billrider2013

On Sunday I headed off to Thredbo with my Canberra host.

The plan was to ride our bikes from Dead Horse Gap, which is just up from Thredbo to the headwaters of the Murray River.  We drove up in one of his three 4WD’s.  Having three of such vehicle seems a bit excessive.  However, it must be remembered that the same person also has a car (not operating at the moment) and three motor bikes (BMW Sports Tourer, a classic Laverda and a trials bike).

A bit about my ride last October

It may seem as though I am cheating by getting to Thredbo by Land Rover.  I don’t feel too bad about that given that I rode from Thredbo to Canberra last October.  The route took me via Adaminaby and was part of my ride over the mountains from Wodonga via Corryong.   Both days’ rides; Thredbo to Adaminaby and then on to Canberra were fairly tough.  The ride from Adaminaby took me via Shannons Flat and the Upper Naas Valley.  This was very familiar territory in my late teens and early twenties.  I had a trail bike in those days.  The mate on the Thredbo ride and other long term mates also had trail bikes.  We rode our bikes all around the mountains surrounding Canberra, almost every weekend.

When I arrived in Adaminaby I called my mate to tell him that was heading his way the next day and to provide details of my proposed route.  His response included a suggested variation of the route:  “remember the track that heads up the hill just after you cross the border into the ACT.  If you take that track you will miss the 4WDs on the Naas Rd”.   My response was: “I don’t remember that track very well because it was nearly forty years since I was last on it”. I also had to point out that if I had an accident, he was the only one who new approximately where I was and he was only bastard who would be capable (and hopefully willing) to find me.   I ended up taking the Naas Rd.

Driving Down the Monaro Highway and Memories of Cooma

Our route to Thredbo took us down the Monaro Highway.  It has to be one of the most boring pieces of road on the planet.  I have travelled that road so many times.  One reason for travelling it is ,of course, to get to the Snowy Mountains.  I travelled on it many times to go skiing.

Another reason to travel the road was to go to Cooma.  Cooma is town of 8,000 soles, 90 klms south of Canberra.  Its claim to fame is that it is the Headquarters of the Snowy Mountains Authority (SMA) now Pacific Hydro, which was established in 1946 to build the Snowy Mountains Scheme.  The scheme was designed to turn the Snowy River from flowing eastward to the sea, back though the mountains into the Murray River which flows west and ultimately ends up in South Australia.  This diversion is performed using a series of dams and tunnels.  The water flowing through the dams and tunnels also used to generate electricity. The whole thing was, and remains, a major engineering feat on world scale.

The workers on the scheme were largely drawn from the large number of Europeans that flocked to Australia after the Second World War.  These were highly skilled and motivated men that were willing to put up will the very harsh and often dangerous conditions experienced in the construction of the dams and tunnels.  The majority of the workers were based in Cooma.

I became involved with the SMA as an Auditor with the Australian National Audit Office (ANOA) in 1980.  The SMA was one of the ANOA’s clients and my section was their auditors.  We were due to conduct the first of our ‘preliminary audits in December 1980.  Before our visit the longer members of my section told me what I could expect of the audit and the SMA.  Seemingly the most important experience was to be meeting one of the SMA Internal Audit Team.  This was very attractive girl with long blonde hair and an unusual name.

We travelled down to Cooma to start the audit on Monday on the 8^th of December.  My only recollection of the day was meeting the very attractive Internal Auditor with the unusual name.  She was of Dutch extraction, and was later to find the she shared her unusual name with her mother.  After work, my audit team and another ANOA team that were auditing a related entity  (the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation) met at the Cooma Workers Club for dinner.  After dinner we sat in the bar playing records on the Juke Box .  The two of the records that were played most were Woman and Watching the Wheels by John Lennon.  In the morning I woke to hear the news the John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York.

Two months later in February 1981, I got to know the girl will the unusual name a little better.  We did not see anything of each other after I moved back to England in July 1983.  As I write, we now speak regularly.  December 1980 only seems like yesterday.