The Long Way Euround – Day 1: The Upper Murray

Today was the first day of my annual Classic Mercedes road trip – The Long Way Euround.   While the major event that anchors the trip is the Australian National Show and Shine in Euroa, it is more about the trip than the destination.   I’ve previously covered the plan for the six days of the event.

We started our road trip in Bathurst.  Trying to get out of Sydney on the first morning would have wasted hours.  The idea was everyone was to make their own way to Bathurst the night before as an unofficial Day 0.   I was the last to arrive and it was quite foggy and wet getting out of Sydney, which made the drive rather slow.

This morning, the weather was much better and our convoy of 10 Classic Mercedes rolled out of Bathurst at 6:30AM.  Our first destination was Young via the Olympic Highway, where we had a rather nice breakfast at a local Bakery.   On the way to Young, we passed through the towns of Blayney and Cowra.   The Terrain was mostly gentle rolling hills.   It has been quite a wet year this year, so the countryside was very green, and there was quite nice varieties of colour as we drove along.  All the cars were running well, and it was cool but not super cold.

From Young, we continued along the Olympic Highway to Cootamundra, where the terrain was similar.   At Cootamundra, we turned off the Olympic Highway and turned south towards Gundagai   The normal way to travel to Gundagai from here would be to head down to the M31 Hume Motorway and then head into Gundagai.   On this trip, we’re trying to avoid motorways, so we took a back road through Burra Creek.

The road through Burra creek was very narrow and windy, but it was a really good driving road with minimal traffic.   The weather was warming up and I think everyone enjoyed taking their cars on this back road.    From there, we arrived in Gundagai and lined the 10 cars up in front of the old Railway station.

From Gundagai, we headed south towards the outskirts of Tumut.   This road was also very good and had some great changes of elevation and some nice bends.   At Tumut, headed towards Tumbarumba.  This section overlapped with Day 2 of the Concours run from last year.   We filled up at Tumbarumba, and I had used around 55 liters in my 450SLC to cover 390km.  I thought this would be among the worst of the convoy – but I was wrong.   The 500SL managed to use 58l, the 380SEC was similar and the 280S and 280SE 3.5 W108s were closer to 60.   Meanwhile the W124s were the milage superstars with the 300CE only using 35 liters for the same distance.

From Tumbarumba, we left the road we used last year and headed west towards Jingellic.  The road here was similar to what we experienced from Gundagai to Tumut and it was an enjoyable drive.    From Jingellic, we crossed into Victoria and drove along the south side of the Murray River.   The Murray River road was a revelation.  We followed it for quite a long time, past Granya, along lake Hume until crossing back into NSW at Bethanga Bridge.

Driving this road was the highlight of the day, and I suspect will end up being one of the highlights of the trip.   The road follows the river, but is elevated, and the views are amazing.   The road is also great to drive on, twisting and turning with the river, some corners tight, some sweeping and huge fun at legal speeds.

I got rather enthusiastic with these corners in my 450SLC and managed to break both of my rear exhaust hangers.   Luckily, one of the other guys had some spare hose clamps which have become makeshift metal exhaust hangers.   So far they are working very well.    Along this road we also stopped at a couple of lookouts which had amazing views.

After we crossed the bridge, we had to pick our way through Albury.  We lost a couple of the cars in the convoy, which were funneled onto the M31.

The rest of of kept going towards Howlong, before heading back into Victoria for the final push to Cobram where we are staying.   This road was fairly flat and straight.  While it was interesting to see things like the olive groves along the way, there was no comparison to the Murray River Road.

We arrived in Cobram about 6:30PM, where we were reunited with two of our lost vehicles, the final one not arriving until about 7:45PM.   We refueled at the end of the day and I had used 15L per 100km, similar to my previous tank.   After checking into our hotel we had nice meal at a local pub.

We covered around 675 km today.   Losing three cars was not ideal, but we managed to find them in the end.   The roads were excellent, the cars all ran well and we all enjoyed our day.