Since my wife shifted to a 4-day week with every Friday off it has always been our intention to take advantage of it and have a long weekend break. Well, this weekend it finally happened. We stuffed what we needed in the Calibra, gassed up and headed north. Up the coast road and across the Seacliff Bridge the a brief stop to admire the scenery from Bald Hill where my dad’s second cousin, Lawrence Hargrave, experimented with man-carrying box kites at the end of the 19th Century. It is a little-known fact that the Wright brothers borrowed heavily from Hargrave’s designs when building the “Flyer” although they were too arrogant to admit it in public. Hargrave was a true scientists who, despite the pleadings of his friends and colleagues in the scientific community, refused to patent his inventions believing that scientific discovery belonged to everybody and could not be one man’s property.
Despite it being the last day of school term and with the school holidays about to begin, we somehow managed to pick the best of the routes and those least cluttered by holiday-makers for the whole weekend. The Royal National Park was empty of cars, and, more importantly, morons on push bikes and we made it up to the Nursery on the highway at Heathcote in time for a leisurely lunch. Then it was on into Sydney and Cronulla, our destination for the first night. The lovely people at the Rydges Hotel organised a room for us with a balcony overlooking the beach and we settled in.
After resting up for a few minutes, we hit the streets, anxious to explore the pedestrian mall just behind the hotel. I don’t know how long we spent there but we must have visited at least every second shop. Tired and armed with booty we returned to the room, and planned dinner. Room Service was out of the question so we hit the streets again. As we passed through the lobby we noticed two police push bikes parked in there. The, as we stepped outside, we found the footpath crawling with cops. It soon became clear that some guy, in the grip of the grape, was trying to throw himself from the top floor balcony of our hotel around on the eastern side of the building. There were ambulances, fire trucks with extension ladders (that would have had zero chance of reaching high enough anyway) and every important-looking policeman you could imagine on site. Everyone outside was staring up at the balcony which we both found to be a bit distasteful, actually.
We found a little restaurant right down on the beachfront and, while we waited for our order to be delivered, I took advantage of the time to go down to the end of the street and photograph 5 classic Ford Mustangs that were there delivering a wedding party to their photo shoot on the beach. All convertibles, all red 1964/5 models except the bridal car which was what appeared to be a genuine GT500 convertible.
Not being a Ford man I consulted some of my Facebook friends about this one and it appears that there were only 517 of these ever made, so this would be one of probably only a handful in Australia. When we arrived back at the hotel the police had the entrance blocked off and we had to wait for about 20 minutes until they hustled the miscreant through the front doors, wrapped in a blanket, and into a waiting ambulance.
In the morning we re-visited the restaurant from the night before for breakfast (the service and food the night before had been so good we thought they deserved it) before heading north again. Our next stop was the famous Pie in the Sky on the Old Pacific Highway where we had a cold drink and admired the bikes. We followed the OPH all the way to the end (again, zero traffic and 100% fun) to our next destination, a little town near Woy Woy where I was due to pick up a push bike that I had won in an ebay auction. One of those “town” bike thingies, it enables the rider to put their feet flat on the ground at a stop and also has a very low bar so that “tippy-toe” feeling you get when you first get on is avoided. I’m hoping to be able to build up my fitness and the muscles in my leg by riding it around town here.
We then hit the F3 for the last part of the trip and it was also mercifully free of homicidal holiday-makers. Slipped off at Swansea for a late lunch and then a visit to Charlestown Square for some more retail therapy for Helena.
Then it was on to a mate’s place for the night. Lenny is an old friend who I first met in first year in high school in 1962. He runs a very successful auto spares outlet up in the valley and lives down near Lake Macquarie, one of my old stomping grounds. Len recently won the award for the best business in Cessnock in the annual Chamber of Commerce competition, so, needless to say, he’s still feeling pretty chuffed. We had a fabulous night with him and his wife and family and, after breakfast on Sunday morning we took a wander through the bushland that is at the back of his property.
Then we headed north again, seeking out the historic town of Morpeth. What a delightful little place that is. We had morning tea and explored and returned to the car only to find that the left front tyre was flat. An attempt to undo the lug nuts revealed that the spanner had been “rounded out” by a previous attempt so it was call the NRMA and wait. Fortunately, the car was in the shade, the surroundings were more than pleasant and we weren’t in a hurry so the time till the serviceman arrived passed relatively quickly. Tyre replaced and spare inflated to the correct pressure and we were on our way. Down to Pokolbin then out to Broke and Milbrodale and onto the top of the Putty Road.
Despite the fact that Helena doesn’t like spirited cornering, she seemed to quite enjoy it as I attacked one of my favourite twisty roads. Soon we were at the lovely Grey Gum Cafe and lunch was served. We dallied around for a while, chatted to Kim, the owner, and was delighted to find that two more of Helena’s paintings had sold since we had been there last, whoohoo. The lack of traffic of any sort continued to amaze and, as we got closer to Sydney, I was faced with the choice of which road to take to get home. My favourite (though it is considerably longer) is the backroad down through Mulgoa, Wallacia, Silverdale, The Oaks, Picton and then onto the Picton Road. The sensible way is straight down the Northern Road from Penrith, Campbelltown, Appin and home down Mount Ousley.
Just outside of Penrith I rolled the dice and decided on the pretty way home. Again, we came up trumps. Once past Silverdale the road was deserted and even Picton Road, so often frustrating and filled with traffic, was devoid of traffic. We arrived home just after 1930, tired but happily so. The Calibra had monstered the trip proving again what a fabulous little touring car it is. AND, with the trip meter showing 720kms, we had done the whole trip on ONE TANK of petrol and the meter still hadn’t hit the red zone. It’s only got a 60l tank so I’m roughly calculating some extraordinarily good fuel consumption figures.
In motorcycling, overnight, the wheels look like falling off the Melandri challenge for the WSBK championship with a DNF in the first wet race and a DNS in the second. Congratulations to Kenan Sofoglu winner of his third World Supersport championship last night also.
On a much sadder note, news through yesterday morning on the passing of Andrew Johnson, or “Ajay” as he was known. The legendary “hard man” of Aussie road racing, AJ raced and won on a huge variety of equipment despite the handicap of a severely damaged left hand, courtesy of a hydraulic hose explosion when he was a young man. His manhandling of the famous “Syndicate” Kawasaki superbike wrote him into legend and his greatest win was undoubtedly the wet Castrol Six Hour in 1980 on the CB1100R Honda with Wayne Gardner. RIP, AJ, your like will not pass this way again.
photo courtesy of Derek J Hanbidge (deejay51.com)