The 2005 Geehi Rally
The ride to the
2005 Kosciuszko Rally at Geehi had been atmospheric
to say the least.
Sheryle and I left at 7am
to ride via Thredbo and Dead Horse Gap, but
as we crested the rise that Scottish Mist came
in, making the road slick and greasy. By the
time we reached Tom Groggin the mist had turned
to rain, so after a quick stop at Geehi, Sheryle
headed back to Canberra
while I contemplated the task of setting up
a tent in the rain – and decided a beer
taken under the shelter of Tyrell’s Hut
was a better option to start. With the fire
lit, this non-decision was definite the best.
Jeanette then told
me that it always rains at the Geehi Rally –
and that this one of its charms! I wasn’t
to see the benefits of this until the next day,
after a great evening spent imbibing and seeing
if Ian could tell bigger porkies than a fellow
from Newcastle
who rode a battered R100 GSPD. In their minds
the bikes got more powerful, the women more
numerous and the spirits stronger as the evening
wore on - and of course down in my cups, I agreed.
Sunday morning was shrouded
in mist, and those who went fishing for trout
bagged a few, while Sue carefully wiped the
dew from her new bike and P plate – at
5.30am – but then it was a fantastic
morning. I packed and headed out towards Khancoban enjoying
a fabulous set of views on the way.
Then the mind started to
wander, in rhythm with the corners, to the
colours of the day. Just how many shades of
green are there in nature?
My mind instantly answered “three”
(light green, oxford green and dark green)
but there are many more – what about
the gray green of the eucalypts, the “screaming
green” of fresh grass, or the emerald
green of the deciduous tree leaves in town?
Then of course there are the various shades
of green of the trees on the rows of hills
– or are they blues? As I got into this
meditation, I counted 17 greens (why 17 I don’t know – you could easily count 21 or 27
or some other number if you took the time).
Suddenly my reverie is broken
by the sounds of an unseen Ducati motorbike heading my way. You cannot miss that note;
it’s totally distinguishable like that
of a Harley due to the particular type of
motor (a Desmo for
the Ducati or desmodromic
engine configuration). Sure enough, the streamlined
fairing of the 999R comes into view, with
engine in full song – and of course that
“colour of passion” as the Duke
website sells it – Red. So I wonder if
we can paint a bike that blazing colour, would
it really exist naturally - in nature?
By this time I was passing
through Khancoban. The deciduous trees had
finally thrown off their Autumn
leaves, and the remainder on the side of the
road were red – deep red brown, but not
the full-on blood red from which I was seeking
inspiration. But not to be let down, the flick
of vermillion red on a barbed wire fence ahead
was so startling I pulled over very gently
and stopped on the verge, to watch. A pair of robins was flitting back and forth
between the fence and a bush, chasing insects.
They were a matrimonial pair,
with the male being the show-off with that
blazing red chest and the female a dull oxford
green and gray colour – bugger, another
green – better make that eighteen! This
was the “flame breasted robin” rather
than the “red breasted robin” they
being two different species.
As I passed the turnoff to
Cabramurra, and headed down to the turn up
the Elliott Way,
I cogitated further on the colours of nature.
Clearly all colours are made up of
the three Primes being yellow, red and blue
- plus the two extremes that are black and
white. Any school child will tell you that
black is actually not a colour at all, just
the absorption of all light and that white
is actually the reflection of all the colours
together. Other colours are mixtures, for
example green is a mixture of blue and yellow,
and purple is a mixture of red and blue in
various amounts.
Clearly I was not going to
see pure yellow in nature here (I thought)
and that finding a truly black-black would
be tough, but suddenly I nearly ran down a
large mob of cows soon after the turn off!
And what colour were they? – black and
white and I mean real black and white in big patches over their hides
– I wondered if they get differentially
hot and cold in patches in the brilliant early
morning sun, that had just come out? Black
is an interesting “colour” because
it comes in various shades usually –
just try buying black clothing (eg
mens sox) and see
the difference – which is often actually
various shades of dark grey!
The Elliot
Way is truly a
marvelous piece of motorcycle road. There
was not a car to be seen, the sun was out
and so I hooned along, sweeping through a
plethora of corners (and wishing I had put
a little more “pre-load” into the
rear suspension as the centre stand touched
down again in a long sweeper). While the black
cockatoos gave me another “black”
to figure out, the sound and sight of a mob
of white cockatoos about to descend and settle
on me, took the edge off my speed while I
watched them sit on a fence and the grass
of the verge, only to all squawk, raise their
plumes and fly off – gotcha yellow there!
And so
to the other options on the artist’s
palette of my mind. My father is an
architect and my mother a painter, so I was
familiar with that shaped piece of plywood
on which they mixed incredibly expensive dabs
of paint with strange names like “burnt
sienna”, “red ochre” and “Prussian
blue”. What other colours would I find
out here on a great sunny Sunday?
The next to find was purple which was
easy to discover on the fields that opened
around me to the north of Tintaldra
and Corryong. Here,
Patterson’s Curse flowered in abundance.
It is called Patterson’s Curse
because if horses eat it in large enough quantities,
they can become very ill or even die. But
in other places, its called Salvation Jane because the cattle can be saved by
it in a drought. It was brought to Australia
from Europe by the
Merino Man, John McArthur and has become a
weed in Australia,
growing prolifically after a big dry. Today
it’s just fields of purple to me –
or is it mauve or violet?
And more colours revealed
themselves as I traveled along – tan,
brown and ochre of the soil and stones in
roadside cuttings, yellow and orange daisies,
a hundred greys
of tree bark, silver from the flashing leaves,
blues from the hills and more at every corner.
The Elliot Way, driven from
the south eventually ends up in a cornucopia
of turns, (there is not other way to describe
them) that twist down into to the reservoir
of Talbingo Dam
and then back up the other side, thousands
of feet of vertical climbing to Cabramurra
– just heaven on a bike.
But I stopped in the little
park by the dam at the bottom of that descent,
and rested with a Cherry Ripe and coffee from
my thermos. It was still and warm with the
reflections in the lake flashing a thousand
blues and silvers at me, split only by the
outline of a small tin boat, with two boys
fly fishing under a dank overhanging bank
opposite. They drifted by, in time with the
white clouds drifting above, in an impossibly
blue sky. If I photographed that, I wondered,
would anyone really believe how blue it was?
It was so peaceful, only to be interrupted
by the hiss of the spinning fly-reel as the
trout struck, then
churned a ripple across the stern of the boat
as he made off with the fly.
I climbed slowly away from
the dam up to that blue, flicking my RT back
and forth from corner to corner, trying to
wear the outside of the tyres evenly but only
succeeding in building up a pill of rubber
on the edges of the tread. Practice makes
perfect and I have a long way to go!
The occasional grind of the
stand told me that this was a great ride on
a perfect day as I headed up past Selwyns
and out to Kiandra.
As the bike barreled down a long straight
I started to sing – as you do on a day
like this. My choice then, was my choice all
those years ago for the Australian Anthem
– Song of Australia – so
flicking the visor up I sang into the wind;
“There is a land where summer skies
Are gleaming with a thousand dyes,
Blending in witching harmonies, in harmonies,
And grassy knoll, and forest height,
Are flushing in the rosy light,
And all above in azure bright -
Australia!”
Olaf Moon - Copyright 2005
