The Ace Cafe is the true Cathederal of Motorcycles. Founded in 1938 its been the go to place for motorbikes through many iterations of the art of motorcycling.
On a fine Sunday, all those iterations can be seen in Ace’s car park. Custom bikes, lovingly restored classics, and the latest models are all there.
It’s a place where you can get a good feed, a pint, or a cup of tea and wander around the bikes and chat with other bikers.
Custom bikesSpeedway bikeScootersClassics
And modern bikes, maybe even a bargain.
For a biker visiting London the Ace Cafe is a Pilgrimage
The Strawberry Full Moon hung high in the sky, overlooking the Solstice Celebrations.
The sky sure had a wintery feel, looking across Port Phillip to the City of Melbourne.
But in the old ship building shed us locals celebrated the coming of winter.
On the Sunday, my motorbike club, the Moto Guzzi Club of Victoria, conducted its winter breakfast in the Yarra Ranges.
I rolled the mighty Breva out of the shed in the morning twighlight on a cold, clear winter morning.
I was riding through the city as the sun rose and three hot air balloons drifted overhead.
The BBQ was already under way as I arrived at the Badgers Creek Weir picnic ground.
A small group of local residents are waiting for to share.
While the BBQ was attractive with the temperature of 2c, the pot of soup was where I headed.
The best thing was that for the motorbikes built on the shores of Lake Como in the Italian Alps, the temperature was perfect, and all the bikes ran perfectly.
After a huge breakfast of minestrone soup and eggs and bacon, I needed a bit of a walk in the bush up to Badger Wier.
As winter settles in, it’s only two weeks till I head to the Northern Hemisphere for my next European Adventure.
"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none can ride like me.
From “Mulga Bill’s Bicycle” by Banjo Patterson.
I like stopping at the towns and villages recounted in the early Australian balads.
The flood plains of the Namoi River were full of water.
In the “land of drought and flooding rain” therehe had been a flooding monsoon north in tropical Queensland a couple of months earlier. The flood waters were slowly moving south, bringing vital water to the edge of the Outback as it travels thousands of kilometres to the Murray River, which empties into the Southern Ocean.
Wallgett was just a photo stop as my destination was Lightning Ridge, famous for its Opals.
Lightning Ridge is very much more a tourist town rather than a prospecting these days. Especially if compared to the Opel prospecting South Australia, Coober Pedy, and Blinman.
There are some good aspects to a tourist town….
The street art…
The Opal shops…
Even fine coffee with delicious apple strudel and ice cream.
Lightning Ridge sits on the Great Artesian Drive, a series of thermal baths drawing water from Australia’s Great Artesian Basin.
It was hot 30c in Lightning Ridge so I enjoyed the cold water of the campground pool to the hot spa.
My next stop was Brewarrina and little detour to Goodooga for a hot bath in the cool of the morning.
I arrived at the Aboriginal Cultural Centre in Brewarrina for the last cultural tour of the day
Brewarrina sits where the northern rivers come together to form the Darling River, which funels the monsoon rains of the tropical north of Australia southward along the edge of the Outback, providing precious water to a dry land.
Drone photo by Dave Kelly
Brewarrina, which means Tall Trees, was/is a special meeting place for Aboriginal Australians. The rock fish traps pictured above were built over 10,000 years ago. And were an intrcately designed so that fish could be caught and stored in ponds.
This photograph (below) from 1870 shows aboriginal children collecting fish from the fish traps.
Photo in Aboriginal Cultural Centre.
The banks of the Darling River also contain ochre, which is used for skin care and decoration by aboriginal people.
White ochre on the river bank.
Unfortunately, the high state of the river had covered fish traps. But a river full of water is something beautiful in itself.
And on the river bank, I spied some some red tailed black cockatoos. A beautiful bird that lives along the rivers on the edge of the outback.
From Brewarrina, it was time to follow the river flow south toward home.
You really know you are back in the outback when you find emus running down the main street of the town.
I’d spent the night at the pub in Nymagee on my way to the Macquarie Marshes, a 198sqkm oasis in the dry plains of North West NSW.
The fact that you are in the Outback is reinforced when you confront a road train at a water crossing!
I set up camp in Coolabah Gum woodland opposite the woolshed at Willie Retreat about 5km from the southern end of the Macquarie Marshes.
The woodland was home to a beautiful selection of small woodland birds.
The oldest known Coolabah gum is 300+ years old. The Coolabahs in this woodland were old and gnarled with plenty of hollows to form homes for the little birds.
The next day, I woke to a beautiful outback dawn…
And headed down to marshes.
In the light of the day, the small birds were flittering around, catfish were jumping, waders were hunting, and the pelicans rode high on the thermal updrafts.
As the sun went down, the mood and colours changed.
Across the water, a crafty fox was keeping an eye on me.
The Birruma Boardwalk is 25km north od Willie Retreat and provides a way of walking through the, otherwise, impenetrable reeds and across the top of the boggy marshes.
A further 50km up.the road, at the northern end of the Marshes, is the town of Carinda famous for cotton growing and for having tge pub where David Bowie’s Lets Dance film clip was recorded.
After leaving Konista, it was a misty ride through the mountains of Western Macedonia skirting Thessalonika to Kavala.
I had decided I wanted to make, what is a bit of an Australian Pilgrimage, to ANZAC Cove on the Cannakale Peninsula in Turkey. Hence, it was a blast across northern Greece.
What were the highlights?
The most fascinating stop was the Porto Logos. A little fishing village on the coast between Kavala and Alexandroupoli.
A quaint village with a small port and restaurants, a secluded beach and flamingos and other bird life.
It’s also the site of the Byzantine Monastry of St. Nicholas.
The monastry is set in the middle of the lake with each of the churches containing amazing frescos and etching.
The Byzantine Madonna and Child in the photos are etched and coloured directly onto brass plate and were breath takingly beautiful.
The city of Alexandroupoli is a beautiful coastal city at the top of the Aegean sea close to the border with Turkiye.
The sad part of crossing this part of Greece was the largely blackened forests and farmland, the legacy of recent wildfires in Northern Greece. Wherever I travel, there are ever present reminders of the current climate crisis
