Maiyingu Marragu

​My love affair with the Blue Mountains continues unabated as once again, when I had the opportunity to go north or south, I headed west on the Husky. I was hoping to build on the exploration work BrotherPete and I had done around Lithgow a few days before. But before I got to Lithgow, I got distracted (this seems to be happening frequently in 2016!) by the King’s Tableland sign at Wentworth Falls. The King’s tableland is a “peninsula” jutting out from the main spine of the East-West ridge of the Blue Mountains. There’s a dirt track that runs the length of the Kings Tableland plateau till its abrupt end over the cliffs at McMahons lookout. As I head down this track, I can feel the heat of the day ramping up. It’s gonna be a scorcher! 

​The track itself is quite pleasant, mostly open firetrail with some rough and steep sections. By now I’ve realized that the Husky’s rear shock is setup hard, which is excellent for aggressive supermoto action on the road but is too hard for the dirt. So I get knocked about a bit on the rough sections. Tweaking the preload is a pain because there’s so much stuff in the way. I’ll get to it one day but in the meantime, it’s a good excuse to work on my “stand up” posture. Everyone’s seen those really cool pictures of adventure riders on Enduro bike, standing up and disappearing into glorious sunsets. But when I tried this, I didn’t feel in control of the bike at all. I went to my local shop and asked them to raise the handlebars so I could stand up straighter. The mechanic, who’s an unusually honest bloke, looked at the bike and said “It’s already as high as it should be. You need some weight on the front or it’s gonna wash out without you knowing what’s going on.” He proceeded to give me tips on body position. Who says customer service and honesty is dead in Australia. Highway Performance Bikes at Rockdale, folks. Hit it. 

​Anyway, it seemed pretty straightforward when he was explaining it at the shop but it’s a different story in the real bush! You need excellent balance and stamina in the legs. Your knees should be bent while clutching the tank and this, along with your feet on the footpegs is what “holds” you on the bike. It’s the same on any type of motorcycle really.
For best control, your hold on the handlebars should be light and used only to provide directional input and “feel” what the front end’s doing, not to actually hold you to the bike. But this is much easier when you’re sitting on a road bike and you’ve got heaps of body parts in contact with heaps of bike. On a slim dirtbike with hardly any tank area, while standing, you’ve pretty much only got the inside of your knees and boots to provide any clamping area to hold you to the bike. And then you have to somehow balance while every rock you hit tries to catapult you off the bike. This dirt biking caper is not as easy as it looks! But it sure IS fun. I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. I almost certainly have really bad technique but Fuck, tell that to someone who cares. I’m having the time of my fucking life on this thing! 

I come to a tight left hander (would be a 25/35 on the road), throttle off and dab the rear brake slightly. The rear wheel skips as it searches desperately for traction. I counter-steer into the corner. The front slides, I let it. I get on the gas. The rear also slides. I let it. The thing I’m learning most from the Husky is to just let it do its thing. It knows a lot more than me out in the bush and I’m starting to trust it even when both wheels are sliding. A few minutes later I’m going down a slight decline at 50 and get air over a slight bump. In the air, I spy a sharp right hander coming up. As soon as I land, I lock up the rear brake. The bike slides and I push the right handlebar. The front slides and the bike turns sideways abruptly. The bike is at (what feels like) full lock and my right foot is out skimming the rough ground. I feel the front will wash out from under me at any second and the temptation is to stick the foot out further to break the fall. I resist this temptation, placing inordinate faith in the front TKC80. It pays a handsome return on my faith and sticks. I have just executed, what seemed like to me, a full lock speedway type manoeuvre. I’m sure it was nowhere near as dramatic but fuck, I’m stoked! I consider placing my camera at that corner and doing it again. Then I realize that the odds of me pulling that off twice out of twice are less favourable than me having a threesome with Megan Gale and Jennifer Hawkins. Twice.

This tree was split right down the middle from top to bottom by a lightning strike!

​I quit while ahead and continue on. Soon, a most interesting rock formation rises majestically from the bush. I stop and check it out. It looks like an overhanging arch of the Sydney Opera House and is most unusual in its convex, cave-like shape. It is obviously an aboriginal sacred site and would've had an appropriately meaningful name but some white guy, in his infinite wisdom, has named it Battleship Tops. You’d have to be particularly naval if the first thing that came to your mind when you beheld this rock was “battleship”. 

Oh look, a Battleship!

​But white people have plenty of form when naming things inappropriately, at least this guy tried to name it after the actual physical feature. Many other landscape features are named after totally irrelevant people or things, with total disregard for established names. Mt. Everest, for example. The local sherpas had a name for this magnificent mountain centuries before any white man laid eyes on it. A name fitting of its place at the top of the world mountain hierarchy. Chomolungma, they called it. “Mother Goddess of the Earth”. Impressive eh? But some white guy came along hundreds of years later and named it after the Surveyor General of India at the time, George Everest. Everest, who never even saw the mountain in his lifetime, himself thought the name was inappropriate and protested it. But no heed was paid, the white man’s discovery of the mountain had to be stamped on history. You can just imagine the conversation in some colonial office:
​
“Hey old chap, so how big is this mountain you’ve discovered?”
“It’s the highest mountain in the Queen’s commonwealth, Sir. Some say it’s the highest in the world!”
“Is there a name for it?”
“Yes Sir. The locals call it Chomolungma”
“Chomp a Lung what? What does it mean anyway?”
“Mother Goddess of the Earth, Sir. It’s a sacred mountain for them”
“How absurd! Bloody natives. They should stick to carrying loads up the mountain and leave the naming to us. The heathens don’t even know the Queen’s language. Send Watson a wire immediately and tell him we’re naming the mountain Everest, after that George guy, what’s his surname?”
“Everest, Sir. Yes Sir, right away Sir.”

​Lake Burragorang, created by the Warragamba dam, is the primary source of Sydney’s water supply. From McMahon’s lookout it looks absolutely stunning. A deep blue gleaming jewel framed by the hazy green background of virgin native forests. McMahons lookout is little known and at the end of a rough, 25KM long dead-end track, it’s pretty isolated. I sat with my legs dangling over the 200Metre cliff and ate my sandwich while listening to the sounds of the jungle below me. The kool kidz might’ve called it “peaceful as”. 

​I smashed it back on the dirt back to the Great Western Hwy and reached Mt Victoria where I saw the speed limit was 40 down the hill due to road works. I shouted “Fuck That” in my helmet so loudly that a cockatoo shat itself as it flew over me at that exact moment. This was, of course, much worse for me than it was for the cockatoo but I took it as a good omen anyway. I decided there must be some alternative way to descend the escarpment so I took a punt and headed down the road to Bell. Sure enough, after a couple of false starts, I stumbled onto the Hartley Vale Road (or something like that), a rough and narrow track descending sharply to the little hamlet of Hartley Vale. There were more pleasant surprises in store for me as I thoroughly enjoyed the short but fantastically twisty Browns Gap road and then took the turnoff to Hassans Walls up a speedy dirt track. Who dares, fucken wins folks and Hassans Walls was a massive Win! 

​I can’t believe I’d passed under this fantastic lookout hundreds of times and never knew of its existence. It has panoramic 270 degree views of the Blue Mountains and the southern valleys around Hampton and beyond. For a while, I just sat up there in a little cave carved out of the cliffs and gaped. I’d bypassed the shit fight of the roadworks on the highway, found a couple of fantastic alternative roads and an epic lookout along the way. I took it as a sign from the gods to keep up this exploration shit!

​I refuelled at Lithgow and hit the dirt heading up the GlowWorm road. Not too far into it, I went up a side track marked as the “Maiyingu Marragu Trail”. I laughed. I was sure this was the trail that the map said was the “Blackfellows Hands Trail”. So now, in this politically correct world, “Blackfellows Hands” was obviously not a very cool sign to have. The forestry authority, wanting to be seen doing the right thing had changed the name to an aboriginal one. Problem solved eh. We love aboriginal culture now and we like dem blackfella names too, “dey iz kool”. Now that there’s hardly a culture left anymore, it’s OK to rename and promote aboriginality. It’s a crazy world I tell ya. Doesn’t matter what you actually DO as long you’re seen to do the right thing. The forests in here have been logged to fuck. The trail is in appalling condition with massive potholes due to extensive use by heavy logging trucks. But hey, it’s the “Maiyingu Marragu Trail”. Very aboriginal eh. Everybody’s happy.

​It was hot, the road was bumpy and the fucking forestry fucks had conspired to suck all the enjoyment out of my ride. It was the low point of my day. But then the “real” gods intervened and confirmed that no matter how powerful man may think he has become, the Gods will always run the show. They revealed to me the real Maiyingu Marragu, totally unexpectedly. I was immediately struck by the spiritual aura of this place and my frustrations evaporated as I walked around in a daze of awe and wonder. 

I can easily see how this place would’ve been sacred for aboriginals. Anyone who feels a connection to this earth would unquestionably be moved by this place. It was also easy to imagine ceremonial aboriginal gatherings under the vast caves while a thunderous sky roared overhead and waterfalls poured off the cliffs around them. I will not try to describe Maiyingu Marragu but encourage you to make the effort to find and explore it yourself. Try not to be a dickhead when you’re there but. You wouldn’t want an idiot spraying graffiti inside your church or ancestral home would you? 

​While that was the unexpected highlight of my day, the Wolgan Valley that came next was a pretty close second.

​The Wolgan Valley reminds one of the age of dinosaurs. Its grand scale and primeval landscape of forests and cliffs seem much more plausible in imagination than reality. 

​A newly sealed road goes all the way to the ultra-luxurious Emirates Resort, where you can get a 2000$ a night room. Or you could continue on the dirt road to Newnes and camp under the cliffs and stars for sweet fuck all. 

​It’s reassuring that despite rampant commercialisation, there are still amazing experiences to be had in this grand country, for free. Long may it stay that way! Newnes was once a bustling mining town and it has an interesting history that is worth looking up on the internet. It’s now an isolated and dusty end of road shack, with a population of 2. The proprietor of the Newnes Hotel and his dog. It’s an ideal place to hide from the world, or your wife. The Newnes Hotel proprieter, lounging on the front verandah, asked me to get my own drink out of the fridge behind the counter because it was “too fucking hot to move”. 

I asked him if there was a pool in the river where I could cool off but he was pessimistic on my chances of finding one in the shallow river. Undeterred, I crossed the river and poked around the ruins of Newnes for a bit and then stalked the river till I found some rapids and a little pool, just deep enough to lay in. The water was crystal clear and I let the river wash over me.

That dip set me up nicely for the run back home, which I accomplished in record time and glowing spirits, bypassing the roadworks after Lithgow again. I re-fuelled the Husky at Penrith after 280KM on a single tank. It only has a 12L tank. I love this bike more everytime I ride it! Might have to do a full on review. It deserves one.

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