THE EAGLE SOARS – A grand tour on the Moto Guzzi V100 Mandello S

You’ve got to love a ride that offers you the tale of a headless corpse, a haunted pub, a missing man,
a world of cheese, and some truly epic roads.

“Well, the highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kidding nobody about where it goes
I’m sitting down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad”

Bruce Springsteen

Only two bike manufacturers fly with the eagle. There’s the big American concern, and all its eagle totems are either screaming or plummeting from the sky to catch rats. But Moto Guzzi’s eagle soars. Its wings are outstretched, like it’s catching the updraughts swirling around the Dolomites.

On the Mandello S, this soaring eagle can be seen in its daytime running light, which is a very cool touch on what I have said is the best Moto Guzzi ever made. That was my unequivocal position when I attended the press launch last year.

But while press launches can certainly give you a good idea of what’s what on a new model, nothing beats putting some serious miles under a bike’s wheels.

And after having spent three days and some 1400km (give or take) on a Mandello S riding some crazy good, crazy awful, and crazy beautiful roads, I still believe it to be the best Moto Guzzi ever made. And I have a tale I wish to tell…

I planned this trip like I plan my life, ie. With little regard for anything but seeing something new, and maybe reconnecting with places and roads that have captivated me in the past. Australia, being the big-arse bastard that it is, always has lots of new things for me to look at, while also ensuring I have to travel goodly distances to get anywhere to see anything.

This drives many non-Australian bikers insane. They begin gibbering and trembling at the sheer vastness of the place. No, it’s not like Europe where you can ride through five countries in five hours. I can’t even ride out of my state in that time. In this case, I had to ride from Singleton to Melbourne and return the Mandello to PS Importers. I had three days to do it in. So, I stared at the map for maybe thirty seconds, went “First night in Merimbula, second night in Marlo”, then worked out the bits in-between.

I had never been to either place. And I also planned my route with the Mandello very much in mind. It’s a Guzzi, so bulk twisties had to be a thing. It’s a sports tourer, so belting it along some iffy and changeable surfaces also needed to be a thing, and we have lots of those in Australia, so no biggie there. And there needed to be long stretches in the saddle to see how the Mandello S measured up in terms of comfort.

I ended up with all that, and as an added bonus I also got a mysterious murder, a family decapitation, a bar-dwelling ghost, some rogue cows, and a strategically deposited pile of human excrement I got to stand in.

Riding down the east coast of Australia south of Sydney is a chore. But a very pretty one. The scenery is lovely, and you will get to see a lot of it because you’re never quite going fast enough to miss it. Once you’re south of Wollongong, the freeway ends and the old Highway 1 takes over with its myriad little towns and speed limit changes. You no sooner get your groove on than you’re being slowed to 60 and then 50, and the Filth is ever present to ensure fiduciary compliance.

I had initially strapped my backpack to the rear seat of the Mandello S, but that wasn’t working out. You can get luggage fitted to it if you’re gonna tour, but strapping bags to it is a challenge. I managed, utilising Andy Strapz, the grab rails and rear-footpeg mounts, but all that did was drag the backpack forward into my spine after the first ten minutes. So, the backpack was shouldered at the first petrol stop, and I motored on.

There is a lot of cheese going on south of Nowra. This is the stunningly green Eurobodalla Shire and it’s filled with happy fatso cows. It is the home of Bega cheese, but while I am a fan of cheese, I am not a fan of the many cheesy (pardon the pun) tourist venues dedicated to en-cheesing the traveller on his way down south.

But cheese is big money, and it shows. Many of the towns on the south coast have become rather gentrified in recent times. Sure, Ulladulla is still a dire shithole, and Mogo is still a strange little town trying its hippyness on, but once you get south of stunning Moruya, you’ll start to see hipster eateries, boutique breweries, and loads of puffer jackets.

None of that works for me. I stopped at some crappy servo in Tabourie and ate a sausage roll. It reminded me of the late and great Ken Wootton, the last serious editor of AMCN, who existed on servo food for most of his adult life.

He was also, as regular readers will recall, the bloke who lost my bag off the back of the bike he was riding, and left me in the clothes I was riding in for three days, bereft of a big bag of weed, my favourite Hawaiian shirt, and a flash pair of sunnies. Which is so not the way to endure snow-blocked roads and the savage sexual assault of a snap-frozen shower curtain which kissed my naked bum as I sought to warm my tired bones, before retiring to attempt sleep in a meat locker out the back of Tintaldra pub. It was in his honour and to his memory I ate that awful sausage roll.

I had been on the Mandello S for six hours now. I was getting awesome fuel economy. It’s simple to get more than 300 out of a tank, and what was more surprising was I was not at all sore. The ergos are spot-on for doing big miles. The seat is great, the wind protection is minimal but obvious, and while the “active aero” exists, it really does nothing I could notice in terms of reducing wind on my thighs.

I’d mentioned this in my launch review. There are two hand-sized sections on either side of the petrol tank which rise up, as on the wings of eagles, when you reach a certain speed (and this speed can be set by you if the 100km/h standard setting is not to your taste), and are meant to deflect 20-odd per cent of the wind from your mighty thighs. I could not notice the promised effect, but felt this aero was a very cool thing anyway. I greatly enjoyed watching the sections extend and retract as I rode along. But I quickly realised I needed to watch what I was doing rather than gawking at the flaps.

On this occasion, I’d turned the gimmick off before I left home. And I was really enjoying the Mandello S and its ease of operation. It’s not going to tear your head off, but it’s quite eager when you want it to be. I’d lashed out a few times after passing an oncoming Filth Patrol, figuring I may have some Filth-free miles ahead. Traffic was light and there are some lovely bends on Highway One.

I applied myself a little and the Mandello soared with aplomb. It really is a sweet-handling bike. As if Moto Guzzi has ever built a bike that doesn’t handle, right? Sure, in the bad old days its bikes did many strange things that enhanced their so-called “character”. And while they offered owners many false neutrals, half-gears, sideways lurches on downshifts, and the odd fragrant smoke coming from the wiring loom, they all handled amazingly well.

Those bad old days are gone. The Mandello S is still quite the Guzzi at its core. That transverse V-twin donk and shaft-drive combo is still unique upon this earth, but it now makes its Guzzi magic without you needing to call for priests to exorcise its salami-demons,

And while The Mandello S may give away some horses to its competition (it makes 115 horsepower and 105Nm torque at 6750 rpm), it really bangs much more willingly than you’d first think. And it does this without making unseemly demands on the rider in terms of comfort or ease of use.

It also comes with a quickshifter, which really likes it when you load it, and does not enjoy being used at low speeds because you’re too lazy to use the clutch. It comes into its own when you get on it a bit. Just load it and shoot, pilgrim – that semi-active Öhlins suspension always has your back.

I rode into Merimbula full of curiosity, for I had never been. This was the Sapphire Coast of NSW. And it does not get its name from dreadful sapphire mines full of slaves scrabbling for that gorgeous gem. The name comes from the colour of the waters – and they are stunning.

Merimbula sits on the shores of an estuary called Lake Merimbula – so it’s not really a lake at all. It’s fed by two creeks, Boggy and Bald Hills, and the waters are graced with oyster farms. But there’s another actual lake, Black Lake, just to the north, which is how the town gets its name from an Aboriginal word meaning “two lakes”. Interestingly, it was originally a “private town” owned by the Two Fold Bay Pastoral Association. It had acquired the land from the Walker brothers, who had themselves acquired it from the Imlay family. Historical records only mention the original inhabitants, the Yuin people, as being “displaced” by white settlers, but that invariably means murdered, ridden down, and hounded out of the area. Which is how the British Empire has always civilised the savages it encountered.

I checked into the Sea Spray Motel which disappointed by not being lashed with wild waves as it perched at the edge of a restless sea (it’s up the hill from the centre of town), but delighted me by being friendly, clean, nice-smelling, and boasting superb water pressure out of its shower. Nothing worse than having hot water despondently oozing on you after a long ride. I need it to hammer the road out of me.

I walked down the hill into the town centre and immediately found my dinner spot. The Umi-Ko Izakaya restaurant lashed me with sashimi, octopus, and gyoza, and some weird beer I didn’t mind. I’m on the coast. The seafood has to be great, right? Location is everything when you’re eating. Only idiots and former mates of mine order prawns in Balranald. The sashimi was so good I almost went off the reservation and began ordering big party platters of it. The only thing that stopped me the consternation that would flood the soul of Chris ‘Sheepdog’ Harris at PS Importers, when he beheld an invoice for $988, while I patiently explained that quality tuna, salmon, and kingfish is not cheap and must be consumed with nine beers and a well-mannered cognac.

I walked my dinner off strolling around town. The evening was warm, the air fresh, and some very hot girls in criminally short pleated tennis skirts were doing a Tik Tok video outside Dulcie’s Cottage on Main Street. No, I did not photograph them because it would be hard to explain such an act a magistrate. I merely watched discreetly, approved internally, had a few beers at the RSL, and went back to my digs.

The following morning it was no longer warm and I was heading into even cooler climes. First, the legendary Mount Darragh Road needed to be assayed again – it had been a while – and I had to go into Pambula to get on that road. Pambula is the smaller town immediately south of Merimbula, and is maybe even prettier. Its estuarine beaches are quite lovely when they are deserted. I can only imagine the nightmare they become when holiday crowds descend upon them.

The Darragh Mountain Road is also quite lovely when it’s deserted and it winds its way inland and uphill in a series of challenging bends the Mandello was made for. The surface is not glorious and you need to keep your wits about you to avoid potholes and random gravelly patches. Do it. It’s worth it.

You’ll end up in Wyndham, a tiny little town full of hermits, artists, musicians, and shamans, where you’ll also find the Robbie Burns Hotel. Robbie, or “Rabbie” as he is known in Scotland, is the revered national poet of that country. He wrote Auld Lang Syne. He also wrote many poems, chief among them being Address To A Haggis, which starts:

“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe or thairm:

Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.”

I mean, what else would you say to a sheep’s stomach packed with offal?

The hotel was closed when I hit Wyndham early that morning, but you should check it out if you have a chance. It was built in the early 1650s by another Robbie, one Robert Turbet. He’d been shipped to Australia in 1849 after being found guilty of stealing, and here he met 16-year-old Mary Peacock, an orphan of the Irish Potato Famine. Together they had 13 children and built the pub which stayed in the family until 1959. It’s now owned by a lady called Katie, I am told, and there was a late model Triumph parked under the verandah out the front that morning. So Katie may well be amenable to visiting motorcyclists.

It was about six degrees when I arrived in wind-blown Bombala. I had a brief coffee, chased one of my escaped gloves up the road after the wind caught it, then hammered off to Delegate and the start of the legendary Bonang Road.

If you have not ridden the Bonang, you must remedy this. It used to be all dirt, then it was partially sealed, and now it is completely sealed. And the last 50-odd km into Cann River are simply divine. I had previously ridden it when it was partially sealed, and it was great then. It’s astonishing now.

But it will kill you like a crazed animal if you get ahead of yourself. It’s isolated and largely deserted during the week. I encountered three cars along its entire 125km length. I also encountered what the Bonang is famous for – leaf litter, errant sticks, the odd wallaby, and a surface that varied from great, to good, to “Oh, my…” to “Piss off!” in less than a kilometre. But the last 50, as I said, was more than worth the price of admission.

I stopped about two-thirds of the way along at a small rest area. It even had a picnic table and a burbling brook, sadly obscured by weeds. As I was taking a picture of the Mandello S at rest, I realised some disgusting twat had taken a shit right next to the picnic table, and I was standing in his efforts.

There was no toilet paper evident, which might have warned me. And I was wondering what kind of gronk would back out his business in just that place. Did he need to brace himself against the table? No toilet paper? No attempt to even chuck some soil on your filth?

I walked around, hating humanity while scraping shit off my boot, which is when I saw the poster of the missing man nailed high on the trunk of a tree.

John Swiety, 57, had disappeared off the face of the earth in March of 2023 on the Bonang. His two small dogs were found wandering near the road a while later and his white Hiace van was found near Goongerah, which is also on the Bonang. He’d left Morwell with another man and was never seen again. Police reckon he was the victim of “foul play”, but because he is not cute blonde girl with wealthy parents and a fat Insta account, I’ll bet good money the cops aren’t staying up nights trying to find what happened to John.

The small poster, nailed high on a tree, and a few sentences on the Vicpol page is all that remains of this man.

Thankfully, what remained of the Bonang required lots of concentration, and here is where the Mandello S and I really came to grips with each other. Fifty kilometres of relentless corners, changes in elevation, a superb surface, and a bike that just puts it all together in a satisfying, hassle-free way is that little bit of magic that feeds us all, is it not?

Orbost was warm when I arrived. I fuelled up and set off for Marlo, which was not all that far, and was to be my stop for the night.

Marlo is where the Snowy River enters the sea. The run from Orbost to Marlo parallels the river, and you can really get a wiggle on here. It’s all big commercial dairy farms on your left, river on your right, then just before you enter Marlo, massive wetlands take the place of the river. The dairy farms remain, and suddenly I came upon a line of stopped traffic.

A bunch of cars had been blocked by a small herd of cows. The cows were immobile, and so were the cars. It was a gun-free Mexican standoff – swollen udders versus SUVs full of fat people.

I idled to the front of the line and as the cows saw me, they began to move on down the road, except for one crazed Bessie who belted off into the wetlands like a rogue bison. This herding went on for about a kilometre – me idling along, the cows fast-walking ahead of me before they all suddenly encountered a little old lady in floral gumboots standing in the middle of the road with her arms spread.

The cows moved off to the left and stopped in front a closed gate. I turned off my bike and awaited developments. The little old lady came closer and asked if I wouldn’t mind opening the gate so the girls could return to their paddock.

“No problem,” I said. I got off the bike, squelched through some boggy ground, pushed some heifers to the side and opened the gate. The cows all moved through like we’d rehearsed it. The old lady was very grateful.

“Thank you so much,” the old lady said. “You look frightening but you’re a good man.”

“Please don’t tell anyone,” I said. “By the way, one of your cows has run off into the swamp back there.”

“Oh, she’ll come to her senses when its milking time,” the old lady smiled.

Marlo was only three kays up the road, and I didn’t even get into top gear before I pulled up in front of the pub, which sits on a grassy knoll with the entire Southern Ocean behind it. It’s a hell of a view.

And it’s a hell of a pub. An ex-submariner named Paul, and bike-riding lady who follows me on Facebook called Cat, manage the place. They’re not a couple, but they are a great team, and the pub has both superb accommodation and a restaurant most worthy of the name.

My room was at the back of the pub, and it was a spotless and very modern two-story affair with a verandah. I dumped my stuff and went to pleasure myself with beer. It was a gentle, golden afternoon, and Paul and I got to talking, while Cat, very helpfully, went to find me some duct tape so I could fix the blinker some dick had broken on the Mandello in Merimbula. I’d only noticed it dangling when I got to Orbost. I think the bloke who’d parked very close to me in the Sea Spray Motel in Merimbula had jagged it with his leg when he was getting out of his car and figured he’d best not tell me because it might have ruined his week. He was certainly right in that regard. But I could have done with his cash and credit cards, because what’s an apology without actual amends?

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AY-SKHUHL – CHAPTER TWO (PART B) ROUGH DRAFT

25 February 20210

Over a brace of beers, Paul told me a bit about the Marlo Hotel. It was once owned by the Sterling family, some of whose family pictures still hang on the walls inside.

“Interesting family,” Paul explained, pointing to a young man in one of the photos. “One of their sons, this one, I think, was beheaded by the Japanese in New Guinea.”

It was one of the first five pubs to get a liquor license in Victoria, and before it was a pub it had been a mortuary, a way-station, courthouse, and a lookout post for the Royal Australian Navy. In fact, the room I was staying in, the Tower Room, was the actual lookout post that kept an eye on any possible Japanese invasions during WWII.

“And it also has a ghost,” Paul smiled.

“Have you seen this ghost?” I asked.

“Lots of people have,” he said, “I was locking up one night and putting the chairs away in the restaurant, when I heard a noise in the bar behind me, right where I’m standing now.”

“And there was the ghost?” I asked.

“No, but when I came back here there were some glasses I had put away in the racks lying on the ground. People think it’s one of the Sterling family daughters.”

“What do you think?”

“I think there’s a ghost.”

I finished my beer and decided to see some of the coast. It was a beautiful afternoon and what I knew about ghosts told me they don’t usually come around busting glasses in the arvo. So I planned to behold the beauty I felt would reveal itself to me at Cape Conran.

I rode east out of Marlo along the Marlo-Conran Road. It’s dead straight and runs parallel to the sea on your right. But you can’t see the sea because of the scrub. There are, however, a few good gravel roads you can take which spit you very quickly onto the beach, or near to some amazing-looking rocks. It’s quite a fascinating place.

The Gunaikurnai, Bidawal, and Nindi-Ngudjam Ngarigu Monero people consider Cape Conran Coastal Park to be their Traditional Country, and the area is rich with their artefacts and middens. And it’s also quite the sailor’s grave, thanks to the appropriately named Beware Reef, which claimed quite a few lives in the 1800s.

Bodies would wash ashore with regularity on this cruel shore, which is probably why the Marlo Hotel was used as a morgue in the 1800s.

I took some pictures at Salmon Rocks, sighed as I always do at the sheer immensity and utter indifference of the ever-restless ocean crashing into them, and got back on the Mandello. The control-freak in me could never come to terms with the sea, and I hold the men who go to sea – especially those who went in the old days on sailing ships – to be made of much sterner and braver stuff than me. I would much rather take my chances on the road astride a two-wheeled rocketship, than face what the ocean might offer me in terms of drowning.

I later discovered some free spirits had decided to settle Cape Conran in the 40s, and built some huts and basically squatted there for a few decades. I’m not sure why. It’s not any kind of hospitable place. But the 1986 Victorian Labor government bulldozed their dwellings and sent them packing.

I returned to the Marlo Hotel, beheld a stunning estuarine sunset, and found a table in the restaurant – which was filling up at an amazing pace for such a tiny town in the off-season. I had decided I would eat both my lunch and dinner at the same time because I had not eaten since the tiny cheese sanga I’d wolfed down that morning in Bombala.

Seafood chowder, chicken and prawn arancini, oysters, some homemade garlic bread, and a bottle of filthy red later, I was of the view that if the ghost turned up that night, she might well be more frightened of me than I would be of her.

That night the weather closed in, and the morning saw me making my way to Melbourne in a light drizzle. It was also rather brisk. But that only made me ride faster so as to get this awful transport stage over with. This was a route I have travelled many times on my way to Phillip Island. It sucked then and it sucked that morning as well. It continued to suck as I made my way through Swan Reach and Bairnsdale, and reached peak suck when I stopped in Stratford to eat something and have a coffee.

There are places where people like me are just not welcome. Such was the up-itself Badger and Hare noshery, which will hopefully continue to disappear up is own arse and take its snotty waitresses, its overpriced food, its really average coffee, and its empty birdcages pretending to be arty bullshit with it. Oh, and its picture-wall of dogs which puffer-jacket wearing twats have hauled inside when they’ve come to chai-latte themselves.

It was blowing gale as I made my way towards Melbourne, the taste of a toasted focaccia overloaded with spinach rank in the back of my throat, and it was cold. Of course it was.

The Mandello cruised smoothly along on cruise control at a shade over the speed limit thanks to Victoria’s surprise speed cameras, and I had little to think about other than how easy this bike had made the whole trip.

I had spent long hours in the saddle and found it ergonomically spot-on. I had lashed it like a slave through countless corners, grinning and wild-eyed, enjoying the gentle but eager power delivery. I had ridden it over a myriad of surfaces and not once wished it had better suspension or felt any vagueness in the steering. It had not put a tyre wrong. It forgave easily, and it rewarded generously. It was smooth where it needed to be smooth, but retained enough V-twin characteristics to avoid blandness. It was still a Moto Guzzi, but without any of the questions that marque had trouble answering in the past. Questions which had made Moto Guzzi the exclusive province of its loyalists. Those days are over, I reckon. This is a Guzzi for all the people, because it behaves like something made in the 21^st century, rather than something a clan of red-eyed fanatics had thrown together after a Chianti binge.

And motorcycling is better off for it.