain village!), Sofala, Ilford, Kandos, and Rylstone, and then between the Goulburn River National Park and the Wollemi National Park to Muswellbrook. In the Wollemi National Park is Mt Coricudgy, 1257 metres high, and these ranges are part of the complex mountain chain which stretches almost from Cape York, the northernmost tip of Australia, to Wilsons Promontory in Victoria, the most southerly point of the Australian mainland.

This mountain chain, the Great Dividing Range, is never far from the eastern coast, and while it runs north-south for 4000 kilometres it is not a single range; more than two dozen other steep (but seldom lengthy) ranges branch off, their backs running east-west. The Wollemi Range, through which we were now to pass, is one of those.

In this national park at least four rivers start - the Capertee (which becomes the Colo) and the Hunter Rivers, both of which slice through gorges and flow into the nearby Pacific Ocean. Only three kilometres separates the source of the Capertee River from the headwaters of the Cudgegong River, which keeps heading west, changes its name to the Macquarie River, and then flows north and west in a great semi-circle to Dubbo, Warren, joins the Barwon, flows into the Darling, and half a continent later joins the Murray River at Wentworth. So those three kilometres between the Capertee and the Cudgegong mean a difference of 3800 kilometres before a raindrop reaches the sea - and into which ocean it returns. In the end, it could be decided by which side of a grain of sand the waterdrop fell.

We packed up the dewy tent, I bathed in the cool water of the campside creek, and then we rode through the morning cool to Wattle Flat. This was just a few kilometres up the road, but we stopped here and had a thermos coffee before riding on through Sofala, on the banks of the Turon River, where an enormous goldfield was discovered in 1851. A man named Crosswell made the richest claim. He was sheltering from a severe storm in a cave when he saw gold protruding from the ground at the cave entrance. He picked up a nugget. It weighed 120 ounces.

The rush was on.

Sofala's gold is gone now, but snug between two steep hills, Sofala remains as alluring as ever.

Sofala took its name from the Mozambique district in south-west Africa, identified by some as the Biblical land of Ophir from which King Solomon is said to have amassed his golden wealth. Sofala's gold is gone now, but its beautiful setting, snug between two steep hills, remains as alluring as ever.

And then it was on to Ilford, another small village of 20 houses, a service station/store, and a pub. It was getting cooler now that we were gaining altitude, and we had a warming coffee and a snack, topped up with fuel and sachets of sugar, and I put on an extra outer jacket, and Juliette climbed into her waxed cotton jacket and red overpants. The misty hills on each side were almost close enough to touch. Through Kandos with its huge cement factory, and we rode beneath the aerial bucketway which takes raw materials to the plant. A little further on was Rylstone, which still has surviving pioneer slab-built cottages, colonial sandstone public buildings, and a railway station which Henry Lawson, by now older than he was at Grenfell, helped to build.

Now the bitumen stopped. Ranges surrounded us, clothed in greenery, carved by rushing rivers, the V50 in third and sometimes second gear, a lazy 40 km/hr. Down Murrumbo Gap, through Cox's Gap, the Goulburn River, still a creek here, following our course to our left. Songbirds sang their welcome, I answered with the burble of my twin Staintune mufflers. Heaven had arrived, and I still breathed in life.

Juliette, surrounded by Hunter Valley vineyards, rings her sister in Brisbane.

Juliette and I stopped as we emerged from the mountains. We were now in vineyard country - the wines of the Upper Hunter are world-famous - and too soon we were on the Golden Highway into Sandy Hollow and then into Muswellbrook with its shops, coal mines, and civilisation. We wolfed down a Chinese meal and headed out again as soon as we could - just two kilometres along the New England Highway, and we turned off at Aberdeen on the narrow, steep, dusty, but breathtakingly spectacular track which soars over the Great Dividing Range at Barrington Tops. We crossed the Hunter River twice here as we skirted Lake Glenbawn, and then through Gundy and Moonan Flats...and then the road pointed to the sky. Below us, the plains stretched in green and yellow, and mountains stacked themselves on top of and beyond each other. This was the Barrington Tops Road, recommended for four wheel drive traffic only. So many times I wanted to stop and take a photograph - so many times a four-wheel drive came hurtling towards us that I felt it better to concentrate on the hooligans rather than the view. From now until Gloucester, on the eastern side of the range, all the cars we met were four-wheel drives, all were driven far too fast for the conditions, and all threw up thick clouds of fine dust.

The upper Hunter River near Muswellbrook.

That is, until we crested the Barrington Tops, 1500 metres high, when the forest and the fog closed in. Visibility was cut to a few tens of metres, yet the beauty was undiminished. In fact, while it was now muddy and slippery, rather than dusty and slippery, it is a great way over the range!

We were relieved, nevertheless, to drop down the Bowman Range, pass through the Copeland Tops State Forest, and eventually to hit the bitumen again, and rolled into Gloucester as late afternoon became sunset. It was just after 6 o'clock, and the petrol stations were closed. It was also New Year's Eve, and time to start thinking about midnight.


Main Index  Stories Index  Home  Previous  Next