It was a bit last minute, deciding to hit the road for a couple of weeks after the excesses of Christmas. Start the new year with a flying lap of Victoria and South Australia on the old GS BMW, the one we nicknamed ‘The Appliance’.
Pretty self-explanatory, that. Everything in my shed is old like me and in constant need of a bit of a tickle for distance work – all except that bloody GS, of course. Bought as a quick fix for a Tassie trip a few years ago, the GS was 18 years old, had lots of rust, very few kilometres and was cheaper than a holiday in jail. Yes, uglier than a distorted duckling and all the character of a battery powered water pistol – but totally reliable and, most importantly, very comfortable for the pillion.
Secondhand GS BMs are the best value for money in the two-wheeled world. You can buy an excellent one for the price of parts to rebuild a Harley and the bloody things will do a quarter of a million kilometres with nothing more than Penrite and Pirellis. And while my 2006 model is the most technologically advanced bike I’ve ever owned, BMW owners are like iPhone customers: the old one might work perfectly well but it hasn’t got the Jedi laser speedo or whatever of the new model…
Kaz and I loaded up and ripped down the Numinbah Valley. Then we turned inland and rode down through Gloucester and the Buckets Way. Now, Nicko and I had ridden through Dungog and the back country here only a few months previously – but the green fields, full dams and glowing paddocks had been belted dry by hot days and the lack of rain. Eyeballs water, lips blister, water tastes better than beer. Almost. We skipped the M1 by taking the Putty Road and skirting Sydney.
That morning we’d heard of a heatwave coming through but it was crisply cold riding south. Karen still had her jacket liner in until we stopped for lunch at the pub in Bega. Yet half an hour out of Eden we felt the heat carried on a harsh wind.
We spent the afternoon in an air-conditioned room, snoozing, reading, anything but facing reality. It was 40 something outside and there wasn’t any need to push hard. The TV news was all about the weather and the prospect of bushfires but a walk to the Chinese at dusk was a world away from that.
We planned an early start to make the most of the cool. It was only 650km or so to Melbourne but I phoned around and got the last room in Bairnsdale.
By noon it was blistering as we unloaded the bike and settled in for another afternoon of not a lot. Afternoon TV was all about the heatwave and how the wind was stirring up bushfires across Victoria.
As an outback kid I’ve survived plenty of hot days. It’s about slowing down, going into ‘lizard mode’, no more effort than required. By 7pm it’d cooled enough for us to walk to town but the talk in the pub was about another day of heatwave.
I got in touch with our Airbnb in Melbourne and got an early entry but next morning the liner’s back in Kaz’s jacket. The sky had an ominous look but for the so-called ‘hottest day yet’ it was cool enough at the last servo before Melbourne for us to take time out for breakfast.
That’s when it hit. Twenty minutes later we’ve come out of the air-conditioning to find the temperatures doubled and there’s wind gusts pushing us around. By the time we’re in city freeway traffic it’s like riding into an oven in the middle of a storm. There’s rubbish being whipped around by the wind and gusts pushing us around like someone’s trying to land a bag of spuds on the rack. My iPhone, in its mount on the ‘bars, blanks out in the heat.
We make it to our digs in time to collapse. It’s only midday but battling the heat and getting lost in suburban Melbourne was like tacking another 1000km onto the day.
There’s smoke in the air this morning but the world’s cooled down. Half of Victoria’s smouldering but South Australia beckons. What an incredible country we live in. And that bloody GS? Hasn’t used any oil, has run perfectly every day and shrugged off Australia’s excesses like the true appliance it is.
Thank heavens for that!
