Update: Departing from Hungry Jacks at Tuggerah at 9:00am
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Only 1,667 km – about 21 hours 49 mins at the speed limit over 4 days (400kms a day)
Premise of this direction for the ride is that it will/may be warmer and drier than heading down South West. We’ll see what the Big Fella has in store for us.
A-B Day 1, Bikes will depart on Friday 11th July at 9am from Sparks Road Carpark and head to Burren Junction (maybe Narrabri if we are knackered) by a route to be argued over.
B-C Day 2, Saturday 12th July will be riding to the back of Bourke and maybe finally seeing the ‘Black Stump’ if Brizzer doesn’t wave us on past it 🙂
C-D Day 3, Sunday 13th July will be riding down to the beautiful country city of Dubbo for an overnight stay.
D-E Day 4, Monday 14th July will enjoy the ride home.
This is not a sewage treatment plant OR a horse exercising pool, it is the luxurious Burren Junction Bore.
THE BLACK STUMP (We may never see it)
Beyond the black stump is a favourite old Aussie saying.It basically means beyond the back blocks, far off in the backcountry, far from civilization.
Like other early Aussie sayings such as never-never country and beyond the Wallaby, beyond the black stump was an attempt to describe and give a sense of place, to what many believed was indescribable – those endless plains of inland Australia. And when people use the term two questions always arise; is there a black stump? And if there is, where is it? Well there is a black stump, and you can find its remains at Blackall in central Queensland, over 1000 kilometres west of Brisbane.
The saying came about after a group of surveyors arrived on Astro station near Blackall, in 1887. The surveyors used a blackened tree stump as the base for their measuring equipment. The equipment was so large the tree stump was the most secure base around. The surveyors were at Astro station to take longitudinal and latitudinal observations, which were to be used in the accurate mapping of inland Australia. From there they were able to fix the position of all the major towns of southern Queensland.
Before long people considered anything west of Blackall to be – beyond the black stump
Brizzer’s Grandchild number 3. Olivia Amy Louise Caldwell (Looie)
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