G'day everyone, just spent a week up in the sun at Cairns with the wife and kids - was fantastic. Anyway, wife wanted to go snorkelling out on the reef with the kids and I somehow managed to convince her to let me hire a bike for the day and she and the kids go without me as I get quite bad sea sickness, so I went to Cairns Eaglerider and hired a 2014 Streetglide from Ross (top bloke) and covered 450kms in the day,mostly easy riding but a couple of one lane country roads also - they keep you on your toes

Anyway, headed south out of Cairns towards Innisfail and turned right at the East Palmerston Hwy and headed up to the tablelands, did the waterfall loop which had some beautiful backpackers - woops mean waterfalls, then out to Ravenshoe (highest pub in Qld) and into Atherton, checked out Lake Tinaroo then headed back towards Malanda. Well the road going from Malanda to Gordonsvale (20" out of Cairns) - Gillies Range Rd - has a section that has approx. 263 turns over 18k's with an 800mt decent! Nice quick turns too, literally turn, straighten, turn all the way down. I was going to try and count the corners, but fekk me I was concentrating that much I lost count after 12 or so, so looked it up in the brochure in the room?  when I got back. I should have done it in reverse in hindsight, but I wanted to squirt up to Kuranda while there was still plenty of light.

All in all, a fantastic day, even if I was 'Nigel no friends' I was riding a Streetglide (which I have been hassling the missus about for 2 odd yrs) going thru some beautiful countryside and enjoying some great roads.The bike was fantastic to ride, so smooth, awesome brakes (didn't realise how poor my Fatboys were) the cruise control was cool to use and the radio was enlightening - don't know how many people heard me singing as I was going by .

Highly recommend the general route to anyone heading up that way if you get the opportunity.

 

cheers

DocGreen

Going up the Gillies Range is a great ride and the Mountain View Hotel has a good lunch (beer), hope you got the chance to shoot up to
Port Douglas, if you didn't you missed a great road.

Agree mickle, but having driven the road to Port Dougy a couple of times before, I decided I wanted to see a few different areas around Cairns and I only had the bike for the day - but hey we enjoyed the week so much it may happen again next year, so I'll give the Port Douglas road a run then hopefully.

DocGreen

Nice work incorporating that ride into the family break, onya Doc.

G'day Doc ,,, Looks like you had a great day riding up north .... But I gota say ,,, "no pics , and it did'nt happen"...

I was up & around that way many many years ago it really is Beautiful, & given how wet & cold it is around the Illawara I think you timed it nicely .

Thanks gents,yeah the wife did well organising the trip up north as I reckon we dodged the worst of the weather back home, and had absolutely cracking weather in Cairns.

Only managed to get a couple of pic's - too busy riding  but will try and post one or two when I get them off the camera.? ?

DocGreen

 

Good write up about a part of the world I used to know well. Beautiful spot up the Atherton Tablelands! How's the road surface on the Gillies and Kuranda Doc? The Kuranda range used to be so smooth and sticky, that it was an insult to the road not to go flat out...

JFE, both roads were perfect, one short section on the Gillies Range Rd that had been resurfaced recently so was a bit slippery, but otherwise great. I did do the road from Milla Milla (I think) to Ravenshoe and mate that was not good - single lane for a fair whack of it with no real visibility around the next bend - luckily most cars I met were happy to drop a wheel off the road as I certainly wasn't going to, but overall the roads were great.

DocGreen