We agree to meet at The Local to start the day, because it has the ideal combination of being open early and boasting the best coffee in town
Maybe there’s something in the water up here. The Northern Tablelands is undeniably beautiful country, with generally very agreeable weather, but there’s something else that clearly has a pull on people.
Having only recently been clued into the superb riding on offer in the New England region, I’ve been looking for any opportunity to explore more of its northern reaches by bike. With a 100km loop mapped out and gravel rigs bolted to the roof, my friend Zoe and I made the seven-hour drive north from Sydney to Glen Innes, up Thunderbolts Way in unrelentingly torrential rain, seeking car-free roads and champagne surfaces. We had no trouble at all finding those, but we were also lucky enough to meet an incredible group of locals who, as we discovered, all had something remarkable in common: they weren’t originally from here.
The Ngoorabul people have been connected to the land around Glen Innes for thousands of generations, but in the last 150 years the area has attracted Scottish, Irish, Cornish and Welsh settlers and, even more recently, our riding companions for the weekend. So what is it that would make so many people pull up stumps and head almost to the Queensland border to make a new home? It barely took a pedal stroke to begin to understand just what that might be.
Just like a chocolate milkshake
The gradually rising chimes and buzzing vibration of my phone alarm wake me up, and I’m relieved to say the least. After driving through some of the
