The most boring town on the planet?

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Leon H

Pack Dog
Joined
Feb 22, 2006
Messages
204
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0
Location
Townsville, Australia
Bike
BMW R1200GS
Recently Melissa?s sister had moved from Townsville to the city of Mackay, about 400km south of Townsville. Her brother was also down there doing working at a pharmacy as part of his pharmacy degree. Now it?s my belief that Mackay is possibly one of the most boring, desolate, scungy towns in Australia. I only ever drive through there on my way to Brisbane, and I rarely venture off the highway. It is flat, hot and ugly. So anyway the plan was she would do her family thing, while I went out on the GS and explored the local countryside. Looking at Google Earth and Mapsource I noted that there was some interesting topography and twisty roads in the general area, so I programmed in a ride to Mackay off the highway, 2 days of riding in the area, and a ride back a different way. Of course a big part of the reason I was going riding was to get away from my brother in law, who is the stereotypical loud arrogant rude know it all squid who thinks he is god?s gift to motorbike riding and all other topics. I find him a deeply irritating moron, so the less I had to do with him the better??

Friday morning, we set off south to Mackay on a pretty warm day, with fine weather over Mt Stuart in Townsville.

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Heading south on the Bruce Highway is unfortunately just as excruciatingly boring as riding north, but unfortunately the road south is even more boring. Just flat, hot, straight roads. After a while we turned off the highway to Airlie Beach for a quick bite to eat by the sea.

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Back onto the highway to head further south for a little bit. For some reason this stretch of road always fatigues me, so I was glad when we turned off the highway at Mt Charlton to head into Mackay via the back roads through the mountains. The country immediately changed once we got into the pioneer valley, and gave me a sneak preview of what was to come.

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After some very good mountain riding, we stopped about half an hour out of Mackay to brace ourselves for the crazy traffic, and the dickhead onslaught that awaited us.

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Their flat in Macaky was exactly like I expected. A tiny semi-detached dog box that was as hot as hell, and my loud mouth bro in law (herein referred to as ?squid?) looking like he just crawled out of a dump. Inside this flat it was about 40 degrees?..

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We immediately unpacked the bikes, and I walked down to the local bottle shop to take the edge off my thirst, and hopefully numb a bit of the pain of listening to squid. By the time I got back to the flat squid had decided that he was going to come riding with me the following day ? I was not happy about it at all, but I agreed only to give Melissa some quiet time over the weekend with her family without him hanging around. I proceeded then to get thoroughly refreshed from the supplies I obtained from the bottle shop, and then go to bed in the world?s hottest bedroom??.

Saturday morning rolls around and I wake up with a very dry mouth, mild hangover, and feeling generally sick from a poor nights sleep with a lot of sweating in the still heat. I scoff some breakfast, grunt something to squid about our route, jump on the bike, follow the GPS and head north out of Mackay.

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Straight out of town I was amazed. The countryside was nothing like the flat plain Mackay is on. There were hills and corners and mountains and forests and rocky outcrops. Truly a beautiful area. The mind boggles why they built the town where they did.

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Anyway squid was struggling to keep up, and I spent a large amount of time the whole day waiting for him. In classic squid style he blamed it all on the bike and was constantly fiddling with suspension dials he didn?t understand. Incidentally his bike is Melissa?s old YZF600, which he crashed into a parked car within a week of owning it ? smart guy!

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Across some windy dirt and windy tar we rode (and I waited) until we reached out first destination, Cape Hillsborough National Park. A great little park with a very nice road in, a good camping area, and a beach. Mackay is nothing like this, and it felt like I was a million miles away, but I had only come 60km from town. It is hot there though ? already it was about 35 degrees and a not breeze blowing. Lovely spot though I recommend it.

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From there it was off to a little dot on the map called Seaforth. Well it truly was the place that time forgot. A quiet little fishing village with the old style pine trees, old picnic area, old shop, and even an old stinger enclosure for swimming in! It was an utterly charming spot to sit on the beach and have a cool drink ? again, well worth a visit!

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From Seaforth across the dirt back over to a place called Mt Ossa. Another stretch of entertaining dirt and twisty fast bitumen. And of course more waiting?..

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By this stage I was almost starting to have an inkling of respect for squid. While he was groaningly slow, he was having a try at the off road on a bike not really designed for it.

From Mt Ossa it was a blast through the insane winding Mt Charlton Road. What a great road, mountainous, and great scenery.

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I?ll ride up this hill on another day??
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So hot the bitumen was melting and the trucks and cars were tearing chunks out of it. I came back to this spot the following day, and it was even worse and I could actually rip chunks out of it with the back tyre, and the RID on the BMW was melting ? hot stuff!

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Eventually we dropped into the bottom of the valley and cruised up the Pioneer River until we reached the Eungella Range. I had heard it was steep and at the head of the valley, but I didn?t expect this!


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View from the top. Steep and windy. You increase something like 650m in 4.5km.

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I?ll finish this a bit later I have to go out for a bit???..
 
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