The word going around at the December social sip was that Porepunkah was just too hot. Too hot! Stone crows, don’t people understand that this is Victoria. And yes, that was Snows falling on Mount Hotham, just up the road from the Porepunkah camp ground. Come Boxing Day, I had the year ready to roll, and after a quick oil change the T.T. (that stands for "TERRIFIC TOURER") 350 was straining at the leash. If only that confounded rain would stop. I’ll wait a little longer; the storms will blow themselves out soon.

By lunchtime not only was the cricket well and truly off for the rest of the day, but I had resigned to donning the waterproofs and setting sail on the good ship Yamaha. There probably has been heavier rain, but I’m darned if I can remember when. It was coming down the inside of my visor; it was all over my glasses. Cars had pulled over to the side of the road. Oncoming vehicles had been reduced to grey blobs. Just hope like hell that nobody shunts me from behind.

The precipitation reduced marginally on the Melba Highway. Going up the Great Divide…Whoa!… suddenly the car in front diverged to the shoulder of the road and slammed on the brakes. The driver’s door shot open and a liquid vomit jettisoned horizontally through the air for two meters. Nice one, mate. Obviously a post-Christmas liquid lunch that hadn’t settled too well.

Rain all the way to Yea……Ah, at last, a little dry road after Yarck. Ooh, look at all the trees bending over in the wind. At Mansfield, I paid the petrol bill with a few coins from petty cash. Wow, some tailwind. I’d been getting over thirty kilometers to the litre. By now the gloves were sodden inside the wet-weather mittens and there was a decidedly damp feeling around the bum.

Still the rain came down as the T.T. and I pressed on to Whitfield. For years I had always turned right out of Whitfields and covered the 32 kilometers of dusty and rough gravel road to Dandongadale. Not now. If you turn left and cross the river at the camping ground a series of farm access roads take you through the forestry and towards Carboon. Here even the gravel ceases and a tiny dirt track continues through the tall timber to eventually exit and rejoin the bitumen at Lake Buffalo. Magic.

The moment my front tyre touched the dirt track, the mother of all hail storms let loose. "Oh my Gawd" I panicked." This hail will dent my tank! How stupid can you get; the little T.T. is plastic from stem to stern. Snick it down a gear, wind it up and slip slide down the red earth track. Thank goodness I was running street-legal knobbies. Myrtleford and I’m almost there. Phew, it’s quite a trip with all the camping gear on board.

Can’t say I was expecting hoards of Touring Club members at the Mt.Buffalo Caravan Park on Saturday evening. Our usual spot was deserted, but there was Robbie Langer’s van parked up on the embankment with the venerable Dominator propped beside. Rob had arrived the day before and had become bogged after following directions from the proprietor on where to camp. Lucky they had a tractor to tow him out.

The next day, Sunday, dawned cold and miserable. Snow had fallen overnight at Hotham and Falls Creek. Normally we’d have been off like a shot for a trail ride. But no thank you, not today. The best we could do was to drive into Bright and shiver with all the other tourists. The bakery was doing a great trade in coffee and buns. We bought a few bike magazines and a newspaper and wandered off to the local pub. Didn’t drink anything stronger than a lemon squash, it was the warmth we were after.

Later in the day we drove back to the Buffalo camp ground to find, yep, you guessed it, still nobody from the Touring Club. Just as we given up hope of anyone arriving that day, Rob noticed a trailer with a 750cc Kwacka on board and a spare set of wheels. "What dick-head would be driving around with a road bike and a set of extra wheels", we wondered. Well, you know the answer to that don’t you. And so did we when Ben ambled around the corner of the maintenance shed. So we quickly set to and gave him a hand to unload the green meanie from its moorings, all the while giving loads of lip about his engineering of brackets and supports.

From here on I sort of lost track of who arrived when…but there was Julie and her three (count them) children, Kathy in the car and Derek on the Honda 600, Kerrie in the Mazda and Ian on the Suzuki 900 and at close of play on the Monday, Dave and Bronwyn in the van with the 750 Duke and a very new RGV on board.

Thank goodness, cold, miserable Sunday was soon over and sunny Monday had dawned.

Last year, John Willis and a few of us had put in quite a bit of time finding a trail leading from just down the road at Porepunkah right through to Harrietville. Fortunately my Alzheimer’s disease hadn’t erased the details and Robbie and I were soon at 4,000 feet on top of Snake Ridge. Just as we killed the motors for a look around, four enduro bikes roared up the steep incline, front wheels pawing the air. One KTM 400cc four-stroke, two KTM 300cc two-strokes and a Yamaha WR 400cc four-stroke. Very classy equipment indeed. After a quick chat, they invited us to join them but we declined on the grounds that we’d look like a couple of dorks. Anyway, Robbie and I just want you to know, for the record, that we beat them into Harrietville. Yeah, one of the KTM’s pulled a flat tyre. Tough!

Snake Ridge leads into Demon Ridge and on the way back we took Mongrel Creek track down through the valley into Wandiligong. Great names. It’s worth doing the ride for the sign posts alone. This whole run is a stunner, very high altitude but not too difficult. Just the perfect recipe for holidays. On the way back to Bright we saw a gaggle of para-gliders soaring and hovering high above Huggins lookout from where they launch. Now, there is an interesting looking hobby!

Back at the campsite everyone had now settled into the holiday mood. The boy and girl racers had done their evening race track warm-up lap up Mt.Buffalo and back. Of course, this happens only after the National Park entry fee office has packed up and gone home. Robbie was feeling so relaxed he thought he’d go down to Porepunkah and back on his pushie. Guess what? He got lumbered by the local copper for not having a helmet. No fine apparently, just a stern letter to come from the appropriate government department.

Tuesday morning dawned another perfect day as I packed up my campsite to hit the road. Which road? The Dog’s Grave Road of course!

I’d forgotten how steeply and how long the Alpine Road climbs up to Hotham. Talk about fresh at the top. Phaaaw…. Finding where High Plains tracks come out onto major roads can be difficult at the best of times, but it didn’t take me too long to pick-up on the Dinner Plain track. This skirts around the back of the Dinner Plain Village and two stony wheel ruts disappeared into the distance among the snowgums. A beautiful little track that is quite easy to ride and winds it’s way through the alpine tableland and eventually down to the Birregun road. This is where a memorial tombstone is placed to mark the burial site of ‘Boney’. Peter Meighan, a stockman, buried his faithful dog here in 1863 when it took a dingo bait and died.

I thought the road back to Dargo would be easy going, but from Mt. Birregun down to the Dargo River you lose altitude like a fighter pilot whose just run out of petrol. Wow! So, as I rolled into Dargo and the usual hubub of 4WD turkeys, my official Christmas Club Camp and subsequent ride came to a close.