travel

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…

Bundaberg

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First, an extremely belated ‘Happy New Year’ to all.  This is actually the third post I’ve written this year, but I seem to be particularly prone to technical gremlins in 2015, so it’s the first one to make it up the pipe to the internet.  Hope that improves as the year goes on…

Now.  On to a slow-moving tale of sweat, rain, witches and cartoon statues.  Pretty much business as usual, then.

You may remember (it was a while ago) that I got stuck in Brisbane for longer than planned due to the weather.  That’s the trouble with heading towards the tropics during the wet season.  It rains a bit, and the rain can be quite heavy (for those from outside the UK, that’s a fair example of British understatement).  And when it’s not raining, the sun comes out, making it phenomenally swampy when combined with 70-plus percent humidity.

New Year’s Eve found me on the receiving end of the heat and humidity, which had been building ever since Brisbane.  I scraped into Maryborough, gasping for refreshment and looking forward to welcoming in the New Year.  About an hour later, there was a light shower:

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The storm took out the electricity to the whole town, as well as others up to 20 miles away.  For about four hours.  It took its toll on the NYE celebrations too, as it becomes incredibly difficult to buy anything when the cash registers don’t work.

I’ve been running very slowly, dodging perpetual showers ever since I left Maryborough.  Having ducked and dived a few paltry kilometres further north, I’ve been stranded in Bundaberg for the last couple of days.  But I have high expectations of escape tomorrow (Wednesday).  The fact that I’m still here is down partly to the consistent streams of drenching showers rushing in off the ocean.  And partly down to the witches.

I thought they were witches the first time I clapped eyes on them: three local old crones cackling around steaming cups of coffee.  All very Macbeth (though I think that was on a blasted heath, rather than on Bundaberg’s main street).  But then, they seemed so nice when I started talking to them, and I quickly concluded that they must just be very noisy old ladies.

I’d already packed up the Beast, and was ready to roll this morning, but had been temporarily halted by yet anther monstrous shower.  The witches saw the bike, and pointed out that there were inky black clouds and columns of rain as far as the eye could see.  Then they brainwashed me into staying another night, as it was bound to rain all day.  Needless to say, it dried up by about eleven, and was bright and breezy until dark.  I assume they enchanted the elements to wind me up.

The moral of the story is that you should probably get weather advice from the local weatherman  (‘showers clearing later’), rather than a bunch of random octogenarian sorceresses.

They did suggest the (tiny, but free) local zoo as a distraction, though.  So I got to see a sleeping dog in a cage:

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Bundaberg’s charms don’t end with sleepy dingos, though.  It’s sugar cane country around here, and something has to be done with all that sweet stuff.  The city is famous for rum and ginger beer (both separately and mixed into a refreshing cocktail).  The rum is really nice, but I’ve been addicted to Bundy ginger beer for a long time, and it’s likely to remain my rehydration solution of choice, as long as I can find it in shops.

Sugary treats aside, Bundaberg should also be famous as the birthplace of Bert Hinkler.  I must confess that I’d never heard of Bert before arriving in town.  But after seeing everything from shopping centres to streets named after him, I looked him up.  It’s no wonder the town is so proud of the first person to fly solo from the UK to Australia (as well as making several other long flights, fighting in WW1, and piloting a plane in the inter-war Schneider Trophy seaplane races).  Which makes it all the more surprising that Bert’s statue looks like a cartoon man.  With a giant chin:

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Much though I’d like to spend a few days pondering the possible links between Bundy rum and the city’s intriguing artistic rendering of its favourite son, I really need to move on.  I’m running behind, and need to push on up the coast towards Rockhampton, and before that, the Tropic of Capricorn.

Providing the witches haven’t spooked the weather, it shouldn’t take too long.  And I’ll try to get the next update in a little quicker…

Rain and Racist Grannies

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I stopped for three nights in Brisbane over Christmas.  I arrived on Christmas Eve, in scorching sunshine.  It was hot then, and should have been hot and sunny all week.  I’m not going to make too much of the heat, as the internet says the UK is doing its usual ‘couple of inches of snow destroys country’ winter routine.  There may not be much empathy out there…

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I was due to leave Brisbane on the 27th, but the weather decided differently.  Forty eight hours of continuous rain later, I finally set out this morning.  It’s warm rain here (I’ll hopefully hit the tropics in a relatively few days), but it seems to be just as effective at keeping me indoors as the colder, New Zealand version.  I really need to grow a pair at some point.

So my rest stretched to five nights.  A nice opportunity to sit by the pool, reading and watching the rain fall.  I video-chatted with my Mum, brother, sister-in-law and nephew on Christmas Day, which was lovely (and about as Christmassy as the whole thing got).  I read two books from cover-to-cover, despite following my usual ‘best value’ rules (picking the two that were fattest and had the smallest print).  And I made friends with Brian, the pigeon who lived next door to my room.  Probably still lives there, come to think of it.

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Now…  How do you deal with an inconsistently racist granny?

It’s one of those awkward social situations.  Made a bit easier today by the fact that Beryl (the ‘IRG’ in question) is not my granny.  And that she loved her rescue dog.  I’m also making slight allowances for the fact that she was probably pushing 80.

But still…  It started so well.  I stopped for a drink to relieve the sweltering humidity.  Beryl heard my accent, and turned out to come from Greenwich, where I began (and intend to finish) my little journey.  Surely, a nice little chat awaited?  Beryl, however, was quick to advise me that she will never again spend time in London because “all the white people have gone”, and the country’s essentially being destroyed by (presumably non-white) immigrants.  She seemed set to go on in this vein for quite some time.

As I searched desperately behind my sunglasses for a sensible response, a man with a dog walked past.  Beryl immediately switched to talking about her dog, which she clearly loves to bits.  In the course of a lengthy monologue on the adored pet’s virtues, it became clear that one of her favourite things about her dog is that it has black skin (not a black coat, mind you – black skin).  Erm…

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Anyway, I shrugged off thoughts of how painful Beryl’s irony bypass surgery must have been, and made my way out of Brisbane’s suburbs and up into the countryside.  Tonight’s stop is Nambour, which is a pleasant but unremarkable town, distinguished this evening by displaying the shortest portion of a rainbow that I’ve seen from a while.

Though the end of the partial rainbow is roughly where I’m staying this evening; I may spend the night digging holes to find the pot of gold.  Or sleeping may be the better option.  There are a few more miles to make before another stop to welcome 2015, after all.

Oh, and for those of you who asked, the Beast got two new inner tubes for Christmas.  There’s a tyre in the pipeline shortly, too.  I’m not that cheap 😉

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…

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…