What is behind those mountains? What kind of roads? Would they be private? Dead ends? Too rough? These are the questions I kept asking my girlfriend every time I came up to visit her in Armidale from the Widden Valley in the Hunter, where I work as a midwife for horses.
Riding an ag bike at work, wrangling mobs of thoroughbred foals or leading a cranky mare on the bike from paddock to yards, does not feed my hunger for adventure! I’m always looking at maps to get off the beaten track.
When I found the Endeavour ‘Thunderbolt’s Escape’ ride, I was ecstatic… I couldn’t wait to see what was behind those mountains in the New England high country, following the tracks of the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt.
So, I saddled up my trusty Mothership; a BMW 2007 GS1200, held together with zip ties and duct tape, and headed up to Gloucester, where the meeting point was.
We Spaniards know our gold, and I was keen to get up and onto the dirt roads into the old gold mining towns and find out the truth about the man who preyed on the gold diggers. I also have a personal connection to him, which I later found out was more than I thought.
Kye Anderson, the owner of Endeavour, certainly delivered the thrills (and spills) I was looking for.
At the meet and greet at the bustling Roundabout Inn in Gloucester on Thursday afternoon, there were six riders signed up for three days of bushranging, and little did we know that we’d be down to five the next day. One bloke from Brisbane rolled his bike in the first hour of the first day but still managed to finish the day riding with a broken collarbone.
Kye Anderson is 27, but the rest of us were in our 50s. Endeavour can take as many as 15 riders out, but Kye prefers the smaller rides where he can deliver a more personal experience, especially when he has so much history to tell us.
Fired up Friday – 312km, Ascent 6604m
After a good night’s sleep and breakfast at Hebby’s Bakery, which even serves a Thunderbolt blend of coffee from Walcha, we headed up to the Mograni Lookout for a briefing on Bucketts Way, just a few kilometres out of Gloucester, where we admired the view over the Barrington Tops. But we had 200km to cover on the iconic Thunderbolt’s Way road (which goes from Gloucester all the way to Inverell via Uralla and Walcha) and the Great Dividing Range to conquer. Kye was keen to get us up and over as soon as possible, as he had no idea how each of us would handle the off-the-map routes through farms and national parks that only he has riding access to (his rides have the rare National Parks stamp of approval).
Not being 100% confident on gravel roads on my bigger bike (the others were on lighter 650s), I took precautions and rode at my own pace. With Kye’s cornering system, they didn’t have to wait more than five minutes for me.
Kye started his career as an international rider for KTM, testing new bikes and competing in Europe, and is now sponsored by GasGas, who supplied his bike for the Thunderbolt tour. Fred Ward (Thunderbolt’s real name) was also always after a younger, faster horse, and on his visits to the Widden Valley he stole some of the best racehorses and rode them to death.
We stopped roadside at landmarks where Thunderbolt would have taken a breather, and Kye was always ready with a historical fact that built a picture of a pretty reckless renegade and made us bikies look tame.
We hit gravel passing through the town of Nowendoc, which aptly means ‘rough ground’ in Indigenous language. I was ready for plenty more of that and was enjoying it big time. Kye tells us that in the gold rush days there was a pub at the bare lookout where we stopped and that the circus used to come to town.
Kye showed off his speed when he gunned it through forestry roads where the wallabies were barrelling by almost as fast as the timber trucks coming out of Gloucester, all we could see was a wall of chrome and flying stones. We rode on public roads through forests and the most spectacular scenery of valleys and mountains as we climbed 6600 feet into the highlands.
Lunch was catered deep in the Nundle forest with an improvised fire and a great spread of hot food that kept the energy up for ‘the road of a thousand bends’ (there is one of these in the Costa Brava of Spain too).
We made it to Nundle, an 1850s gold mining town on the Peel River less than an hour from Tamworth, and checked out the old mining site sitting right next to the road.
We got into the Econo Lodge in Tamworth at the respectable hour of 3pm. A thoughtful Endeavour touch was the valet-style service into the motel, barely had I got off the bike before I was handed the keys to the room and was relaxing on clean sheets in next to no time.
The big Saturday – 317km
This was the biggest day of riding and where we got closest to the trail of Fred, or Thunderbolt.
After breakfast, we started at the stunning Moonbi Lookout, perched on a granite rock similar to the much-graffitied boulder outside Uralla, where Thunderbolt could look over the sweeping plains to where he was going to rob next.
Outside of Tamworth, the cattle stations began and the tarmac turned to dirt as we started hitting cattle grids hard. I was having an awesome time, but I must have hit a cattle grid the wrong way on the back tyre, and Todd the sweep rider and I had to pump it back up to 40 PSI to be safe and make it to Walcha. With the tyre holding pressure out of Walcha, we carried on, but with 40 PSI the gravel spun like a coin on a mirror. We also encountered a few showers, which made the roads more challenging.
We had lunch in Uralla next to the only grave with fresh flowers. You guessed it, Thunderbolt’s… or was it? Kye told a different story. After Thunderbolt held everyone in the pub hostage, police chased him to ‘Ward’s Escape’ and shot him. But he mysteriously turned up at the Uralla races a few weeks later, leading people to believe it was his lookalike brother who was shot. Thunderbolt’s name even appeared on a passenger list for a ship to America. Sounds like a Mexican telenovela to me!
After admiring Thunderbolt’s life-size bronze statue on the main street of Uralla, we headed off to the spooky Gostwyck Church and past a giant yurt where they shear sheep around Armidale. We also admired the very full Dangar Falls. My favourite bar in Armidale is named after an Italian stuntman, Signor Vertelli, who walked across the falls on a tightrope in 1866.
That makes our assault on Thunderbolt’s cave seem easy, though it was the toughest part of the tour.
I loved the more technical terrain getting to the cave, it was the highlight of the day, though I wasn’t expecting it to be so tough. Fred holed up there with his Indigenous wife, whose tribe suggested the cave as a refuge.
Getting there got gnarly and wet, and I dropped the bike in a puddle. Yes, a puddle! My glasses fogged up inside my new Arai helmet and I couldn’t see,it was like riding with a diving mask on. I panicked and things got complicated.
I managed to clear my vision, but it was still pouring rain and the descent was sketchy. Thick scrub, deep ruts and only Todd behind me. At the bottom, I misjudged a puddle line and dropped it again. I blame the over-inflated tyres, but I wasn’t quick enough to correct it.
I reassured everyone I was fine and still wanted to reach the cave. The ride up wasn’t pretty, but joder… I nailed it.
We could have stayed in Thunderbolt’s impressively large cave, complete with fireplace and natural chimney but instead we made it to Guyra motel by 3:30pm, with plenty of time for a few cervezas.
SUNDAY Session – 314km
On the final day, our first stop was Ward’s Escape just outside Guyra. The weather was clear but cold and crisp, and I wished my heated grips were working.
Kye led us through farmland, gunning it between gates. I briefly thought we were escaping farmers, but apparently it was all above board.
After three days on Thunderbolt’s trail, I started to see the landscape differently. Instead of horses, we were riding bikes, but the sense of movement, isolation and adventure was the same.
We rode into the World Heritage-listed Guy Fawkes National Park, spotting brumbies that could well be descendants of Thunderbolt’s stolen horses.
Heading into Gindaaydjin, meaning ‘plenty of big round stones on clear plains’, we had lunch among the prehistoric rock formations of Glen Innes, their version of Stonehenge.
We finished at Mount Mackenzie lookout, one of the highest points overlooking the northern tablelands and the Boonoo Boonoo and Girraween National Parks, 1300m above sea level.
We said our goodbyes in Tenterfield at the Royal Hotel, where Thunderbolt himself may have had a drink back in the day.
Over a cerveza, I thought about my own connection to Thunderbolt in the Hunter Valley. Around 180 years ago, one of his girlfriends lived in Sandy Hollow, just 50km from my farm. He also hid out in Widden, stealing thoroughbreds from the property.
Apparently his cave is still there somewhere.
Another adventure waiting to happen.
