Fabulous Towong

Once again the wild calls from the Snowy Mountains National Park were heard all the way down in Melbourne. Yes, maybe these calls are a bit softer after the hottest bush fires in decades swept through the area a couple of years ago. But there is an upside for those with the need to burn both rubber and adrenalin. With no wildlife on the roads and very little regrowth on the trees, you can see through the corners. The pleasure of twisting the throttle that bit harder was priceless.

After the usual early morning meet at Yarck, nine of us headed up the highway to Mansfield, across the fun bit to Whitfield, then across the sedate section to Myrtleford. The next section is a special combination of twisty and open bits that comes with a guarantee to get the heart racing. This section lasts ALL the way to Mitta Mitta.

Mitta Mitta has fuel, excellent salad sandwiches and a swimming spot for those overheated by the ride in. It is also the gateway to Dartmouth Dam, another section of road where you can practise leaving black marks through and out of corners.

Leaving Dartmouth Dam we back-tracked up the Omeo Highway to the Murray Valley Highway, slipped across Granya Gap and followed the Murray River to Walwa and then onto the resort (home base), via a lot of special bits.

Over the next two days, at approximately 9 am each day, we would mount-up and head for the hills! And what hills they are. Needless to say, we left no corner unridden, even going as far as Charlottes Pass to view Mount Kosciuszko itself.

At one stage we found ourselves in Tumut for lunch, very bloody hot. To the amusement of the locals, one of our members was running around in his long johns! We know who you are, don’t we Danny. The real reason we are in Tumut is about to become apparent, the Wee Jasper Road. For all of you that haven’t heard of this road, you MUST put it on your ‘list of things to do before you die’. It is a road in the middle of nowhere that leads nowhere. Brilliant. A place where there is little chance of being caught up in revenue raising exercises. Magic. Some of our members were seen laughing and performing little jigs at the end of this road. (Yes, I was one of them.)

Unfortunately, Saturday arrives far too quickly and we left our base camp for the last time. The plan was to retrace Wednesday’s route, which worked fine till we got back to Myrtleford after going down to Mitta Mitta. It started raining and basically kept showering all the way back to Melbourne. All up approximately 2,200 km’s travelled and no incidents; not a bad few day’s work!

Paul Southwell (Honda CBR954)