australia

Signs of the Times

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It hasn’t been the world’s most interesting couple of days on the bike.  I had a nice rest day in Coffs Harbour, and have made it a few more kilometres up the coast to Yamba since.  It’s been pretty flat and pretty warm.  I’ve had one day when I felt fantastic, and one where I was not feeling up to much at all.  It still doesn’t feel a lot like Christmas.  So much, so standard.

It’s not the most devastatingly pretty countryside to ride through, either (at least around the main highway; the seaside towns are generally very nice), and I’ve had far too much time by myself to think.  Partly about all the rubbish end-of-year TV that I’ll miss out on, which will no doubt include more than a few ‘Top 20 Things That Nobody Cared About in 2014’-type shows.

The result of all this pondering is the following: the top several (not sure how many until I finish writing; it’s not that well planned) signs and signposts from the trip so far.  If that doesn’t knock your socks off as a surprise present for the festive season, I really don’t know what will.

Anyway, it was all inspired by this, which I found attached to a picnic table at a rest stop on the Pacific Highway yesterday:

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What do you do when you see a sign like this?  It has today’s (when I found it) date on it.  It’s held to the table with medical tape, which looks convincing.  Do you run away squealing?  Do you assume it’s just a weird joke, and sit down to have your lunch?  Do you cautiously examine the table from a safe distance to establish whether there’s really a snake there?  This is currently the run-away winner in the ‘Not Sure How to Respond’ category.  But it’s also the winner of the ‘Genuinely Useful’ category.  There really was a snake under the table.

Next, the ‘Correct English’ winner.  Somewhat surprisingly, I found this in the middle of nowhere, on Route 66 in Arizona:

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Which just goes to show how important commas can be, and is also much more elegant than a simple ‘Don’t Pee on the Floor’ sign would have been.

This is so much fun, isn’t it?  Bet there are people actually holding their breath to find out what’s next.  And I bet I could name all three of them…

As it turns out, next is the ‘Oddest Tourist Attraction’ category.

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Yep, that really is teachers and gunfighters and wax, all in the same building.  In Dodge City, naturally.  That came very close to winning the ‘Most Culturally Revealing’ category, too.  But that’s a little later.  First, the ‘Most Unnecessarily Over-Specific’ sign, from Haast in New Zealand:

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Not only a picture of the hazard, but a clear visual representation of exactly the face-plant you will perform; is that really useful?  And is there more than one place in the world you could actually use it?  It could only really be more specific if it included a second panel with a broken cyclist and an ambulance.

I enjoyed the mid-west of the USA (apart from the headwinds), and it’s had (hands down) the most generous people of the trip so far.  But there was an obsession that I never really got my head around, which means that this is the ‘Most Culturally Revealing’ winner:

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That’s right.  Golf carts.  There are millions of them in the mid-west.  I’ve seen them with custom paint (imagine a golf cart resprayed as the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard).  I’ve seen them used instead of mobility scooters by old people.  And I’ve seen herds of them being them driven in laps around campsites as after-dinner recreation.  The fact that they are so common that they’ve generated their own road signs (albeit giving the slightly erroneous impression that some of them might be used to actually carry golf clubs) is truly culturally revealing.

Nearly there now.  Just a couple of Kiwi pearls to go…

The penultimate award is for the ‘Most Persistent Activist Vandal’.  I saw this sign, (carefully and cleanly) amended to make a political point after crossing into Otago from the west coast:

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Every single subsequent iteration of the sign I saw in NZ had been amended in exactly the same way.  One strip of duct-tape carefully placed over one word on every sign for hundreds of kilometres.  You can’t argue with the effort, at least…

Finally, there’s the ‘Straight to the Touring Cyclist’s Heart’ award, which goes to this poster I found in a cafe window:

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It doesn’t really need any further comment.  Despite my previous words about the countryside and the slightly boring roads around here, at least I’m not sat in a box on a hamster wheel.

And that’s got to be something to be happy about.

Christmas Decorations

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I’m experiencing Southern Hemisphere Christmas Weirdness.  I think it’s probably the same for everyone from the northern hemisphere.  You see fat men in red costumes sweating about town in over 30 degrees C.  And watch people spraying fake snow and hanging decorations while you’re busy with your second application of sunscreen, and worrying whether that’ll be enough.  I guess, if you’re here regularly, you get used to it.  Or if you live here, of course.  But it produces an odd sense of dislocation for me.  And most of the European travellers I’ve met don’t feel ‘Christmassy’ at all, either.

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Personally, I’m feeling more American Mid-West in August.  Despite having the Pacific coast fairly close to the road for the last few days, the heat and humidity are increasing steadily as I plough on north towards Queensland.  I’m having to adjust from the relative cold of New Zealand and the pleasant riding temperatures further south around Sydney.  My need for liquid while riding has more than doubled in the last couple of days, and the more health-conscious Aussies don’t sell massive buckets of soda for next-to-nothing like the Americans do.  Some adjustment is required.

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They like decorating things over here, and not just for the festive season.  I stopped at Port Macquarie (still trying to remember that it’s pronounced ‘McQuarry’, for some reason; thankfully, most locals just call it ‘Port’, which is much easier) a few nights ago, and found that the town had developed a plague of painted koalas.  I was quite excited, as these were the first wild koalas I’d seen.  Hopefully, it’s a sign that my woeful luck with wildlife is on the turn.

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There also seems to be a developing tradition of painting rocks on breakwaters at harbours.  These were at ‘Port’, again, but there are examples at Coffs Harbour (apostrophe not included, apparently), where I am currently residing, too.  I suspect that they may turn out to be everywhere.

I’ve been making mixed progress up the coast.  One day, the humidity will take its toll, and I’ll be struggling to make 40 miles.  The next, there will be a tailwind (and maybe I’ll be better prepared for the heat), and I’ll be doing 75 miles fairly effortlessly.  It seems to be a bit of a lottery, though at least the weather forecasts are much more reliable here than in NZ.  And there are more painted decorations to look at along the road; some good advice here on where not to buy your next truck.  It must take a massive grievance to go to this much effort…

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In any case, I officially became a long-distance cyclist on Tuesday, as I pushed through the 6000-mile mark for the trip, just south of Kempsey.  You might (if you’ve been putting up with reading the blog since then) remember that I met Tim and Laura Moss in California, just before I hit the Pacific.  They were just starting a US coast-to-coast as the last leg of their round-the-world ride, and were aiming to be home in the UK by Christmas.  They also run a database of long-distance riders, which you’re not allowed to enter until you hit the magic 6000-mile mark.  So I can now get in!  And Tim’s a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, which makes it as official as can be…

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I’m resting up in Coffs Harbour today, getting ready to push on north.  I’ll have a proper look round today (Thursday), as I’ve only seen a couple of cafes and a dead fairground so far.  I’m also vaguely thinking about where I’ll actually be for Christmas; if the miles keep ticking by as they are, I’ll probably be somewhere on the Sunshine Coast, just north of Brisbane.

Maybe I’ll just go for the town with the most remarkable decorations.  Or maybe the town with the least.  Maybe Brisbane itself wouldn’t be a bad idea, as a big city with plenty going on.  Or maybe I want somewhere quiet, so I can sit by a pool and be bemused by the Christmas heat in private.  Decisions, decisions…

Not a Ferry Good Birthday*, and Eating Australia

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*Actually, it was fine, but I needed to use the awful pun somewhere…

I never thought there could be a downside to a strong tailwind, but there can.  I never thought that riding through a National Park in the sunshine would be anything other than idyllic, but it was.

My birthday (Friday) began well, as I woke up to a strong southerly wind, which would shove me effortlessly up the coast from Newcastle.  And it did.  For a while.

I was so chuffed with the tailwind that I decided to push on from my (extremely unambitious) target for the day.  I’d initially decided to give myself a super short day as a birthday present.  But I’ve learned never to waste a tailwind, especially a gale-force one, so I sailed gleefully onwards, to catch the ferry from Nelson Bay.

I got to Nelson Bay with twenty minutes to spare before the ferry.  And it was only lunchtime.  I’d be able to make ground at a superb rate.  Perfect.

The ferry was cancelled, due to my tailwind.  In fact, all the ferries that day were cancelled due to my tailwind.  Not so perfect.

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Still, the town was fairly large, and touristy, with a lot of yachts.  By dinner time, there was a throng of brightly (some might say less-than-tastefully) dressed tourists bouncing around.  Looked like it should be a decent evening for a couple of beers to celebrate being another year older.

They disappeared.  Nearly all of them.  Vanished.

The maximum number of other people in the pub was seven.  In the middle of town.  On a Friday night.  What manner of madness is this?

On the bright side, a gentle birthday evening meant that I didn’t need to use my ‘Emergency Hangover Day Off’, which I’ve been carefully holding in reserve (think it may still come in handy for Christmas or New Year, mind you).  On Saturday morning I was raring to go.  And the ferries were running.  Onwards!

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While the ferry rolled its way across to Tea Gardens, we kept a sharp look-out for dolphins.  Apparently, the bay’s residential pod means that they are spotted on 95% of trips.  Given my wildlife history thus far, I’m sure you won’t be super-surprised to learn that the nearest thing to dolphins we spotted was a bunch of kids in speedboats.  Still, dolphins are not the highest on my wildlife-spotting list.  I can live with the disappointment, as long as I can see a kangaroo at some point.  Or even a wallaby.

After leaving the ferry, eating a massive pie, and heading north again, I met Bruce and Marg. They are in the relatively early stages of riding around the edge of Australia, pausing only to climb the highest peak in each state.  They gave me some very useful advice on surviving the outback, having just done a chunk, and also provided me with a useful shortcut through the bush, which would save me time, save me climbing, and provide the Beast with a little off-road action.

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It was a track.  Not good enough to count as a dirt road, and closed to vehicles, but easy enough for the Beast to deal with.  I even heard some panicked crashing in the undergrowth, which I took to be kangaroos legging it from my rattling, crashing, and altogether not very subtle approach.  Didn’t see any, obviously.  But I was getting closer, and decided that dirt roads are something I needed more of.

Today (Sunday), after a night in the pleasant, but again, surprisingly empty, town of Forster, I resumed my northward progress.  I thought I might just be able to make Port Macquarie today, as there was a fair chunk of fast but dull highway involved.

Then I got distracted.  There was a dirt road through Crowdy Bay National Park, which would take me to Laurieton, just a short hop from ‘Port’.  Another 25km of quiet, pleasant meandering for the Beast, and another chance to nail that elusive first marsupial.

Or, as it turned out, a chance to get a real taste of Australia.

It tastes gritty, and slightly metallic.

A lesson learned about dirt roads.  If they have cars on them, you’re going to ingest the countryside as well as see it.  Cycling has a real knack of bringing you closer to the environment through which you travel…

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To round things off, the hostel which the internet had advertised in Laurieton doesn’t exist.  There is some debate locally about whether it ever did.  It is, however, a thoroughly agreeable town with a lovely harbour.  And a paragliding school who were kind enough to take me in for a small fee.

As I try to wash the flavours of Australia from my mouth with lashings of ginger beer, I think it’s fair to say that I won’t be rushing back to the dirt roads.  Anyway, I have a hot tip that golf courses are the way to go if you want to see kangaroos.

I’ll let you know how that works out…

Impressions of Oz; the First Few Miles

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It took only a short ride through Sydney to work out that I’m not in New Zealand anymore.  The volume of traffic was a clue; I think I’ve seen more cars in the last three days than in the whole six weeks in NZ.  Also, someone had built a fairly famous bridge and opera house in the middle of town.  There may well be bridges and opera houses which are famous in NZ, but probably not in this league.

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But the real giveaway was the cyclist I met while taking hero pictures of the Beast, which was quite pleased with itself after cruising across Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Where Kiwis just tended to ask where I was going, and commiserated about the weather, this guy really gave me the inside track on Australia.

Depending on how it goes, I’m going to die of thirst in the outback, get hit by a road-train (or just a truck with an amphetamine-crazed driver), be attacked by spiders, snakes and crocodiles (possibly all at once, by the sound of it), or be abducted and murdered by one or more of the myriad desert weirdos who haunt the Northern Territory.  This was all imparted to me in a slightly hysterical voice, and with the earnestness of a man who clearly believed I was entirely nuts to be even considering riding to Darwin.

I’m still not sure whether he was trying to wind me up, or whether he actually believed all this, erm, stuff.  I’ve checked with a couple of other (saner-seeming) Aussies, one of whom thankfully came along immediately afterwards.  The general consensus seems to be that he was probably being serious, but was clearly an institutionalised townie, and not a Proper Aussie Bloke.  The general consensus also seems to be that I’d be very unlucky to have more than one of these disasters befall me.  Which, of course, is a massive relief.  I think.

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The most dangerous wildlife I’ve seen so far were some giant pelicans, which were parked up by the side of the road between Swansea and Newcastle.  OK, OK.  By a lake near the road.  They didn’t seem especially interested in attacking me, so I’m taking a fairly relaxed view of Australian dangerous creatures so far.  And, much though I hate to admit it, Aussie drivers seem to be less spooked by bikes, and keener to give cyclists space than in NZ, so I’m not over-worried about the traffic either.

There are still a few concerns, mainly to do with time.  I’ve only got three months to get to Darwin before my visa expires (when did Brits suddenly start needing visas anyway?).  And Australia is enormous.  Sydney to Darwin is a significantly longer ride than Toronto to San Diego, which took me just over two months.

The weather may play a role in slowing me down, too.  I’m back in the all-too-familiar hostel window / rain scenario again today (Thursday), stuck in Newcastle.  Too many rain days (and I’m very much in storm season at the moment) would quickly push me behind schedule, but there are worse places to be stuck, I suppose.

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I’m also likely to lose a bit of time in the next few weeks, with my birthday, Christmas and New Year to fit in.  Any (or more likely, all) of these will probably cause a fairly slow start to the riding here to turn into a very slow start.  So there will be some time to catch up somewhere along the way.

It might be raining today, but it’s not cold like it was in NZ, which is a big plus.  But the heat will build as I head north towards the tropics, and may cause problems in the outback.  I’ve spoken to a few people (not of the hysterical persuasion), who say that it’s a tough ask on a bike.  Although I’ve also now met four bikers who have ridden it (albeit in the opposite direction), so it clearly can be done.

So.  Australia.  Well, so far, it’s big, and not especially dangerous.  It has fish and chips, pies and cake.  It has decent drivers.  And it has lots of pretty spots along the coastline.

How long it will remain so benign, I don’t know.  How long it will be before I’m flapping about time and / or the weather also remains to be seen.  And how many of the many potential catastrophes outlined above will actually happen is yet another unknown.

I’m looking forward to finding out.

Except for the catastrophes.

What a bummer if he’s right…

Bye, bye, New Zealand. Hello, Australia!

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It’s summer again.  After the cool, damp and beautiful interlude of New Zealand, I’ve landed in Sydney.  Back into high 20s – early 30s C (though at least I’ve missed the 40C temperatures of a couple of weeks ago).  Back into humidity.  And back into thunderstorm season.  It feels a bit like a flashback to the American mid-west.  Though it looks a little different.  And just like NZ, there are pies here.

The last few days to Christchurch were fairly uneventful.  I found probably the busiest and flattest road in the country, and ploughed along it for a couple of hundred kms.  Apart from a few raindrops and a few more brushes (not quite literally, thankfully) with NZ drivers, nothing too exciting occurred.

I did meet yet another cyclist who put my trip in perspective; a Frenchman in (I guess) his sixties, who’s been on the road for five years, across four continents.  Pretty remarkable.  More surprising, is that he’s planning to stop in a few months.  I guess that’ll be a difficult transition for him; I worry a bit about what I’m going to do when I finish, so it’s hard to imagine what it’d be like after five-plus years.

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Christchurch is still a city in transition, rebuilding itself after severe earthquake damage.  It feels a bit odd, as the city centre is essentially a massive building site, with the heavily damaged cathedral surrounded by empty lots, diggers and cranes.  A few hundred metres away, there’s a temporary shopping centre built out of shipping containers; an ingenious solution to the devastation caused to the city.

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And then another few hundred metres takes you to the older area of town, which looks almost quintessentially English.  There are a bunch of Victorian buildings, which seem to have escaped the earthquake damage almost completely (along with most of the suburbs).  There’s the River Avon running through parkland, and there are punts on the river, just as you see at Oxford or Cambridge.  The contrast with the central district is astonishing.  Hopefully, as time and rebuilding go on, the city will reintegrate itself, but I suspect it’ll be a few years still until it all fits together seamlessly again.

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On Sunday, I was outside Christchurch airport trying to pack the Beast into a slightly-too-small box, which was continually trying to blow away in the blustery wind.  Eventually, I managed to squeeze it in, and only had to pay 90% of the cost of my own ticket to get it on the plane.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend flying with a bike as a stress-free experience.

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In the end, the Beast did get on the plane, and the plane performed as expected.  We arrived in Australia on Sunday evening, stepping out of the air-conditioned airport into the muggy summer night.  A day spent rebuilding the bike on Monday, as well as patching a damaged pannier (exploded mosquito repellent, plus Ortlieb pannier, equals chemically-melted plastic – ouch!).

And this morning (Tuesday), I’ll be on the road in country number nine.  Back on with the sunscreen and shorts for a while, though the rain jacket looks like it’ll still be useful, too, on occasions.  More from Oz soon, as I begin the long, long trundle to Darwin…