Almanac Life: A new motorbike, wild and woolly weather, and an errant B Double.

June 27, 2025 by Stan Kluzek 1 Comment

I have driven or ridden the journey between Bendigo and Colac hundreds of times. Today’s (25/06/2025) journey rates as one of the most challenging journeys. I have probably ridden my motorbike in more treacherous conditions, but the sum total of today’s journey rate it pretty high in significance.

So I left Bendigo East, with pretty well clear skies all round, at about 9:30am. I knew the weather forecast was for 90% chance of rain, but I thought I had got lucky with the skies being so clear. I had visions of going via Ararat, to catch up with a friend. I stopped off at Quarry Hill (Bendigo) to catch up with another friend for an hour or so.

When I came out to my bike, the skies looked rather threatening, so I shelved the plan to go to Ararat, and headed for my normal route to Colac.

No problems. Although the temperature was a balmy 7°C, I had the luxury of plenty of heated clothing. There was a heavy drizzle by the time I got to Lockwood South, so I donned a raincoat over my motorcycle clothing. Resuming my journey, I felt quite snug, even smug, as I enjoyed my ride through little towns such as Maldon and Newstead. The rain had not become more than a few intermittent light showers.

Towards Smeaton, the weather took a major turn, and became quite wet and very windy. The rain was not a challenge, not the air temperature that had now dropped to 5°C. It was the wind gusts, that kept challenging me to keep the bike heading straight down the road. The wind had other ideas of blowing me clean off the road. Many times I had to lean the bike into the wind.

At Creswick I stopped for lunch at Meg’s Café. A great spot with the most courteous staff. A bowl of pumpkin soup with a cheese toasty and a cup of coffee. Also a borrowed piece of cardboard to keep my motorbike seat dry, while I was having lunch.

Back on the road to Ballarat, where the temperature did not move away from the previous 5°C. Onward through Ballarat and Napoleons. The sky to the south was a very dark shade of grey. I thought “This is interesting, is it going to snow?”

As I approached the little bush hamlet of Enfield, the rain turned to hail and the air temperature dropped to 3.5°C. Wow, I can’t ever remember riding in conditions where the temperature was that low. Again, I coped okay with this, and kept to a speed that was conducive with the conditions.

Leaving Enfield I notice the air temperature had improved to 5°C, but I was a little puzzled about the surface of the road. Initially I really could not process what had changed about the road surface. Then the lightbulb moment connected. Over the surface of the bitumen, was particles of ice, either in the form of hailstones or snow. I reduced my speed again. I wanted to stop to take a photo, but thought better in the treacherous road conditions. A police car overtook me, and I guess they may have thought, that I was being very sensible with my road speed, but I was still a nut case to be on a motorcycle in these conditions.

The ice on the road cleared by the time I got to Dereel. The next town would be Rokewood. There is a huge wind farm being constructed near Rokewood, supposedly the largest in Australia. The road through to Colac consequently has many speed restrictions. It was still raining reasonably heavy, but nothing I could not cope with. It was the wind that I had to be very aware of. Sitting on the speed limit of 80 km/hr, I was aware of a couple of vehicles behind me. A small car had to exceed the speed limit to overtake me, and I thought very little of it. However, the second vehicle was a large empty B-double truck and it overtook me also. A huge plume of water from the overtaking truck engulfed me. My thoughts turned a little black and I thought how dangerous this was. The truck had exceeded the speed limit and had nearly blown me off the road with water in the process.

I did try to pursue the truck, as I did notice that it was inclined to veer over to the righthand lane on many occasions. I wanted to do a community service and get his number plate and at least report him to someone in authority. However, his speed was too excessive for me to get close enough. Even through the small towns of Cressy and Beeac, I noticed that he was well over the speed limit of those towns.

Finally, my pursuit ended when I had to stop at a railway crossing, that the truck had managed to get through. It was then that I realised that I had used a lot of emotional and physical energy on a perilous pursuit. How stupid was I, having for three quarters of my journey ridden both sensible and cautious. I was more cross with myself than the dangerous truckdriver.

So I arrived in Colac safely. I’ll put this ride down as one that belongs in my top five most challenging rides. The other rides are another story, and I really don’t need to have a top ten.