354 replies to this topic

[bradbury west]

Thread bump for info for those not familiar with the history.
Roger Lund

[Ray Bell]

Merely an aside, but I think worth posting...

 

This evening I took that drive from 'Armidale to the coast' in one of my Foresters.

 

What a road! To be honest, I wouldn't have gone that way had I known fully what I was in for, but now I've done it I'm glad for the education.

 

The first 40+kms out of Armidale are straightforward, very good country road with very light traffic. Then one turns onto second-class bitumen and immediately swoops and dives over a bridge and onto gravel. In quick succession, bitumen and gravel sections follow, not too outstanding in their makeup (but with a badly sunken bridge approach leaving a sharp concrete edge which dented a rim for me and left me with a flat tyre), but then the gravel was to come in earnest.

 

Beginning at about 950m altitude, the road climbs to about 1050, then begins a descent which never seems to end. The road is a hand-hewn ledge in the sides of mountains and hills overlooking ravines and creeks, corner following corner, steering winding and unwinding nearly as quickly as is required to wind the other way.

 

This goes on seemingly endlessly, with about ten kilometres covered before the main descent ends at about 150 metres altitude. Then come some undulations, but the nature of the road, narrow, unfenced for the most part, clinging to hillsides with rock walls to one side and sheer drops to the other, never seems to change. The gravel is not too bad, but it takes a long time to get a short distance in these circumstances.

 

I drove it as hard as I dared bearing in mind that I no longer had a spare tyre. I travelled 70kms before I encountered an oncoming car. By that time I was finding cattle on the road, it was now dark and the black ones were hard to spot. Once I went between one which was standing there looking at me and another which was lying on the edge of the road chewing its cud, all the while the ABS laughing at my right foot as I delicately steered between the bovines.

 

John says that the car in question came from some 19kms west of Bellbrook, but I have to report that from the first Bellbrook sign to the village itself was probably the best part of 19kms. And in that distance yet more of the hand-carved narrow road etched itself into the hillsides, some parts of it graced with a different sign, "VERY narrow road". Many times drivers were warned not to stop because of the risk of falling rocks, occasionally with the addition of a 'Proceed with caution.'

 

A shame I made the drive as darkness was falling, I'd like to have seen more of the terrain. But all the while I was thinking just how poorly this little car with 2-wheel brakes must have been equipped for such a road, certainly at any kind of speed.

[john medley]

Ray, your observations support Ivan Saxton's reference that this was and is "billygoat country", and no place for a "FIAT S76", nor its wheels or gearing, so long ago.

 

And it wasnt a FIAT, nor did it come from Armidale or Armadale......

[Ray Bell]

Well understood, John...

 

To progress down this road in the S76 would have been a herculean task, and a very slow one that was very likely to end in tears. It's simply laughable that anyone would suggest it.

 

A lot of the country wouldn't support billy goats either. Measurable distances see rocks creeping out above the roadway, though not far, while frequently one encounters small piles of rubble under the upper inclines which are driven over because there isn't room to go around them. The 'proceed with caution signs' are prefaced with a term something like 'slip area', and I don't believe I have ever seen 'very' on a 'narrow road' sign before.

[Pat Clarke]

Ray, you can take a virtual trip along that road on Google.  I just had a look. Billygoat country indeed!

 

Pat