Exploring Australia on a Himalayan 450, dirt tracks, camping, barn finds - Episode 3

In this episode we continue along the bridal track. Dave hugs a tree and misses a corner. We race some kangaroos and a wombat. Of course we buy more epic tracks, then muster some sheep and finally find what we've come on this journey for. Morning. We know who the fire bug is. That's Tupu. So he's gone totally opposite than yesterday's square box fire. It's a teepee today. Showing his range of technique of fires. A rough day. Delinquency. It's awesome to be able to pull up and camp next to a river like this and have no one else around. As mentioned last night we don't really have a plan. Well we're going south, we know that much. But there is the town of Bathurst coming up next after the end of the track and we'll get some reception there, have a look at some maps and yeah work something out. No time schedule, no distance, no places. Just ride, camp, look for barns. Pretty good plan to have actually isn't it because we don't know where the barns are so we just better go surf. Can you spot the real reason Dave started his fire again? I think he got his socks wet through the water yesterday. He's drying his socks. That's a few holes in a sock between prayers. Well that was inevitable. It was time to pack up camp. We rolled out along the small track we'd come in on yesterday. The bridle track was shut down for over a decade due to a landslide here at Monaghan's Bluff. It only opened up again a bit over a year ago when they finished this bypass up and over the top. We had made it to the end of the bridle track. She's old. Another quick stop for these two 1800s. So the wood's probably too old because the outside's still a tree. So one side of the plank has not been milled flat and still has a curvature of the tree. Of course Dave found someone to chat to. There was another big one across the road. People lived in that one not long ago. There was a murder there. Here at this house? Yeah. Yeah really? What's the background of that? Something you're eating around? That's what it was. There you go. We were invited to take a closer look. These old insulations. Mud? There's mud, yeah. That's a good find. Two barns across the road from each other. One stop. One stop. We rode the short distance into the town of Bathurst. Dave was on the hunt for coffee. He found a small hole-in-the-wall coffee store. So while he fueled up, I looked for more potential dirt tracks heading south. Seeing we were in Bathurst and Dave had never been on the race circuit before, we thought we may as well do a lap. It would be kind of wrong if we didn't. For those who are unfamiliar with Mount Panorama race circuit and the legend of the Bathurst race, this is Australia's most famous race circuit and holds Australia's most famous race, the Bathurst 1000. When there are no races on, you can ride on the circuit as it is a public road and people live along it. This is why it's called Mount Panorama as it has a very panoramic view. It still boggles the mind how fast the race cars come down here and still manage to keep it off the walls. Well, most of the time. So you just can't sort of come to Bathurst without doing one of those laps and Dave hasn't done one before. There's just some things you got to do. See that every year. I don't know, never done that before. That's good. Uh, where to next? Uh, let's head towards Cowra. I think I might know a dirt track near Cowra. Well, it's sort of near a lake, so we've got a long way around, but we will get there. We got to the main road where they were resealing it. First, the tar truck went past laying down the layer of tar, then the gravel truck. The trucks are not quite wide enough for a single lane, so a second truck with a little gap out the tailgate to fill in the rest. Then come a couple of rollers. Why aren't all roadworks that quick? We made our way south towards Cowra. I looked back and Dave had pulled over and rode into a property. I can imagine the conversation is a bit like this. G'day mate. How you going? Good mate. I really like your wooden barn mate. Thanks mate. The old guy said it was the original town's police station dating back to the 1890s. I think Dave has found a kindred spirit in the chat department. We turned off the main road and came across this. A very large old wooden building. Dave saw a guy mowing his lawn, so went to see if he knew anything about it. 1880s. It's the old tearduct. It closed down in 1970. The guy who lives in the house behind us, he's not there at the moment, he owns it. He's always had intentions to do it up, but he never did. Beautiful old structure. He reckons inside looks really mint. Yeah, worth looking at, but we can't get inside, so we'll just keep going. The patina on this place was pretty epic. We continued down the small country road, which soon turned into dirt. That's a rare sight. A wombat out for a run. Someone couldn't quite make the corner, so went for a bit of an excursion. Rode into the town of Cowra. Seeing Dave need to wash some very smelly socks and a few other things, we've pulled into this motel and I really need to power some stuff up again. So it's probably 4 30 in the afternoon, so just a shorter day, but it has been another epic day. So much fun. We headed to the local pub and as Cowra is known for its lamb, it only seemed appropriate to sample some of its best. We woke up to Australia's most noisy bird, the cockatoo. Morning. How good are showers when you haven't had one for a few days? So Dave and I have cleaned up, washed some stuff, repacked, so we're good to go. The plan today, well, Dave did some what we'll call research last night. I jumped on some forums last night, looked around the local area to see who's got some barns and I got a couple of leads. So today I think we're going to head to Crookwell. There's a guy and a lady who've got two different farms. We're going to go and check them out. They said they've got a couple of sheds we can take a look at. So we've got a plan. Bit of wind, bit of cloud, it may rain, but what I'm thinking we're going to do, because it's still south, the trail we were on yesterday actually continues past the lake. So we might jump on that because it was a really fun dirt trail. How beautiful is this setting? Beautiful, yes. Windy, definitely. We traveled down the road a little further, then pulled over. This is breakfast. Here we got lemon and pepper tuna and a wrap. We hadn't eaten anything this morning, so we've pulled over as it was getting quite cold and Dave is a skinny man, so he's going to pull over first. Then he also eats a lot, so we're having some food on the side of the road. Dave's going with tuna, tuna wrap, and I'm going with, I'm going pretty classy here, salmon with onion and tomatoes from Mr John West. One of the good things when you don't plan anything, you can just stop whenever you like. And with that wind, we've actually had to slow down. You knock off about 5-10 kilometers an hour off the speed limit and it just becomes comfortable. Up at 100km an hour, it's just, you're really having to concentrate. So we're just going to cruise it for the south. We're hoping we're going to go on to Dyrt soon. No idea where this track goes. Well, it was only a few hundred meters before we were back on the Dyrt. Can we go past? All right, cool, thanks mate. Okay. Sweet, thanks so much. Definitely windy. We've just gone through another gate and we're actually what you'd call on a farm road now, two lanes rather than a dirt road. Apparently the farmer said it might get a little rutted out ahead, but still passable. And we've just come past, I think Dave said these are stringy bark. Although it looked like Dave was hugging a tree. How big Dave? He was actually trying to work out its circumference. About three of me. All right, let's go see if we can stay upright. There were some ruts in the trail, but they were only small. Riding farm tracks is so much fun. We eventually came out of the trees onto open fields. Kangaroos decided to race us and well, they were winning. This went on for over a kilometer. Dave looked back to see if this was the right way to go, but little did he know, I didn't know where we were going either. So I was having so much fun. I forgot, uh, one to look for barns and the other was, I didn't take the turn off to Crookwell, just kept going along this dirt road. So what we're going to do is take a left here and then head back onto the highway and then back track it. I don't know, might be an hour. I know Joey's motorbike adventures are few and far between, but if he ever rings you up and says, we've got a bike, we're going. So yes, that was insane. The wind's been blowing all day, so it's been pretty hard to hang on. Um, road's been really easy to ride and beautiful sections. But how's those kangaroos? Never seen anything like that before. Flying along three kangaroos to ride with you for what? I don't know, a kilometer? I looked down and they're going about 60K an hour as we were going beside them. We got to the main road and the wind was howling. So we tucked in. There was light rain and it looked like it was going to get heavier further ahead. So we pulled over to layer up and get rain gear on. This is what we come to see. It may not look much, but after standing for 150 years, you'd probably look a little battered and weathered too. We met the farmer and his family. We went inside and had a look at the barn. It was an old shearer's shed. Ken showed us some of the shearing equipment and it all still worked. We had a look around the barn. It would cost well over $100,000 to restore the shearer's shed. Also, it's not fit for purpose anymore, so a new shed is going to take its place. Instead of bulldozing it and burning the wood, they have decided to see if anyone can make use of it. The tin is going to another 150 year old shed that is being restored. This stuff interests me a lot. I can see tables out of this kind of stuff already. That's amazing. All these boards would be amazing. I could make some beautiful stuff with that. The shed is supposed to be one of the original ones built here. I'm guessing it's 130 to 50 years old. Everyone used to bring their sheep here to get shorn from the original shearing shed from the district. How long did your father have this for? He brought it in 1948. Oh right, so you've been here all your life on it? Yeah. You took over it from your father? Yeah. And this shed was standing when your father bought the farm? Yeah, when he bought the farm it was an old shed. Incredible. Ken showed us the old milking shed. He would know so much because he's the only one out of six kids that ever had to do it. I think that is about as simple as you can make a stool. He milked the cows. Well Dave was stoked with the barn find and would come back with some tools and his truck to start pulling it apart. I'm not sure if you can hear it but it is still very windy outside. So the farmer has kindly offered for us to sleep in the shearer shed. So we've taken him up on that offer. So we'll be probably the last people to sleep in here. I'm gathering over the years probably a lot of shearers that have slept in here. You might call this our Airbnb for the night. A very authentic experienced Airbnb. A social award seems appropriate for me. Talk to anyone. We laid out our beds as storms built on the horizon. Being country folk they invited us to have dinner with them. I am a very happy man. This is country hospitality at its absolute finest. We even got dessert. So Dave and I have just come back from the biggest feed and even had pudding custard and ice cream. Wasn't going to have it and then Dave goes well maybe and then I yeah had to. What do you think of this beast? He made way more food than you ever imagined. Heaps of like really simple food just good hearty honest food and now we're completely stuffed. Now we get to sleep in what potentially will be a bunch of furniture. Like this is unbelievable 150 year old shed. Exactly why we came on this trip. No idea where we're going what we're going to find and landed on this place somewhere outside of Crookwell. Like look at it like it's it's absolutely everything I could ever dream of. Like we don't know what the timber is yet but the farmer was saying possibly tassie oak possibly huon pine so I'm not entirely sure yet but we'll mill that up and see what it is. Look at it. Can't wait to touch this and make something out of it. But right now we're going to sleep here. We're going to sleep with the ghost probably and see if it's haunted and scare ourselves. No door on the shed. With that thought we called it a night. We woke up at dawn. The sheep dogs were excited as it was time to muster and we were invited along for the ride. I jumped on one of the farm's quads and Dave went with Ken. We drove down to the back paddock where Ken let the dogs do what they do best and run they did. I was staying a bit further back so I didn't get in the way. There's a water flounder. Boring little dwarf. Dave's beating that on him. He's a bit slow. I'll give him a lift. We moved the sheeps through the paddocks. Well the dogs did. We just watched. Got myself a friend. I'm just gonna go and close the other gate and come back. Well apparently I've been left in charge of the sheep. I should probably just sit still I think. Always best to leave it to the experts. Ken showed us some of the things in the current shearing shed. They hang a harness on. If they need a harness they've got a bow back and that just slides You shear the sheep with that. Turn it on. You put the wool in there. That's off a little hogger. One that's about 12 months old. I think it's just a stronger wool merino. That one's finer. This one's stronger. You can feel the strength. The broader these are the stronger the micron in the wool. The finer the crimp Generally the finer it is. Due to a bug going around Ken had to give the sheep basically medicine to help them fight it off. So in they came. There was one last thing to do before we left. To pull up some samples of the wood so Dave could check them in. That's gonna be really nice and blonde and that's gonna be quite rude. I haven't seen a smile so big on old trip have you? Well the trip has theoretically then been a success. We have found wood but we still have to get all the way back up. Lots of trails and I've heard of another place we might just go check out. With the wood strapped to the back of the bike we were off north this time to see what else we could find. Oh my love you're such a fragile thing I know. In the next episode we find more dirt roads and stumble onto a random track. We cross a rather large bridge. Dave tries to get us to the beach but fails. We have to deal with a flooded river. Then we ride into a seventh generation farm which has been in the family since 1830 and get to explore their tracks.