Riding the ridges, touristing the tarmac – 15.08.2020
Some parts of this Covid nonsense are beneficial like the change of Exhibition Wednesday holiday to Friday long weekend. It meant that I got to travel through some wonderful fog on a Friday morning, leaving Brisbane to stop in just north of Dayboro then up through Maleny Stanley River Road, on to the Postman’s Track to Aherns Road then on to Kenilworth. Riding this stretch is pretty cool however driving it brings a whole other level. The roads are, in part, narrow.
At Kenilworth, there was a brief stop then mosey through town and left turn on to a road to Brooloo and further north. What a fabulous road and amazing scenery. Staying off the highway was worthwhile on so many levels. The only thing missing was being on the back of the bike, taking photos and writing notes as the creative juices might be starting to flow again.
The run through on Tourist Drive 22 was something else this time. The Postman’s Track is better undertaken on a bike – much more fun. The roads are adequate and the challenge of the drive is worthwhile – especially if you are taking in the scenery, sharing the narrow gauge road and filling your tank from what is around you.
Tourist drive 22 goes through to Gympie. When I work out the extent of the drives, if I can ever find a comprehensive list with directions, I will work out where else on the drive I need to go to fill in some blanks. There was also drive 24 in and amongst it and some other routes as well.
Gympie through to Hervey Bay was highway. I know time does not stand still but the changes around the place are never ending. From Hervey Bay we skirted around through to the back of Torbanlea and almost up to Howard before hitting the highway again up to just south of Childers then running through to Bundaberg on the Goodwood Road.
The weekend was about time with good people and good friends. It was about marking occasions and enjoying life. It was about pestering a little white pooch and enjoying good meals. It was also about a pair of socks – quite cheeky – which sum up where I have been in recent times with the volume of trials that have occurred and are nearly finished in the last 6 weeks. I have also decided that Wednesdays should be taken out of the calendar as they seem to be physically a little disastrous for me – slipping on my office floor and scoring a gorgeous intense bruise on my left knee and a similarly special bruise on my right bicep then this week, misjudging the location of the car door and making an impression on my right thumb. Had to be the right hand, being right hand dominant…Sunday was about the scenic drive home.
The route back was Bundaberg down Goodwood Road, on to the highway then off again at Howard, down to Hervey Bay then Maryborough and through the pine plantations of Tan Forest towards but not into Wallu then on to Tin Can Bay Road, through some more amazing scenery and lots of new driving, across the highway south of Gympie and down through the tourist route I had travelled north on. I do want to backtrack through some of this area and finish off the Tourist Route through Imbil and Lake Borumba or somewhere near there.
What I can say about trying to find the tourist routes is that the resources appear to “suck”. There does not appear to be a readily available comprehensive list of Tourist Routes so I can check what route I have done and what remains to be done of that route. Anyways….I know that I travelled Route 22 (Maleny/Kenilworth) today. I then detoured through some pretty amazing ridges on Reesville Road then on to Burnett Lane and on to Maleny Stanley River Road which I had detoured from earlier. Whilst Google Maps is good, it really does come up with some quirky stuff and trying to find it again later is nigh on impossible. Today’s run along the ranges might become a ride in the next few months.
Anyways, the drive came down through Woodford, D’Aguilar, Mount Mee Road in to Samford and through Ferny Grove back in to Brisbane. There was a traffic jam at Woodford but it was moving and civilised, unlike the highway.
We have truly amazing scenery so close to Brisbane. I spent a lot of time driving the ranges and trying to tourist the tarmac – which I will need to do some more searching to find the details of. The run out on Friday morning was a great soul stirrer. Throughout the drive, there has been some eclectic music which made the solo (for the most part) drive that much more soul revitalizing. The ranges and the tree canopies, the low-slung sun, the happy nourished cows, the sometimes green meadows, and the lack of substantial traffic made this drive so much more. There was roadkill – roos/wallabies and foxes, there were flights of sulphur crested cockatoos and there were the ridges, the challenge of the drive and the plateau when you descend from the ridges. The panorama of the varying levels of the range and then the isolation of the Glasshouse Mountain is an amazing contrast.
Today was 489km over nearly 7 hours, averaging 75kph. Friday was 466 kilometres in nearly 7 hours averaging 67kph.
There are not so many photos this time as I was driving whilst my husband was enjoying a solo ride in a quite different part of the state, also refilling his soul. These roads are made for motorbiking. They are made for challenge, they are not made for speed.
