Mt Barker SA to Griffith NSW

Skidoooo was in Adelaide on Friday picking up a very shiny GTR1400 called “Wicked Kate” that is to replace “Kiss Me Kate” who lost an encounter with Skippy during his IBA Memorial “Power to the People” Ride a while back.  The plan was to ride the new bike back to Dubbo over two days and take it easy for reasons you may be able to recall.  I offered to head down to Adelaide to ride back with him just to make sure everything was OK and I was available to give him a hand should he need one.

The plan was to ride from Allan H’s in Mt Barker to Griffith on the first day,  tad under 800k’s, with some bailout options if Karl needed to rest.  After a superb bacon and egg breakfast and coffee we got away some time after 9am local time. There was no rush and I was happy with the slow turn around after knocking off an SS1600k to get there and having a late night chatting. We rode East through the Adelaide Hills towards Murray Bridge then past Old Tailem Town and turned left towards Pinaroo where we’d pencilled in a stop at the bakery.  I stopped at Lameroo to make sure Karl was travelling OK and we decided to keep going through to our first fuel stop at Ouyen.  I left there thinking we needed to develop the skill of stopping while there was still fuel in the tank every once in a while.

On the way we did however take a short break at the SA border with Victoria

I was hungry at Ouyen so we stopped for a works burger at the Caltex.  Not bad! Only $8.80 for works and plain for $5.50 which seems bloody good value!  The coffee wasn’t too bad either.  We’d been looking for a nice location to take some snaps and I caught site of a raised area in the salt flats on the Mallee Highway where we got some corkers (well we like them)

Here’s Karl and Wicked Kate

Here’s STEN

Here Karl took a pic of me taking a pic of STEN

I couldn’t get one of Karl taking a pic of me taking a pic of STEN.

We crossed the border back into NSW and made our way to Balranald. It was warming up so we had an icecream and drink and sat in the aircon for a while before continuing on to Hay and taking the Mid Western Highway option.  I’d not been on this section of road before and really liked it. It’s another of my favourite desolate, featureless places now.  Karl was riding in front

We arrived in Griffith before dark, checked into a hotel, cleaned up and walked up the road to Belvedere’s for one of the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had, and a few beers of course.