How I rode to the Mt Buffalo Christmas Camp and survived. Just.

It’s not easy you know. Place the variable clothing out on the bed and think about what’s IN and what’s OUT. For Christmas weather in Victoria, one may as well toss a coin. You’d have as much chance of being right.

The winter sleeping bag was definitely IN. I had made an error of judgment twice already with the summer model. The singlet, skivvy and polar fleece were IN. That should cover scorching hot to quite cold. The difficult decision was with the thermal underwear. The Top always goes IN, but surely I wouldn’t need the Bottoms? Fortunately, I stuck with sound reasoning and the Bottoms went IN.

The full wet weathers are always IN regardless of climate. Little did I know that a day later I would be riding through a massive snow dump up on King Billy Ridge and another snow dump on Howitt Plains. How can this be, on December 28? Simple. This is Victoria.

Let me go back to the beginning. My travel routes to the Christmas Camp have always been varied, but with a fuel range of 550 km I figured this year the sky was the limit. With three quarters of a tank taken on board at Jamieson, I was set to enter the scrub and exit two days later at Myrtleford. With the exception of the Sunday Road Track out of Wren’s Flat, I had done all the anticipated tracks before, but it was many years ago. The forestry boys are constantly changing the shape of many of these tracks. Complacent riders beware.

The big risk was the weather. The prediction for Melbourne was very cold with some rain bearing clouds making their way over the Great Dividing Range. Bugger bum; it sounded like trouble to me.

By Wren’s Flat I had been in and out of numerous freezing, cold showers. The scrub just got wetter and wetter, but I was predicting a change in the weather as I went further east. This kind of thinking encourages a modicum of stupidity. Bring your waterproofs, but don’t put them on ‘till after you get wet. When will I learn.

By evening on the first day, I had made it to the Jamieson River. No break in the drizzle/showers so I pulled out the tent and pitched camp. Nasty, and I now had a feeling tomorrow wouldn’t be any better.

Morning on the second day I found Brocks Road and was headed for the High Country. Up, up, winding ever upward, the track was stony and wet but my compromise tyres were handling any mud quite well. I was now not far from Lovick’s Hut where a good deal of the cinematography was done for the film “The Man from Snowy River”. This is very special landscape and I count it a privilege to be able to ride through it.

Who knows where my mind was rambling when I rounded a bend and was staring at a lightly snow-covered landscape. Snow! I couldn’t believe it. This was December 28, and it didn’t feel particularly cold, nor was I yet up all that high. As I pressed on, the white increased. Thousands of hectares of rugged Australian bush all under snow. I read somewhere that Australia has more snow each year than Switzerland, it’s just that you never get to see most of it because it’s in the bush. At this point I have to confess that I became a little emotionally unstable. I grew up in Queensland.

As I crested King Billy Ridge, the snow was now completely covering the track, but the tyres were still cutting through to the dirt underneath. I was apprehensive … and then it started to snow. Deathly quiet, no wind at all and snow flakes cascading down all around me. In all my adventures on the motorbike, this was the most amazing.

Quickly I looked way across the valley to Howitt Plains. This was a more sinister view. Heavy mist had closed in up there. “Don’t be foolish, Leslie …you could die up here.” … so I turned the bike around.

Having gone no more than 50 metres, I stopped and turned off the motor, just to see the snow falling. As I sat there in the total quiet, the sun burst through the canopy of mist. Bugger it! This is a sign to go on. I turned the Suzuki around again and headed down, way down into the valley.

Riding up to Howitt was a repeat performance. No snow, a little snow and then a white out. Howitt Plains are more exposed and soon my visor was icing up. A southerly wind was driving the whole freakish weather pattern.

“Bugger this”, I thought as I passed the sign to Zeka Spur Track, “I’ve got to be better off riding into Wanangatta Valley. It’s a rain shadow area down there.”

Zeka track is not the hardest track in the world, but imagine yourself in full water-proofs, mittens, loaded with camping gear and riding in the rain. The 4WDs have done a pretty good job of creating some monster whoops in the last few years. I was almost to the bottom, when I rode out of the wet and mud into a valley of sunshine and rock-hard, bone-dry track. In a mood of self-congratulation I crested one of the final erosion banks and in a nano-second I had trowelled the Suzuki and was face down on my elbows and knees in the gravel. Don’t you just hate it when the front tyre lets go. There is no time to put up even a token fight.

I lay on the ground moaning in agony, the gravel was rattling around inside my visor, my left leg had copped the full impact and was twisted up behind my back somewhere. Shit, and double shit. I’m gonna die down here in Wanangatta.

As luck would have it, I didn’t die, nor was my leg broken. When I had finished whining and limping around I inspected the disaster to find that neither the Suzuki nor I were in irreparable condition - which was good, because Wanangatta is about as far as you can get from civilization in eastern Victoria.

I rode on, crossed through the axle high water of the Wanangatta River, rounded a thousand dirt road bends and finally arrived in Myrtleford, 260 kilometres after leaving Jamieson.

Not having eaten since breakfast on the day before, I proceeded to make my second error of judgment.

Parking the bike, I whipped in to the local supermarket, bought some yoghurt and bananas and fed the inner self. Back at the bike I reached into the bum-bag to find … no key. Try the other pocket. Try all other pockets… take off the back-pack, try every pocket. Double shit again. Quickly re-trace exact route through supermarket. No key. The steering is locked, I can’t even push the bike down the street to the camping ground.

Does he on high not realise that I have ridden through two snow storms, jumped face first into a rock hard roadway at 50 km/h, and now to be struck down by … NO BLOODY KEY.

When reason finally prevailed, I realised that I had remembered the name of the Club caravan park just 25 kilometres away, I did have a phone card, and there were an assortment of vans and trailers at hand and a friendly caravan park proprietor who was prepared to help.

The combination of Ben, Ken Wright and his Land Rover Discovery, Danny, trailer with tie-downs, soon had me at my usual camping spot with friends from the MSTCV all round. I was a very fortunate little fellow indeed.

Next year? Next year I might just dawdle up the Hume Highway and turn tight at the Ovens Valley Highway.

Les Leahy (Suzuki DRX400)