Wednesday 14th Dec Creswick / Redwoods ride

Ride leader and report: Jules Pearce


Pics: Jules and Stan Kluzek

I awoke around 6.00am to the sound of rain hammering down on my roof. As so often has been the case this year, this was the weather being dealt up for a Club ride. I wondered to myself just how many people would show up as the forecast for the rest of the day wasn’t very appealing for motorcycling.
As it turned out there were a few hardy souls who were up for a run to check out some more giant Californian Redwood trees and take in the sights of the greater Creswick area. And although the weather was a very long way from the near perfect conditions of the prior Saturday when I did the recce ride, the nine on motorcycles and Geoff in his car still had quite a good day out despite the odd passing shower and some strong side winds on the ride home. 



We headed to Ballan via Anakie for morning tea and then took the Old Melbourne Road to Gordon, Wallace and then proceeded via a labyrinth of narrow backroads to Mollongghip, with only one minor navigational error. You’ve probably never heard of Mollongghip because there’s not much there except some plantations of various trees of which the stand of Californian Redwoods (Sequoia Sempervirens) was a focus for this ride. 






It’s a bit of a stroll to get to the trees but everyone was good natured about it and came along to check them out. Although not as old or impressive as the Otway’s Redwoods they are still significant and this plantation is one of only three in Victoria. They are magnificent trees and although ours are less than 100 years old, in California there are individual trees that are up to 2,000 years of age and are amongst the tallest known trees in the world. My fascination with these Redwoods stems from camping at the Aire Valley plantation as a kid and visiting the ‘Avenue of Giants’ in northern California in 2010.



Arty pic courtesy of Stan K.



I'm becoming a 'tree hugger' late in life!






Tis the season ... there was a large holly bush there as well.

From Mollongghip we headed to Creswick via Dean in some light, drizzly rain that didn’t last long. We had a hearty (but probably not healthy) lunch at the bakery and my mate Rob who has a place nearby at Kingston joined us.


After lunch we fueled up the bikes and headed to Pootilla, Warrenheip to Bunninyong and then headed for home via Mount Mercer, Shelford and finished the ride at Inverleigh. Despite a hell of a lot of rain in the 24 hours prior and a pretty crappy weather forecast we actually had a pretty decent day of motorcycling.


Thanks to Stan for TEC duties and for the loan of his book ‘The Redwoods of the Otway Ranges’ by Roger Smith.



Below: Pic of a living Sequoia that is a tourist attraction in Northern California. (I took this pic in 2010). 

More brave souls against the wind the rain and the cold. It looks remarkably dry in the pics. I'm still recovering from another two weeks of the lurgie.