Day 2 & 3 : Gloucester – Port Macquarie – Byron Bay

The Day #2 turned out to be rather eventful for us. First, we were not going to take the fastest route to reach the destination for the day, i.e., Port Macquarie. The highway route from Gloucester to Port Macquarie is about 150 kilometers and about 2 hours. But then we were here to take the longer scenic route whenever we could.

We were told to take the Oxley Highway, Thunderbolts Way by a lot of riders here and going by the conviction with which they were suggesting us to take this route, we could imagine that this is going to be something special. And special it was. And though it increased the distance to be covered for the day by a substantial distance, it was worth every second spent riding there. This highway, like the Putty Road, is the favorite hangout zone for bikers from nearby areas.The whole route is very beautiful and what you get is an endless saga of high-speed twists and turns.

Another highlight of the day was meeting Leura Kowald in Walcha over a cup of coffee at the Walcha Royal Cafe. This cafe is run by motorcycle enthusiasts themselves and is a must visit if you are doing that circuit. And Leura is a motorcyclist from Armidale, NSW who had ridden all the way to Walcha to say hello us.

She rides a Honda CBR 600RR and when not thrashing around the Honda 150 at her neighborhood race track, she can be found roadtripping in India. And that girl can ride! She can give riders a good run for their money on the twisties of the Oxley highway. We rode with her for some 100 kilometers while on our way to Port Macquarie. She also goes by the name of HippieChick on the worldwide web and her FB page can be found here

The next morning, Day #3 of #powerTrip360, was spent at the Lighthouse Beach of Port Macquarie where we met a gentleman who thought that the Boblbee backpacks on our back were some sort of Jet packs or personal flying device. Can’t blame him for it though. These backpacks, especially the one in Chrome, look something straight out of a sci-fi movie. There is a lot more to be done at Port Macquarie than what we could manage, but on a roadtrip like this time has always been the scarcely available commodity and we were already struggling with the after effects of a late start of the day.

So there was no choice but to push towards our destination of the day – Byron Bay (that rhyming was purely unintentional, trust me!) Byron Bay is another popular tourist destination known for its beaches, scuba diving, and surfing sites. Due to the paucity of time, we stuck to the motorway route to Byron Bay and were instantly rewarded with boredom that comes as part of highway riding package. More so, because reduced speed limits were imposed at many places throughout the route due do road work. But that got us to Byron Bay much faster and we called it a day but not before bumping into Captain Behl at a petrol station. Captain Behl is a biker/sailor and is from Delhi. He was enjoying his holidays, riding around on a Harley Davidson on the Brisbane-Gold Coast route for a couple of days before heading home.