round the world

Tropical Island Life (It’s Tough Out Here!)

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I can’t imagine what made me think that a rest day on a tropical island would be a good idea.

Maybe the heat and noise and dirt of the road got to me.  Maybe it was the lure of reasonably cheap draught cider.  Not, of course, the fact that tropical islands are generally quite nice.  And obviously, cheering up people who are suffering through a Northern Hemisphere winter had nothing to do with it either.  But whatever it was, it turned out to be a decent day off.

After the torrents of rain a few days ago, the skies had finally cleared as I knocked off the final kilometres to Townsville in the now-familiar cocktail of sweat and sunscreen.  I’ve not seen much of the city, as I was racing the falling sun to the ferry.  Maybe I’ll have a chance to look around tomorrow on the way out.

Although it’s raining, yet again, as I write this, so who knows?

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Dusk was in full swing as the ferry landed.  Magnetic Island looked worryingly hilly as the boat approached.  And sure enough, the few kilometres across to Horseshoe Bay turned out to include the hardest climbing I’ve yet seen in Australia.  Which, to be fair, is not saying all that much, but it’s still a nasty shock to be grinding up a 20% gradient at the end of a long day.

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A gentle stroll around in daylight this morning (Saturday) revealed that the island was just as ugly as you might expect.  I grabbed a relaxed (and very tasty) beach-side breakfast with a nice Belgian couple, and then wandered back to the hostel for a little siesta.  I can’t take that much excitement without a bit of a rest afterwards…

But if I thought that breakfast was as exciting as this particular rest day was going to get, I was sorely mistaken.  To be fair, breakfast often is the most exciting thing that happens on my days off, so I think I can be excused the thought.

However, it crossed my mind that the koala sanctuary attached to the hostel might be worth a look.  What could be more chilled out than a gentle stroll around in some trees, trading soporific glances with harmless, fluffy grey animals?  What I hadn’t appreciated was that you have to fight your way past infinitely more terrifying creatures to get to the koalas.

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This is a saltwater crocodile.  They’re the ones which sometimes eat people in this part of the world.  Bundles of muscle, scales, teeth and general prehistoric nastiness.  Scary.

The only saving grace of this particular specimen was that it was only about eighteen inches (maybe 50 cm) long.  After bravely wrestling with it for a few minutes, it was on to the koalas:

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Much more relaxing.  And at least I’ve taken the pressure off my patchy wildlife-spotting skills.  Not that I’ve ever stood much of a chance of seeing koalas in the wild, mind you.

Meanwhile, Plan C is taking shape.  Darwin is definitely too far to reach in my remaining visa time (and I’ve had enough local advice about how dangerous the outback would be on a bike at this time of year, in any case).

So it looks like I’ve only got a few hundred more kilometres to ride in Australia.  I’ll head up to Cairns, and from there take a (probably fairly circuitous) set of flights to get me to Indonesia.  Nothing booked yet, but that should fall into place in the next couple of days.

The journey home begins in earnest soon…

Summertime in the Sunshine State

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Back at home in the UK, there’s an ancient summer tradition of kids riding donkeys at the seaside.  That’s on the five days of the summer that it’s not raining, blowing a gale or freezing cold, obviously.  And on the couple of beaches from which animals are not banned in the name of health and safety.  It probably doesn’t happen quite as much as it once did.

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In Queensland, it’s a little different.  There’s a camel train which wanders along the (fairly tiny) Airlie Beach, and it looks like it’s there to stay for another generation, at least.  The little chap above was being trained (not especially effectively, it appeared) to follow the rest of his family around, in preparation for a lifetime of trudging about with apes on his back.  I suspect the Beast sympathises.

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The sunshine and heat lasted for another day before I had something else to moan about.  At sunset in Bowen on Tuesday, I could already see clouds building behind the palm trees.  And by the time I started rolling up the highway on Wednesday morning, it was to the accompaniment of dire predictions of thunderstorms, torrential rain, and even possible highway closures due to flooding.

This was a bit of a bummer, as I was hoping to get to Townsville (roughly 200km / 125 miles away) by this evening (Thursday).

It’s been known to rain in the UK in the summer, too, so I shrugged off the warnings, slapped on the factor fifty, and pootled off determinedly up the road.  By lunchtime, I’d begun to think that I might get away with it, and make it to my target destination of Home Hill before anything too dramatic happened.  Then I stopped for a nice cold drink at the tiny hamlet of Gumlu, and emerged to see this hurtling down the road towards me:

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Ouch.

Needless to say, the Queensland rain’s not quite the same as at home either.  I spent three hours cowering in Gumlu as wave after wave of clouds unloaded, along with a spectacular lightning show.

Just as I thought I’d be stuck there forever, the clouds parted.  Enough time to dash the remaining 40km?  It looked like it might be.  And it would be light just about long enough, too.  I shifted into time-trial mode, ignoring the protests from my legs, and floored it.

For about ten kilometres.

Then I got a flat tyre.  Only the fifth of the whole trip.  Just one every 39 days.  So why, oh why do I get one in the middle of nowhere when I’m trying to beat a gazillion litres of airborne water to the next shelter?

I’m still not sure whether the puncture did me a favour in the end.  I was still 15kms out of Home Hill when the rain began again.  Amazingly, the arrival of the heavy stuff coincided with me spotting the illuminated sign of the petrol station / hotel / campground at Inkerman.  In I dived, and was rewarded by their phenomenal ‘waifs and strays’ policy – a free worker’s cabin (rather dubiously known as a ‘donga’) for the night.  Lucky, lucky boy…

Today’s forecast was even worse that yesterday’s, so I didn’t really expect to make Townsville.  In fact, I only just scraped that elusive 15kms to Home Hill before cloudburst number one arrived at eight this morning.

I hung around (under shelter) in town for a couple of hours, but things didn’t improve a great deal:

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And so in Home Hill I remain.  As I write, the sixth cloudburst of the day is ongoing.  At home, one shower like that would clear the air for days.  Not here.

Things are forecast to be a little better tomorrow, so I might be able to scramble up to Townsville with just a few showers to dodge.  My optimism remains undimmed.  More likely, I’ll make it to the next town, Ayr, and get stranded again.

So, summer in Queensland.  Animal rides on the beach and changeable weather.  Sounds very much like an English summer on paper.

But it’s really, really, not the same at all.

Liquid Air: The Path to Plan C?

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I’m not a huge fan of selfies.

I have a contract with my five-year-old nephew, Tom (Hi, Tom!), to provide him with a selfie from every country (or major part of a country) that I go to on this trip.  And that’s as far as I really want to go with them.

Except today.  I wanted to explain the Queensland humidity in words.  But I found that ‘damp’, ‘moist’, and even ‘swampy’, were not really cutting the mustard.  None of them get close to the experience of sweating through your shirt while sitting immobile in a chair.  At 7am.  Hopefully, this might help:

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Ignore the cheerful (if slightly awkward) grin.  More accurately, ignore the forced and painful smile.  It’s not my best picture, I know.  That’s not what this is about, though.

I’d been riding for 50 minutes, on an outrageously flat road, with a gentle tailwind.  In other words, I should hardly have broken sweat.  And no, it hadn’t rained.  Yet, as you may have noted, my top appears to have been doused by a particularly enthusiastic bunch of firefighters.  The sunscreen, which was perfectly absorbed into my skin just a few minutes before, has made a disturbing reappearance.  I’m not sure how much water there is in a human body, but pretty much all of mine had simply dived out through my pores, saturating everything in its path.  Lovely.

This is one effect of Queensland’s Liquid Air.  Another is that the air actually feels thicker than usual.  It’s not that is doesn’t provide any oxygen, it just feels like harder work than normal to drag it in and out of your lungs.  Combined with the inability to hold water inside the body, this makes the riding less than easy.  And that’s before the third aspect of the humidity hits.

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The air turns pretty readily (and very rapidly) into actual moisture.  Lots and lots of actual moisture.  The term in these parts is ‘showers’.  I think of them more as full-on monsoons.  They pop up at any time of day, leaving you (if you’re lucky) stranded under a tree or a petrol station canopy for a while, cutting your riding time.  And they hunt in packs, with unfeasibly heavy downpour following unfeasibly heavy downpour.  Sometimes for hours.

What I’m trying to say, with all this Liquid Air nonsense, is that progress has slowed alarmingly once again.

I had to have a couple of days’ rest at Mackay, partly due to a few beers with a Belgian card-sharp who I met in New Zealand, but mainly due to the humidity.  The Liquid Air effect really took hold there, and with the addition of sunshine, significant distances would have been difficult, if not actually dangerous.  I was better staying cool.

I’ve made it to Airlie Beach in two days from there, which is not terrible.  But, sadly, I missed the guy who’s walking around Australia in a Star Wars Stormtrooper costume.  If I’d been on the road a day earlier, I could have heard how his ‘armour’ saved him from a snakebite first-hand instead of on telly.  Grr…

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Airlie Beach is a tourist town, and, as the name may suggest, is on the coast.  I figured that there would be cool sea breezes here to ease the heat a little.  So far, I’ve been proved wrong, although it is (maybe) a degree or two cooler than inland, and a colossal black cloud floated over earlier, rather than discharging floods of rain on the town.

So maybe things are looking up.  The worry is that, with conditions like this, I won’t be able to make the distances I need to get across the outback to Darwin before my visa expires.  And these conditions are rolling straight out of the outback at present.  It may be that I’ll have to content myself with Cairns instead.  And maybe a day or two off to see the Great Barrier Reef.

Plan C, anyone?

Bad Day, Good Day. Same Day.

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The Bruce Highway, which I’ve been bumbling up for hundreds of miles now, is quite possibly the dullest road in the world.  It’s so tedious that there are ‘amusing’ signs posted along the roadside to keep drivers awake.

I thought I was bored in the mid-west of the US, with its slow alternations of sweetcorn and soya beans.  And nothing else.  But the scenery along the highway here is pretty much entirely unchanging for thousands of kilometres.

Just a billion trees.  Seemingly endless bush.  And lots of trucks.

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But things started to change a little on Monday.

It was Day 183, which the mathematically gifted amongst you will note is half a year since I left London.  A day of great significance, then.  You would hope.

I left Marlborough resigned to another long day of heat and bush.  Ahead of me was the emptiest stretch of road I’ve encountered since my run across the Californian desert.  In fact, I’d been warned by locals that there was ‘nothing’ between Marlborough and my destination campsite at Clairview.

Actually, there were three man-made things (not counting the road and a couple of burned-out cars) in 66 miles.  Which is not much, I admit.  But it’s not quite ‘nothing’ either.  After tanking up early on at a petrol station, I was pretty happy that I’d make it to the large rest stop, about 30 miles up the road, with no bother.

The wind had other ideas, swinging around to face me, decreasing speed and increasing sweating and water consumption alarmingly.  I was a sorry mess when I got to the rest stop; time was ticking on, and I still had over 20 miles to go.  I was down to a couple of mouthfuls of water.  And there was nothing to drink at the rest stop.  Just one cafe (closed), and a nice toilet block with ‘non-potable’ signs on every tap.  Risk the undrinkable water, or maybe peg out from thirst?  Decisions, decisions…

This was a low point.  What an awful day!

As I sat moping in the shade, a car turned up with Anton and his family in it.  And things got rapidly better.  They were heading home after a holiday down south.  They had carried 10 litres of water (nicely chilled by the car air-con) there and back for no apparent reason, and I was welcome to as much as I liked.  And there’s a free shower, meal and bed awaiting me a bit north of Mackay, too!  More lovely people!  I trundled out of the rest stop in significantly better spirits.

It was getting close to sunset as I approached the campsite.  About five kms out, a head suddenly shot up out of the long grass by the side of the road, maybe 10 metres away.  The head was followed quickly by the rest of a startled grey kangaroo, which bounced off pretty rapidly into the fields.  I stopped, but it was long gone before I could get a picture.  Shame.  But as I scanned the field, I saw another three kangaroos.  From long range, admittedly, but that’s four wild kangaroos.  I arrived at the campsite with a big grin on my face.

This was a high point.  What a good day!  Amazing how quick things can change on the bike…

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Yesterday morning (Tuesday), I woke up by the seaside.  And the bush finally started to fade into sugar cane plantations as I headed north again.  There was time for one more (thankfully half-hearted) Aussie magpie attack, though without any physical contact this time.  And then I broke out into open farmland on the approach to Sarina.  Hooray!

So, six months and a little over 11000 km (or a little under 7000 miles) done.  And I’ve finally seen a kangaroo or two!  And after a few tough, hot days lately, I should be able to get closer to the ocean, and maybe to the Barrier Reef, as I head further up Queensland.

Hopefully.  Let’s not forget, there’s:

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Birdstrike

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In a country where fast food restaurants and shops are signposted on billboards from over 100 kilometres away, you’d have thought that the Tropic of Capricorn would be marked with a rest stop, or maybe souvenir shop or a theme park, even.  Or at least that there would be an enormous sign.  Or a small sign.  Or a plaque.

There wasn’t.

At least, I didn’t see one.  And I was looking, but missed it while dodging traffic; the roads have got busy suddenly.  Turns out it was actually hidden behind some trees next to the information office on the edge of town.

So, as I zig-zagged past a delinquent camper-van door, and ducked back in to avoid being rear-ended by a road train (would have been painful), I entered The Tropics.  Quite what difference this makes to anything is slightly unclear to me, but there it is; another imaginary line on the globe crossed.  Given the lack of any official marker of the occasion, I took a picture of the first sign I saw with ‘Capricorn’ written on it as a memento:

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Hopefully, one thing that might change in the tropical zone is the bird life.  Before I left home, I’d read accounts of the senseless violence which Aussie magpies can inflict on the unwary touring cyclist.  But until Thursday, I’d just been buzzed a few times, with my avian tormentors contenting themselves with squawking disturbingly from a couple of feet above my head.

Thursday was different.  Maybe they’re getting more bloodthirsty as I head north.  Maybe I unwittingly provoked them by wearing the same socks too many days in a row (they did stink, to be fair).  Maybe the Beast was teasing them.  I just don’t know.

What I do know is that, for the first time ever, a cycling helmet actually protected me from something, rather than just making my head sweat.

The usual squawking and fluttering of nearby wings was abruptly replaced by a scrabbling noise as the magpie landed on my head (which was moving at well over 20 kph – that’s impressive flying).  By the time I got a panicked hand near enough to make the winged assailant let go, it had gone at the helmet like a demented woodpecker:

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It was trying to kill me.  No doubt about it.  And the helmet took one for the team, and saved me a damaged scalp.  It’s still pretty much useless if a truck hits you.  And it still makes my head too hot, risking heatstroke.  But it’s very useful against magpies, that’s for sure.

Aside from running the magpie gauntlet, things have been going well since Bundaberg.  300 kms were knocked off easily in three days, thanks to fewer showers and a lovely strong tailwind.  So I’m having a day off in Rockhampton today.  I’m not even moaning about the heat any more, though I’m quite sure that will change again.

And I met another tourer for the first time since New South Wales, just before the magpies.  Damian’s heading down most of the Queensland coast to Brisbane.  On a bike that cost him AU$85 in a sale, and a set of panniers home-made from shopping bags and milk crates, by the look of them.  Good stuff!

It was already getting dark by the time I’d settled into the hostel last night (Friday).  So I didn’t see much of town.  I had a wander around this morning, but it seems to be more functional than especially interesting.  But I do know that they’re inordinately proud of their cattle here, and the beef’s supposed to be pretty good.  It’s also the first place I’ve been with plastic ‘rent-a-bulls’ displayed on top of offices in the city centre:

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Anyway, I’m relaxing today before pushing further into tropical Australia.  Lots of big gaps are appearing between towns, meaning I’m having to plan a bit more carefully, and carrying extra kilos of water again.  Mackay is the next large place, and I should get there mid-week.  Providing the magpies don’t get their revenge in the meantime, of course…

The Big Shrimp and the Tequila Prophet

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I may have been a little harsh on New South Wales, I think.

Despite my previous comments on the tedium of some of the roads in NSW, I did, at least, acknowledge that the towns and the coast were pretty.  I crossed the border into Queensland this afternoon.  Within a couple of hours, I’d experienced three near misses with woefully driven vehicles (one of them a bus, which really should know better).  And I’d ridden through most of Gold Coast, including the immensely over-developed tower blocks of Surfers’ Paradise.  In short, I was missing NSW in no time.  But at least I can’t call the roads boring any more…

It’s been a fairly eventful few days.  Yesterday, I was at Australia’s most eastern point (well, a few hundred metres away, to be the star pedant that I always hoped to be).  Byron Bay was rammed to bursting point with incoming backpackers, Aussie tourists and its own stock of hippies, all preparing diligently for the onrushing festive frenzy.  I still can’t get my head round the fact that Christmas is right around the corner.  Bah, Humbug!

Before I got to Byron, I covered another chunk of coast, and was privileged enough to see a significant cultural icon on Sunday; the Big Shrimp of Ballina.

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Big Things are a bit of an Aussie tradition.  There are a lot of them all over the country.  I’ve already pretty much missed the Big Banana, because it wasn’t as big as I expected.  I just caught it out of the corner of my eye as I whistled past on the highway a few days ago.

But there was no missing the Shrimp.  Bright orange, shrimp-shaped, and three storeys tall.  It really is a very impressive prawn.  Though why it’s in the car park of an out-of-town store is anybody’s guess.

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After the Big Shrimp, I was pretty close to the top of New South Wales.  Lennox Head (above) is only 20km south of Byron Bay.  It only took me an hour to ride between them yesterday morning (Monday).  But it’s an entirely different world in terms of tourism.  I realise it was getting dark, but it took me several minutes to get a picture of the beach with anyone at all on it.

It was a peaceful stopover, spoiled only by an initially-interesting Australian with a cod-Texan accent (he said it was his ‘authentic inner voice’).  He turned out to be an ex-member of some sort of cult spin-off type group, and a self-proclaimed prophet.  For what or whom wasn’t entirely clear.  Just add tequila to some people, and the strangest things can happen…

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So, New South Wales got interesting just as I was about to leave.  We’ll see how Queensland shapes up.

I’ve got three nights in Brisbane over Christmas, and I guess it’s fairly unlikely I’ll update the blog again until Boxing Day or so.  So I hope you all have a great Christmas, and I’ll be back with more from the Beast and me soon.

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…