Staying with Rick and Nanette is great fun. They are both avid dual sport motorcycle riders among other things.

Rick has been teaching me about the bees with I am particularly interested in.

Rick’s bees

I have been helping them to put a little website together for Rick’s “Just Honey Products” business. Just a little WordPress framework for him to add to at this stage really.

We headed back into Eungella this morning to meet up with Rick Raddatz, a bee keeper friend of Rob’s.

We met a pair of travellers at the lookout while waiting for Rick to get to Eungella and ended up having lunch by the river Just out of Finch Hatton with them.

Rick invited us back to his place and although it was a little out of the way, we took him up on the offer. Boy am I glad we did!

There is a lot of sugar cane planted in his area.

Riding through cane fields to get there

Rick and Nanette put on a great camp oven cooked dinner. Yum!

Rick does a little black smithing too. The iron work pictured above is some of his.

I keep finding more things in common with Rick. What an interesting guy.

Waking this morning revealed just how far above the plain were.

View from camp

View out over the plains reveals a little of last nights climb

The woodland really takes my fancy. A beautiful place.

Particularly clear water. From all water lilys and other water plants perhaps.

The ride north to Eungella took us through some fantastic jungle.

Dropping down into Eungella it self took us deeper into the rainforest. The final miles into the town were on bitumen, winding between the palms, vines and lush dark green vegetation. For once we greatly enjoyed the bitumen. A fantastic road.

Looking east toward Mackay from Eungella

After soaking up Eungella and meeting a photographer who was using drones to video the impressive landscape for a Japanese tv channel, we headed out toward Eungella Dam. We took a side road loop that looked interesting. Boy, was it rough! I bottomed out my front suspension for the first time ever I think. Later on I discovered I also put the first dent in my rim. Quite a ripper of a dent too, ouch!
A tough river crossing, lots of jumps, rocks everywhere and a few hill climbs.
Great track though 🙂 lots of fun.

Camped on the shores of the Eungella Dam.

Getting firewood with the chainsaw

Reflections

There were fish jumping but I am not particularly surprised I didn’t catch any…I only had a bit of carrot for bait haha

We both took advantage of water that doesn’t have crocs and jump in.

Ah well. Beautiful spot.

Still sundown

Many great dirt miles today along the Turton Highway. Open plains county. Starting to see termite mounds more now.

Dry grassy plains grazing country

Deviated from the T.H. late in the day and headed for Homevale. It was already pretty dark when we got near the historic township of Homevale. Looking for a camp site I had on my gps led us down a little unsigned track which is the “Old Dray Track” according to my maps. We never did find the camp on moonlight dam so we opted to keep on along this great little track.
What followed was a half hour ride north along the tiny track through challenging creek crossings and finally a very steep hill climb that had us both struggling to get enough traction and all in the dark.

Stopped half way up the climb. I am tuning weight on my bike to help avoid the front wheel lifting and lowering the wind shield.

A full on hill climb in the dark, what an experience!
Raman said he was looking at the very steep track right in front of him, working his way up, and happened to glance up into the sky only to see a little red dot of my tail light floating in the black high above him. “Oh shit, I hope it doesn’t get any steeper!”

We finally got to camp at 8:10pm. We could see lights on the plain below. We knew we had climbed a long way.

With a few parts to order for our bikes, we header for Rockhampton.

Heading west out of Rocky we got back on the “Turton Highway”, the name I have given to the route Rob has suggested for us. Another great camp site, this time on the banks of the Fitzroy river.

The Fitzroy River

We took a tour of historic aspects of Mt Morgan and the mine this morning. What an incredible place.

The main processing facilities just below the open cut

One of the winding houses from the tunnel mining days. The deepest of the shafts was over 1500ft deep!

Reflections in the lake held by the open cut. The water is very acidic (about pH 3.5).

The remaining chimney from the ore smelter

The open cut lake with Smelter tower in the background

The Bouldery Pub in Bouldercombe has a free camping area. Trace and Deano, the proprietors, have been particularly hospitable. They have taken the place over in the last year or two and they are making a real go of it. Great people, very generous.
Thanks Deano n Trace.

Goodbye Rob

Thanks for a great ride Rob. You are a very generous and knowledgeable man. We are really grateful to have had the opportunity to ride with you. We have learnt a lot and really enjoyed following you trough some pretty small and challenging tracks to impressive places.

See you on the road again some time.

Rob packing to head back south to Cooroy

Rob has taken us past many mining relics and through a number of mining towns. Rob has told me much of Mt Morgan. One such story that struck me was of the great wealth that came from the mining there directly led to the formation of the Anglo Persian Oil Company which successfully pioneered oil exploration in in the Pursian Gulf and later became BP.

So today we are headed for Mt Morgan.

More great trails today.

Calide Dam and Power station

One of the new gas pipelines under construction

We stopped at Mt Scoria.

Rob got a flat mid avo so I decided to cook lunch while he got to work changing the tube.

What followed was the most spectacular failure to cook pasta. I will take most of he credit as I wasn’t able to get the little stove to boil the 2L pot in over an hour! I always have a rule of not putting pasta in until its boiling. We thought it was getting close and Raman tossed it in. It never did boil despite all my efforts. Haven’t had this much trouble with the stove before. Perhaps it’s the wood I am feeding it. Anyway that was a milestone for me in culinary disasters :p

Rob took us up a great track that culminated in a nice hill climb to bring us into Mt Morgan. A quick little tour of the town and a view of the mine before we nipped down te hill to the Bouldercombe “Bouldery” pub only to find there was a function on there and there would be no meals. Rob introduced me to the publican, Deano, and in short order we were offered meals and invited in.

We had a great evening, celebrating Rob’s last night with the Sunken Boys.

Heading west we got into open plains grazing county. Few fence.

On the plains

At lunch time we found our way up a hill near the track. There is something about a landscape where you can ride anywhere without tracks. I have always enjoyed this sort of “overlanding” I guess.

Raman celebrating reaching the top after a challenging climb.

Reading the landscape is really important when riding without a track. There will be gullies and steep sections of hills that can be avoided. The climb to the top of this hill was a challenge and I felt particularly rewarded by the view of the country around.

Raman added some more “character” to one of his side boxes one the way down by dumping the bike upside down. As he put it, “I found my self looking at my reflection in the bash plate”.

No harm done, we were back on the track shortly and on our way to Cracow.

Getting almost lost in the middle of a huge cattle station on old stock routes.

The pub at Cracow is a real bit of history. The walls are covered in scrawlings and the ceiling adorned with old saddles, mining lamps, rusty tools and all manner of other bits of times past.

Mining is a booming industry there once again and the bar is as it once would have been, filled with noisy, dirty, uncouth men making passes at the girls behind the bar while pissing away their wages. Although the wages are so ridiculously high these days it would be hard to piss it all away without getting liver poisoning. Wages start at 140k these days.
This country of ours is mining mad! And it’s all happening out here away from the eyes of most Australians. There are mining vehicles everywhere, thousands of kilometers of pipelines going in (one has to see these to realise just how big an operation this is), new mines opening, exploration and old mines being reopened. A profitable gold mine get 1g/ton of ore! That means they dig up and process a ton of ore for about twenty bucks! Fossil fuels really do enable amazing things.

Rob was to go home this morning however he has managed to wrangle a bit more time away thanks to Paul and the team at Tyres for Bikes. So after welding the pannier frame up we went for a day ride.

The washed out crossing with Rob’s 950 already across.

Along the way we found a few obstacles to challenge us.

Well this one challenged me the most.

Rob patiently waiting while I catch my breath to have another go.

Another great evening around the fire with one of Robs favourites, a Bundy Rum.

Raman has discovered that his pannier frame is snapped. All the rough riding is really putting the bikes to the test. Rob called his friend at the Cania Dam and teed up some workshop time with a MIG welder. I discover my entire dash was shaking around as we left camp this morning too. Fortunately two loose nuts where the culprit and I was riding again after 10 minutes of track-side maintenance.

Another day of great riding on small tracks.

Waking up to this.

The smooth trails on Kroombit. Typically these were the buttery ones. Pretty but slippery. The sandy ridges were more fun but less rainforesty.

Back onto the plains country. Lots of great creek crossings. Rob Turton on his KTM 950 Adventure

Where do you think you are going? moo!

Closed? Lots of fun.

Stocked up in Monto before heading of the Cania Dam.

Sunset on the hills of the Cania Dam