WELCOME TO THE BMW CLUB WEBSITE

Dancing with Clouds

Sometimes, when you roll out of bed on a blue-sky day, there is little portent of what is to come. The Saturday “airheads” ride was nominally headed to Harden at 10am, but flight took to fancy and the three riders stopped in Booroowa at the fabled but rarely visited Clock Café (at the top end of the main street on the right). Ullie, a printmaker from Queensland of indeterminate age, invited herself along on her black 650 GS with Peter and I, after simply catching site of BMW bikes at the petrol station. As we rode clouds built into huge impressive stacks, tempting me to slow to a crawl just to ogle there purple splendour, but we managed to dodge most of the rain to the lunch stop and were barely dampened on the way home. The rabbit pie and salad were good enough to return to, another day.

Those same clouds were a little more distinct on Sunday morning, but that did not deter six riders and two pillions from saddling up at the Red Rooster for the “monthly special ride” to Goulburn via Tarago and mega-breakfasts at the infamous Paragon Café, complete with golden gilt work, and glass. I’m sure I ate breakfast for two, a good thing as it turned out, for lunch would not be had until mid afternoon.

Riders on three bikes decided to continue on towards Thirlmere, a train station and village on the south-western edge of Picton and a few kilometres to the west of the Hume. Ray was in the lead, plus David and Sue and myself as the third. Luckily, all of us were set up with UHF CB radio, which was to prove quite useful as the day progressed. Ray took us on a superb ride through one small village after another, with less than 3 kilometres on the Hume Freeway itself.

The weather became more and more atmospheric, with the clouds from yesterday building progressively higher, upwards of 20,000 feet. Those with a pilot background (Ray) or sailing bent (Olaf) were automatically picking up the electric weather conditions in the NW, but they were soon apparent to all travellers. The clouds packed up like huge piles of marshmallows, with blue sky and sun surrounding them. At one point, we had a fine shower of rain, with warm sun - together! Across the distant ranges, squalls were passing through with their blackened heads hanging as dark curtains, but our wandering trail seemed to dance around them all morning, with merely a few drops raining down through the first half of the day. Sometimes we chased the clouds up a valley and at others, they came across the plain and closed in upon us.

We arrived at the Thirlmere Railway Museum in warm sunshine, paid our $10 and wandered around the hundreds of steam engines and carriages, most of which were open. It was a popular spot on Fathers’ Day, with parents photographing their kids clambering on engines and burrowing in the coal dust. We took a few too. For the nostalgic it is quite a place, with acres of tin sheds covering the rarer models. The largest is a Garrat articulated steam engine weighing 263 tons and having eight driving wheels down to a tiny “Thomas” engine. A snapshot of some of the collection can be found on their website at www.nswrtm.org.

Most of us phoned our fathers from here, all of whom seemed particularly interested in this train museum that they had not even heard of, but now planned to visit. There are also steam train rides from this site, but we did not arrive earlier enough to take the seventy-minute trip.

We rode out, minutes ahead of the next squall, and headed for Berrima. Passing through Mossvale and Berrima was a trip back in time for each of us who had travelled this way on the old Hume Highway, probably 20 years before. A few kilometres down the road at Berrima, we stopped for coffee and raisin toast. This proved to be a well-timed decision, as the heavens finally opened and a deluge crashed onto the tin roof of the café – a peaceful and reassuring sound when you’re inside!

This was a pre-cursor to a series of showers that followed, and would end up with snow and hail at Marulan. We carefully dressed in our full wet weather gear including jacket liners, over pants, neck gaiters and gauntlets and sallied forth into a maelstrom. The road was like a wild hog, black, oiled, slick and filthy. Counter steering into corners was undertaken with all the finesse I could muster, as the front tyre squirmed on the road, and visibility dropped to semi-darkness at 4pm. Street lights came on as we headed out of town an hour ahead of their time.

Strangely enough, we all seemed to feel fine. “Fine” is relative to expectations I suspect. Having joined the elements well prepared, we were quite dry and warm, although travellers at the Marulan truck-stop thought we were totally mad as we pulled in for fuel. “It’s snowing just up the road” one man told me. “Watch for the four car pile-up about five k’s up,” said one woman.

Sunday drivers on the highway were just insane. At 110 Km per hour, I was being overtaken by anything with a motor, from semi-trailers and buses to utes and minis. Clearly there had been some drunken ute-fest in Sydney. By mutual agreement we upped our speed to about 120Km/hour to maintain consistency with the general traffic. I followed Ray’s single tail-light. Water fishtailed from his rear wheel, like from the rudder of a planning yacht. Around his machine a halo of foam and spray enveloped him, augmented by the huge wash from semi-trailers.

In an attempt to improve my visibility, I lowered my bike screen to allow the wind to clear the rain from the helmet visor, but also in a desperate attempt to protect my CB radio propped up on the dashboard. Ray’s radio, mounted on the rear of his bike and covered by a plastic bag, drowned soon after Marulan, and David’s was not far behind I guess.

At this point, things started to get very weird. The sky was black as the ace of spades with huge rain curtains threatening from every side. A mass of red and blue flashing lights heralded the first accident ahead – a bunch of vehicles in the mid line, a BMW car stove into the screen and cops everywhere. A sixty-series Landrover passed me on the inside, with a young child playing his Gameboy visible through the rear window. Fifteen minutes later, we crawled to a stop, to find the same vehicle on its roof on the verge and camping gear spread over a hundred metres. An Army convoy had stopped to help the kids, who by this time were out lying on the embankment under blankets and tarps (and who appeared to be dazed but otherwise fine). Dozens were helping so we pressed on, passing the snow and hail that gave the roadside a very clear definition.

The rain never let up, so I waved goodbye to Ray on Yarra Glen and headed home, very carefully around those wet roundabouts. I reflected on a great weekend’s riding – 750Km of it plus some well learnt lessons in rough weather travel. But those rolled cars haunted us through the night – there but for the grace of god go I.