The Mid-North Coast of New South Wales

The Pacific Highway wasn’t the cyclist’s nightmare I expected.  The road has been widened and improved in recent years, and there’s a wide shoulder and a good riding surface, at least on this Mid-North Coast section.  For 60 kilometres from Nerong to Nabiac, the riding was fairly pleasant, despite a fairly constant stream of cars and trucks.  The healthy buffer zone between me and them allowed me to relax, enjoy the green, rolling countryside and retreat into my own thoughts.

Another great Australian place name.  Pity there didn't seem to be an actual place to go with the sign.

The size of the investment in this highway couldn’t help but impress itself on me: hundreds of kilometres of dual carriageway with three, and sometimes four lanes in each direction, massive cuttings, monumental drainage works, soaring bridges and interchanges - millions of tonnes of concrete and steel and bitumen obliterating thousands of hectares of farmland and forest.  It’s a commitment of tax revenue that few seem to question, but I have my doubts that, as a society, we’re getting value for money.  

The main purposes of this engineering masterpiece seem to be to transport large quantities of raw materials and consumer goods along the North-South axis of our heavily populated Eastern coastal strip - something that could be done more efficiently by rail - and to provide swift passage for recreational motorists, often towing half their worldly possessions, along the same axis.  Why don’t we ask serious questions about all this, like - would we be better creating public transport and rail freight networks, educating people into different recreational patterns, and developing positive social infrastructure rather than encouraging alienating, fossil fuel - based, anti-social behaviours like driving hundreds of kilometres along soulless highways in insulated steel boxes?  When will we realise not only that it isn’t fun, but that it’s dangerous, unhealthy, expensive and largely pointless.  

There were two fatal accidents in the area on the day I rode through Buladelah.  I saw the aftermath of the first one.  At about 5:30 that morning, a B-double semi-trailer left the highway and plunged into a farm dam about ten kilometres south of the town.  As I rode past in the late morning, police divers were extracting the driver’s body from the cab. From my viewpoint, it was hard to imagine how the accident happened.  It was a straight stretch of road with no obvious hazards.  The truck had veered off the highway for no apparent reason.  A few metres either side and it would have missed the dam.  What could have happened?  I could only conclude that the man who died had fallen asleep at the wheel.  

This resonates with me.  My son fell asleep at the wheel of a car when he was eighteen.  The obvious outcome of this accident is that he’s minus a leg, but that doesn’t scratch the surface of the long-term trauma, economic disadvantage, emotional and physical pain that he went through - and still deals with on a daily basis. The real toll of our addiction to driving cars is horrendous, and yet very few people are courageous enough to suggest that perhaps we should reassess the whole idea.

The second fatal accident I heard about later on the radio.  A young driver, in her first year, had misjudged a passing move and ploughed into an oncoming vehicle.  She and her mother were killed and other family members seriously injured.  The consequences of these “accidents” are incalculable, yet we seem to accept them as an inevitable part of life.  If it’s to do with roads and driving, it’s just a consequence of our addiction to cars: nobody challenges the fact that we do this at all.

Ok; you’ve picked up a theme of mine here, but allow me to explore it a little further.  From my bike, I watch car drivers constantly, partly because it’s a good idea to make eye contact with them to make sure they’ve seen me, and partly because they seriously worry me.  Many of them seem to be in a kind of netherworld - not connected to other human beings or to the landscape around them.  The results of this disconnection are all around us.  As a cyclist, I negotiate oceans of refuse discarded from cars.  In fact,  the Central and Mid-North Coast of New South Wales gets my vote for the most rubbish along roadsides anywhere that I’ve travelled on a bike - Tasmania, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland, America.  We have the filthiest highways of the lot right here. (I make an exception here for the US state of Kentucky, where I cycled along roads with  metre-deep deep ditches full of broken glass on one side and homicidal coal truck drivers on the other.  But Kentucky is “special”.)  Travelling by bicycle along these highways is akin to riding through a gigantic, linear rubbish dump.

Many American states have adopt-a-highway schemes, and this reduces the quantity of detritus a little, but the fact that there are still heaps of rubbish there when it’s being removed regularly proves that it isn’t changing the basic anti-social behaviour.  On this tour, I didn’t notice adopt-a-highway programs until I reached the Central Coast.  Where they’re operating, there’s slightly less garbage, but THIS ISN’T CHANGING ANYONE’S BEHAVIOUR!  People are still chucking piles of crap out of car windows.

You’ve probably intuited by now that I attribute this anti-social behaviour to the isolation of car drivers and passengers from their environment - particularly when they’re travelling long distances on highways.  They’re bored; they’re consuming junk food mostly to alleviate the boredom; and they don’t feel connected to the world they’re passing through, so they have no compunction in trashing it.  Out of sight: out of mind.  There’s far too much rubbish out there for it to be blamed on a minority of anti-social individuals: this is a majority sport.  To understand its extent, you have to travel the country’s highways at 15 kilometres an hour - not 110.  Believe me, you get heartily sick of dodging broken glass.  Broken beer bottles are a huge proportion of the truly offensive rubbish, followed closely by plastic sports and soft-drink bottles and takeaway food containers.  If this issue isn’t something that bothers you particularly, try touring on a bike.

Allow me one more observation on this topic, and I’ll shut up.  I would never throw rubbish out of a car window, yet I don’t remember my parents ever lecturing me about it.  They didn’t have to: they taught by example.  Nor do I remember explicitly telling my children not to do it, but I’d be very surprised if any of them did.  What this means is that there’s a frightening proportion of Australian parents who are NOT teaching by example.  Ok; enough!

Camping at Nabiac was a strange experience.  I’ve driven through this small town many times when it was right there on the old highway, and have never been tempted to stop.  Even the signs for the National Motorcycle Museum didn’t tempt me.  This time, though, riding off the highway and over the bridge into town, I suddenly realised what an attractive little town it is, and determined to visit that museum in the morning.  After a  pleasant evening in the pub, I retired to my tiny tent and instantly realised that the highway was very close, that the trucks were frighteningly loud, and that they were going to go on ALL NIGHT!  I did manage to fall asleep,but woke early with the roar of trucks louder than ever. The Motorcycle Museum wasn’t open till 10:00 am, and I wasn’t prepared to hang around till then, so it remains unvisited.

This must once have been the latest in high-tech farming equipment

From Nabiac, I rode the highway to Kew (“Famous” for the highly intelligent and subtle souvenir brand “Far Kew” ), and then detoured to Laurieton - a surprisingly urban and pleasant beach resort that seems set on becoming the retirement capital of the mid-North coast.  

Bonny Hills Beach near Laurieton

The public library in Laurieton not only welcomed me but provided wi-fi access, allowing me to import photos to the blog without pain and distress.  I hereby register a huge vote of approval for the Laurieton Public Library - a bastion of civilisation.  That night, I happily occupied the camp kitchen of the Laurieton Campground, drinking red wine, listening to my beloved ABC Classic FM, and writing, writing, writing.

Headland between Laurieton and Port Macquarie

Leaving Laurieton in the morning, I ambled up the coast to Port Macquarie - a vast and expanding metropolis on what used to be a lovely bit of coastline but is now half-buried under concrete and bricks.

Not the kind of critter I expected to meet just outside Port Macquarie.  Looks like she was a bit shocked to see me too.

I pressed on through town and out to Settlement Point, where a car ferry carried me across a wide tidal river, (not being a car, they didn’t charge me), and on to the Plomer’s Point Road, a 35 kilometre rutted dirt road that runs through the vast Limeburner’s Creek Nature Reserve.  This part of the ride was my first bit of near-wilderness since the East Gippsland Rail Trail.

I passed up the opportunity to explore this particular road.

The coastal heathlands, open eucalypt forests and paperbark swamps that fringe the road are teeming with bird-life.  Despite the potholes and dust, I had a pleasant afternoon pedalling through this lovely, peaceful place, with almost zero traffic.

A local's attempt to deter tourists?  Plomer's Point Road was rough, but more pleasant riding than the highway.

It's a waterbirds' paradise in Limeburner's Creek Nature Reserve after recent floods

Crescent Head was one of those lovely surprises - a beach resort town on Australia’s East Coast that has hardly changed in a generation.  It was Saturday, and there were plenty of weekend campers and caravanners in town, but the place still had the relaxed, unhurried feel  that comes with there being little else to do except fish, surf, swim or lie around in the gorgeous winter sunshine.

As the sun set, I walked across a little footbridge over the tidal creek to the beach.  The sky and sea were suffused with a magical, purplish light that kept subtly changing, and I knew my miserable photographic skills, even with the new upmarket camera, would never do it justice.

Sunset on the tidal creek at Crescent Head

A stand-up paddler returns to shore at sunset - Crescent Head Beach

That evening I sat in the quietest corner of the pleasantly rowdy pub (it was Saturday night after all), writing my blog and studying my maps, when a partying group of weekenders from Newcastle invited me to join them.  Soon the beer and laughter were flowing freely.  Someone said there was an American blues musician playing at the Country Club across the road, and that he must be pretty good because he’d been on the bill at the Byron Bay Blues Festival.  We wandered over.  The man’s name was Bo Jenkins (really, not kidding) and he WAS good.

Bo Jenkins doin' his thaing.

I woke the next morning in my tent to the realisation that I was still fully dressed, hadn’t bothered to get into my sleeping bag, and that my mouth felt like the bottom of the budgie’s cage.  Must have been a good night.  On this still, sunny morning, waiting for the dew on my tent fly to dry seemed a good excuse to sit around, have several cups of tea, and delay my departure until almost 10:00 am.

Sydney and the Central Coast

Not only do I have lovely friends to stay with in Sydney, they live in the lovely, affluent Eastern suburbs, close to the surf beaches and the city centre.  I’m well aware that most Sydneysiders don’t inhabit this world: they live in the vast suburban expanse to the North and South, but principally to the West, stretching out to the foot of the Blue Mountains. A trip to the city or the surf beaches is a major excursion from these realms - one I imagine many of them rarely make.  I loved the suggestion that the new Western Sydney AFL (Australian Football League) team should be called The Squinters, because if you live in the Western suburbs and commute to the city, you’re driving into the sun in the morning, and again in the afternoon.

Me with that famous coathanger thing in the background.

I have a love/hate relationship with Sydney. I lived here 40 - something years ago, as a young man, having emigrated from my own suburban wilderness in Melbourne’s outer East. For me, Sydney was the Big Smoke: a scary, exciting, cosmopolitan place with unlimited possibilities and many pitfalls for an over-confident 18 year-old who was far from street-wise.

If you're lucky enough to live in Sydney's inner East, this is your front yard.

Walking the streets of inner Eastern Sydney today, my 60 year-old perspective is very different. Yes; there’s plenty going on here, but you need plenty of money to enjoy it. I’m oppressed by a pervasive griminess and tawdriness - more litter than I remember; more grim, red brick blocks of flats; more, much more traffic. I get a strong sense of the struggle to survive and thrive that is life in any big city.

I guess you know where this is.

There’s no denying the spectacular beauty of Sydney Harbour, especially on a bright, sunny day in what’s humorously called winter around here. Photographs of the iconic Bridge and Opera House are mandatory, of course, but there’s much more.  A leisurely walk through the Botanical Gardens, which stretch out around the Eastern shore, rewards with sudden vistas of gleaming skyscrapers framed by lush vegetation.  Giant Port Jackson and Moreton Bay Figs add a tropical grandeur.  (I know they’re both there but I couldn’t actually tell you which is which.)  On the water itself, there’s always something happening.  The colours are vibrant, almost surreal.

Sydney's CBD from the Botanical Gardens

My bicycle journey out of Sydney, on a still, sunny winter’s day, was a joy. I cycled from Randwick, through Centennial Park and along Oxford Street through the trendy suburbs of Paddington and Darlinghurst (known in a less genteel era as “Darling it Hurts”) and down to Circular Quay, where I caught the self-styled “famous Manly Ferry”. (I’m reminded of the adage that if you have to tell people you’re famous, you’re not.) A gentle half-hour cruise along the sparkling Harbour delivered me into the lee of its Northern headland, where I began a pleasant two-hour ride past beach after beach to Palm Beach (of course) on the edge of Pittwater. At almost every beach I sighted Humpback Whales on their Northward migration, sounding and breaching just a few hundred metres off these busy city foreshores.

Palm Beach - sans palms

I arrived at Palm Beach just in time to watch the 12:00 noon Ettalong Ferry disappearing around the point. That forced me to relax in the winter sunshine, read, drink coffee and enjoy the surroundings until the next ferry at 1:00 pm.

View of  Pittwater from the Palm Beach - Ettalong ferry

This ferry journey is a treat (although I was disappointed that the big, powerful aluminium catamaran was doing the run, rather than the quaint old wooden boat moored next to it). Rounding majestic Barranjoey Head, with its 1881 lighthouse at the top of the cliff, the ferry cuts across Pittwater, which is surrounded by the dense and rugged bushland of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

From Ettalong, the ride North passed through the formerly quaint (and quaintly named) Central Coast towns of Budgewoi and Woy Woy - now heavily trafficked dormitory suburbs of Sydney. Bypassing Gosford (thankfully), I slogged North towards Newcastle, the second-largest city in New South Wales, resembling its English namesake in being a coal mining and heavy industrial centre, but mocking the resemblance with its glorious surf beaches and forested mountain backdrops.

A Scribbly Gum 

As I climbed yet another steep hill on the increasingly busy highway, a car suddenly pulled over in front of me. A psychopathic hater of cyclists about to bash me? A plain-clothes policeman about to book me for some bizarre local riding offence? No; a considerate local named Darrell Stone - a veteran cycle tourer - offering information about a bike path (in fact, another rail trail) that would keep me out of the traffic almost all the way to the city centre. The Coastline Bike Trail turned out to be a beautiful ride, climbing gradually over forested hills for 20 kilometres to Adamstown, from where a signposted cycle route through quiet backstreets took me to the foreshore. A ten minute ferry trip across the harbour landed me in Stockton - a quiet village within sight of bustling Newcastle, with a pleasant, cheap and secluded beachfront campground.


Overnight, a strong Westerly wind drove up a wall of black cloud, rattling my tent and threatening rain. By morning, the sky was clear again, but the wind remained fierce, hammering my left shoulder for the entire fifty kilometre ride to Nelson Bay, and threatening to shove me out into the traffic. Equally unnerving were the groups (squadrons? flights? flocks? mobs? gangs?) of military jets from the Williamtown RAAF base screaming across the landscape every few minutes a little above head-height. Those who know me will recall how much I adore these displays by machines of death, and how safe and secure they make me feel.

Camped in the Myall River National Patk

 Buffeted and harassed, I arrived at Nelson Bay to find that the ferry across Port Stephens to Hawk’s Nest had been cancelled because of the strong winds. The local caravan park in this upmarket, resorty place wanted to charge me $30 to put up my tiny tent, so I started checking out the options for stealth-camping along the foreshore. On impulse, I stopped in at the tourist information centre, where a smart, lateral-thinking young woman remembered that a Hawk’s Nest - based tour boat operator would be docking in about an hour, and would be crossing Port Stephens again to go home. A quick phone call and I was on. The crossing was rough, but not scary on the solid old wooden boat, and the skipper’s local knowledge was a big help for my onward journey.


It was already dark when the ferry docked at Hawk’s Nest, but the skipper’s directions made it easy for me to find the Myall River Campground in the National Park about two kilometres out of town. Completely alone in a beautiful riverside setting, I put up my tent, lit a campfire, and settled down for a peaceful night. The wind was still gusty, but gradually subsiding, and the stars were spectacular. I crawled into my sleeping bag early and ......


In the early hours of the morning I woke to what I thought was the wind rattling the tent. Half awake, I gradually became aware that something was invading my space - an animal of some sort. I grabbed my headlight and struggled out of the tent in time to see a dingo loping off with with my tucker bag - it had managed to extract the bag from my bicycle pannier inside the vestibule of the tent without waking me. I only woke as it dragged the bag, containing all my food, under the flap of the tent and made off. I stumbled across the grass, yelling and swearing at it, and it dropped its prize and slunk away, leaving a trail of half-chewed bread and pasta behind it, having managed to swallow a foil pack of tuna - including the foil. I wished it a serious bellyache as I repacked my supplies and discarded the torn waterproof bag.

Eying off my breakfast

At first light, I rekindled the campfire, brewed some tea, and started assessing the wreckage, when the second wildlife invasion began. First, a pair of magpies, then several crows, then some butcher birds, then a pair of blue-eyes attacked from all quarters, snatching the remains of the pasta and bread with uncanny efficiency. It didn’t help that I was laughing so hard as I tried to shoo away each invading wave. After breakfasting on what was left (they’d even stolen the small carton of milk for my tea), I set out on the Myall River Road - towards the next disaster.

A line-up of breakfast thieves

Five or six kilometres along the road, a car coming from the other direction slowed and the driver flagged me down. The Bombah ferry, my only way across the channel between Bombah Broadwater and Boolambayte Lake, was out of commission and not running. There was no choice but to backtrack to Hawk’s Nest, cross the bridge to Tea Gardens, and make for the Pacific Highway - the hideously busy main artery between Sydney and Brisbane. Trucks, trucks and more trucks, coming up!

Rule number one for an iconic Australian place-name: use lots of oooos.

Highway Blues, "The Gong", and a well-kept secret.

There are very few alternatives to the Princes Highway on the 130 kilometre stretch between Bateman's Bay and Nowra.  For two days I tried to enjoy the stately eucalypt forests and ignore the cars and trucks constantly grazing my right elbow.  The weather was being difficult too: pleasant, sunny spells alternating with sudden, heavy showers, which meant changing in and out of my waterproof gear every half hour or so.  (Once the sun was out, it was impossible to leave my rain jacket and waterproof pants on because I was sweating profusely inside them.)

Despite this promising sign, and another advertising a wine festival,

I somehow didn't manage to indulge. Not like me!

After threading my way through Nowra's unlovely sprawl, I turned off on the coast road to Shoalhaven Heads, where I pitched my tent in an almost empty coastal campground that was so exposed to the wind I spent most of the night trying to hold things down to stop them blowing away.  One consolation was the brief but spectacular sunset behind the forested hills.

From Shoalhaven Heads to Wollongong the next day, the riding was varied and mostly enjoyable, with a brisk Southerly pushing me northward through patches of forest and lush dairy farms, with sudden spectacular views of rugged coastline to liven things up.

Brewery? Milk factory? Giant alien spacecraft?

No sign to help me identify this "thing" in the middle of farmland.

A brief spell back on the Princes Highway between Gerringong and Kiama saw me dodging milk tankers for a while, and a wrong turn on the outskirts of Kiama took me over some seriously steep headlands before I finally found the town centre.

I headed out to the famous Blowhole on a craggy peninsula near the lighthouse, but despite a raging sea and a sudden storm, the show was a squib.  I rejected the crowded and expensive cafe in favour of the shelter of a huge Norfolk Island Pine in a grassy hollow, where I was completely sheltered from wind and rain while I made a sandwich and brewed tea on my camp stove.  With impeccable timing, the storm abated and the sun came out as I climbed back on the bike for the afternoon's ride into the industrial city of Wollongong.

The famous Kiama Blowhole

declining to live up to expectations.

The countryside remained green and pleasant right up to the edge of Wollongong's industrial area - the gigantic Port Kembla steelworks.  A pleasant surprise was the excellent network of cycle paths that kept me out of the traffic all the way to the centre of town.  More storms were looming, so I decided to find a backpacker hostel.  This was made quite difficult by the fact that no-one in Wollongong seems to know where anything is.  I asked for directions half a dozen times and got either totally misleading information, utter incomprehension or a blank stare.  I was beginning to wonder whether what I was asking actually made sense, or whether everyone in the place was completely mad, when I stumbled upon the stately Keiraview Youth Hostel, which also provides student accommodation for the University of Wollongong.

Pleasant, rolling dairy country

south of Wollongong

"The Gong" is a strange mixture of grubby industrial city, vibrant university town and drab, suburban sprawl, but everywhere you look there's a spectacular backdrop of steep mountain slopes and vertical cliffs, with magnificent surf beaches never far away.  My ride Northwards the next morning was a sheer delight, with the frequent showers and storms only adding to the grandeur of the coastal scenery.  (The wind was still blowing strongly from the South, helping me up the steep climbs.)  The Northern beach suburbs of Wollongong are a well-kept secret - from me, anyway, till now.  Bulli, Thirroul, Austinmer, - the excellent bike path took me through each one without any traffic to distract me from the wide, sandy beaches, big surf and grand, rocky headlands.

A riding highlight between Coalcliff and Stanwell Park is the Sea Cliff Bridge - 500 metres of elevated, cantilevered concrete roadway, spectacularly balanced above the surf.  From South to North, it gently descends in a series of sweeping curves, following the line of the nearby cliffs.  A wide, smooth pedestrian and cycle path on the ocean side of the roadway allows you to cruise safely and effortlessly along, enoying the view.  It's an exhilarating experience - a genuinely inspired piece of engineering.

The cyclist's privileged view from the Sea Cliff Bridge.

Those lovely engineers put the bike path on the ocean side.

The graceful sweep of the bridge as it rounds the cliffs.

North of Stanwell Park, a seven kilometre steep, winding climb - made more precarious by a jagged road-edge and homicidal car drivers cutting dangerously close on bends - brought me to Bald Hill Lookout, beloved of hang gliders.   A few hundred feet below the summit, through scudding black clouds and steady rain, I caught a glimpse of one of these courageous / suicidal (cross out whichever is inapplicable) pilots soaring close to the cliff-face at frightening speed, then vanishing into the murk.  When I hauled myself to the summit fifteen minutes later, the storm had closed in and the glider pilots were packing up their equipment and heading home.    The wind was gusting savagely by this time.  In the brief moments when the clouds lifted, the rugged coast I had been travelling along was revealed.

Every so often along this truly beautiful coast, you are reminded of its darker side.  The scary roads were cut and the isolated villages were settled principally to get at the coal seams that were first observed in these cliffs by shipwreck survivors in the early 19th century, and mined extensively from the 1840s.  Coal, of course was regarded as a bountiful and benign resource, there for the taking and a boon to development in the colony.  Its exploitation is deeply embedded in the economy and culture of the region, and few people hereabouts are interested in hearing about its lethal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.  That this industry should be phased out, with the inevitable loss of jobs and profits is "unthinkable".   More unthinkable, apparently, than leaving a blighted planet for our grandchildren. 

Looking back towards Stanwell Park

from Bald Hill Lookout

After a glorious, sweeping descent from Bald Hill, the road entered the Royal National Park, the traffic all but disappeared, and the forest closed in.  Sheltered at last from the howling winds of the exposed coast, I rode for almost 40 kilometres in a serene, green silence broken only by birdsong.  Lush temperate rainforest in the gullies and open woodland on the ridges enveloped me for three pleasant hours.  The climbs were long but mostly not too steep and the descents were gentle and winding, leaving me at leisure to enjoy this truly beautiful environment.

Serene riding through the Royal National Park, which of course will be renamed
the People's National Park when Australia becomes a republic.

Apparently, you're likely to meet riderless, 1950s-style bicycles

around these parts.  Spooky!

Temperate rainforest along a mountain creek.

After climbing to windswept moorland one last time, the road finally descended to the resort town of Bundeena on the Southern shore of Port Hacking.  I waited in the weakening sunshine, chatting to hikers who had spent the the day walking the trails of the National Park, until the quaint old wooden ferry chugged into view, rolling in the long swells from the open Pacific just beyond the headland.  I hoisted the bike on board and settled down in the lee of the wheelhouse to enjoy the half-hour trip to Cronulla in the Southern Suburbs of Sydney.

Heading across Port Hacking

on the Cronulla Ferry

Approaching Cronulla

Eastern Victoria - Southern New South Wales

The Rail Trail

The East Gippsland Rail Trail entering Colquhoun State forest

Turning old railway corridors into bike trails is a great idea, but I can’t help thinking it’s an even better idea to put trains back on them - or rather, not to take trains off them in the first place.  The value of the  resource that has been squandered by abandoning the 97 kilometre railway line from Bairnsdale to Orbost defies the imagination. Dozens of old timber bridges, now collapsing or in disrepair, span the deep mountain gullies and ravines through steep, lush farmland and the magnificent Colquhoun State Forest.  The biggest, at Stony Creek, is 20 metres high and 293 metres long, and was built in 1916 using only manual labour and timber that was cut and  hauled locally.  It’s an impressive tribute to the ingenuity, adaptability and sheer muscle of its builders, and the cost of replicating it today would be staggering.  So now, the old railway line has been transformed into the East Gippsland Rail Trail.  Only light bailey bridge-style structures are needed to carry cyclists, walkers and horse riders across the creeks today, and it’s certainly a great ride.  Because it was once a railway, all the grades are gradual, so the riding is fairly easy despite the fact that you’re traversing steep, mountainous country.  

Stony Creek Bridge.  Built 1916

Unable to resist basking in the winter sunshine, I started late from Bairnsdale, and meandered along the Rail Trail for 30 kilometres enjoying the scenery and meeting not a single soul.  After lunch in the park at the pretty mountain town of Bruthen, I managed another gentle 30 kilometres through the Colquhoun Forest which brought me to the outskirts of Nowa Nowa.  

I had stocked up with food that morning, expecting to bush-camp, so I had no need to go into town- if, in fact, the half dozen buildings straddling the junction of the Princes Highway and the Bruthen - Nowa Nowa Road can be called a town. I camped under cover amongst the trees to protect myself from the worst of the cold. The tent fly was encrusted with ice in the morning, but my new polypropylene sock liners solved the cold feet problem.

The floral emblem of the State of Victoria: Epacris Impressa - Pink Heath

Even though not a drop of rain had fallen on me, the track was becoming wetter and softer  from earlier rain as I travelled East.  With this in mind, I swapped the Rail Trail for the Princes Highway and diced with the log trucks for the last 35 kilometres into Orbost.  It was another sunny morning, but the wind was getting stronger and was now icy.  A check of the weather forecast on the Internet at the Orbost Community Centre showed a massive cold front, directly from Antarctica, approaching Victoria’s Eastern coast.  My luck with the Victorian winter weather appeared to have suddenly run out.

A couple of emus by the roadside near Orbost weren't emused (sorry) by my camera

The front was expected to cross the coast that afternoon, and the forecast was for freezing gale force winds, rain and hail for the next three days.  With the towns at least 60 kilometres apart in this far Eastern region of Victoria, I would be totally exposed to the wild weather on a bike out on the highway.  Riding on wasn’t an option.  By the time I emerged from the Community Centre, black clouds with an ominous green tinge were massing in the South.  A quick check of Orbost’s accommodation options revealed that it would be an expensive option for me to hunker down there for three days and wait for the weather to improve.  Reluctantly, I decided to put myself and the bike on an overnight bus to somewhere North of the expected path of the cold front.  Bateman’s Bay, 360 kilometres away towards Sydney, seemed to be the nearest place likely to escape the worst of the weather. I booked a seat on a bus leaving Orbost at midnight.

Conversations in a pub.

By mid-afternoon, it was dark, cold, windy and wet, and I took refuge in the pub.  (As you do!)  I still had eight or nine hours to wait till my bus was due, so I parked myself in a warm corner of the bar with my book.  That evening, a darts tournament started up in the bar, and  the place began to fill up.  As my quiet corner became more and more crowded, I was 

inevitably drawn into conversations.  “What yer readin?”  “Where’r yer from?”  “Whaddya reckon ter this bloody weather?”  Good-natured banter in a country pub.  One fairly drunk  twenty-something button-holed me for a while and regaled me with deer hunting stories.  He was very keen that I should acknowledge the superiority of his particular make of hunting rifle, and the rightness of deer hunting in general.  Of course, I agreed.  

As the pub gradually emptied out later, I fell into conversation with two men: Dave, a Telstra worker in his 50s, and Bill, a recently retired police sergeant.  Dave was more than a little drunk by this time.  The conversation turned, inevitably, to what Dave called “the Blacks”.  He’d done quite a bit of work around the Aboriginal community of Lake Tyers - a place that was once infamous for the incarceration of Aboriginal people from all over Victoria - a sort of equivalent of Queensland’s Palm Island.  Nowadays, Lake Tyers is Aboriginal-owned, and Dave was expressing his disgust that it had been “given” to “the Blacks” - that they hadn’t had to pay for it.  Between Bill and I, we got him to acknowledge that the land had been stolen from them in the first place, but that didn’t change his view that the fact that they were, in his words, getting something for nothing, was an affront to him personally.  “My tax dollars”, he kept repeating, “and they paid nothing for it - nothing!”

I’d heard this kind of angry invective before - many times, and I knew better than to get drawn into a debate about it, particularly with a drunk, but what was really interesting to me was the attitude of Bill, the ex-policeman.  Bill had spent years dealing with the contrary behaviour of Aboriginal youths in the Gippsland area; he was a front-line soldier in the constant battle between disenfranchised black kids and the law.  He could have been expected to be angry and negative about them.  But his was the voice of patience and tolerance.  Without directly contradicting or antagonising his ranting mate, he persistently referred to the reasons behind the behaviours - to the history.  Later on, as I left the warmth of the pub to wait in the cold for that midnight bus, Bill strolled past on his way home.  He told me that if the bus failed to arrive, I was welcome to spend the night at his place.  He told me where it was, that the door would be unlocked and that the dog was harmless.  “Just come in”, he said over his shoulder as he walked away.  “Make yourself at home”.  

Back on the road

I slept fitfully on the five and a half hour bus trip to Bateman’s Bay.  I was sorry to miss out on cycling this very scenic part of the Southern New South Wales Coast, but the wild weather would have made it impossible to enjoy.  I know the area quite well: as a child, I holidayed at the timber and fishing town of Eden with my family a number of times.  The tuna fleet is gone now, having cleaned out the fish stocks long ago.  The state forests around here are still commercially logged - hopefully with some of degree of planning and restraint these days.

The bus pulled in to Bateman’s Bay at 5:30 am.  It was dark and cold, but nowhere near as cold as Orbost.  I went looking for breakfast and, of course, the only place open at that hour was McDonald’s.  I feel like a traitor to culture and civilisation when I walk through the door of one of these places.  Along with massive shopping malls they belong in Clive James’s category of “Abbattoirs of the Human Soul”.  The decor was a crime against taste and decency; the coffee was almost drinkable; the food was a heart attack in a box; BUT - they had free wi-fi!  I spent the dismal hour before the sun came up checking my emails and keeping warm.

When it did come up, the sun was glorious.  I spread out my gear on a picnic table by the river, dried everything out, and pottered around happily on the little beach.   As I was repacking my tent, an Aboriginal couple strolled past.  (Bateman’s Bay has a substantial Koori population.)  The man asked me if I was camping out that night, and recommended a hidey hole in the scrub behind the fire station, where, he said, you could see the people walking by, but they couldn’t see you.  He explained that he had used the place often when he was “on the grog”.  Sound advice from the voice of experience.

Suffering in the iron grip of winter at Bateman's Bay

As it was, though, I decided to stay in the local Youth Hostel.  Isn’t it odd that Youth Hostels are full of old fogeys like me these days!  I had a pleasant evening chatting to the only other guests: a couple of kiwis travelling through by car.  The next day dawned cloudy and showery, but the temperature was mild.  I rode off happily along the highway towards Ulladulla.

On the road

From one “safe house” to another on day one, I cut across the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne from Base Camp - my sister Diane’s place in Eltham, to Launching Pad - the home of the sensationally hospitable Peg and Ian Shepherd in the South-Eastern suburb of Mentone.  Heading out of Melbourne the next morning, I negotiated an endless stream of trucks for the first couple of hours.  After Cranbourne, the road widened and felt safer, but the trucks persisted until I turned east for Korumburra.  The South Gippsland Highway was still busy with private cars.  This was a quiet rural area last time I came this way, but the development has been intense.

At Koo-Wee-Rup, I climbed an observation tower, and got a glimpse of the flat, shiny expanse of Westernport Bay to the south.  The information board at the base of the tower provided a potted history of the district, featuring a portrait of an Aboriginal elder from the 1880’s and his “lubra”.  The portraits, taken from a newspaper of the time, bordered on the grotesque, with absurdly exaggerated features.  I’ve noticed this often in 19th century drawings and paintings of Aboriginal people.  The artists seemed to have a need to denigrate their subjects, perhaps to help justify the dispossession, theft and murder being carried out by the rest of white society.

 The Koo-Wee-Rup noticeboard presented the portraits without comment, followed by a heroic account of the draining of the huge swamp that dominated the area before European settlement.  No doubt this ambitious undertaking was a boon to the growth of farming in the district, but it almost certainly destroyed a major source of food and other necessities for the local Aboriginal population.  Needless to say, this “downside” wasn’t mentioned on the historical noticeboard.

 In total, on the day, I rode 100 kilometres to Korumburra in South Gippsland.  That was probably too ambitious for my first serious day’s riding in ten months.  I was already exhausted before tackling the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges in the last 30 km.  The climbing really challenged me, and I limped into Korumburra after dark, stiff and sore.  To add insult to injury, the campground turned out to be at the bottom of an enormous hill, making it difficult (but not impossible) for me to struggle back up into town for a drink later.  I had a long, hot shower, a cup of tea and some pasta before crawling into my thermals, my sleeping bag and my tent.  A beautiful, clear night after a cool, sunny day promised a frosty morning, so I made sure I was prepared.

The South East Gippsland countryside is lush and green, flat to undulating - a rich agricultural district.  The towns of Korumburra and Leongatha are pleasant and prosperous.  The building of freeways and arterial roads has put them within reach of the south-eastern industrial suburbs of Melbourne, and no doubt there’s a growing population of workers who commute to that Stygian zone of tilt-slab factories and nose to tail semi-trailers, then return to the relative peace and serenity of the South Gippsland towns.  Travelling through them on a bike, though, is less peaceful than it once was.

In the early hours of the morning, the wind began to rattle my tent as a warmer air mass moved over the State.  A milder morning, cloudy but dry, promised a reasonable riding day. 

Still a little tired and sore, I decided that the 50 kilometres to Foster would be enough for the day.  A few kilometres beyond Leongatha, I discovered the excellent Great Southern Rail Trail: the bed of a disused railway track converted into a bike path.  Three hours of leisurely riding on the hard-packed dirt surface through bushland and farming country brought me all the way to Foster - the turn-off for Wilson’s Promontory (The Prom), the southernmost point of the Australian mainland.  I greeted half a dozen cyclists headed the other way - not long distance tourers, but locals out for a day ride - and had lunch in a picnic shelter on a ridge overlooking The Prom.

  By the time I reached Foster in mid-afternoon, the clouds were heavy and threatening.  I was tempted by a cosy-looking backpacker hostel, but the thirty dollars they were asking seemed excessive, so I decided to camp.  As it turned out, the tent site at a local caravan park was nearly as expensive as the backpacker, but it was too late to go back by then:  I was ready for sleep.

The rain didn’t eventuate, and a fine, sunny day with almost no wind and only an occasional paltry attempt at a shower saw me cover a pleasant 70 kilometres through green, undulating farmland. 

I considered staying in the pleasant town of Yarram, but it was still early afternoon so I pushed on to the tiny township of Woodside.  A local football match seemed to be engrossing the entire population - Woodside Wildcats versus - who cares!  So, after a cold beer in the nearly empty pub I rode on towards Sale, determined to bush-camp somewhere in the State Forest along the way.  As soon as the sun sank below the trees, the temperature plummeted, and my legs chose the same moment to tell me enough was enough.  I took the first forestry track on the left, put 100 metres or so between me and the road, lit a fire and put up my tent.

I quickly realised it was going to be a very cold night.  I read by the fire until it seemed late enough to climb into my thermals and sleeping bag.  When I checked the time on my phone, it was 7:00 pm.  Oh well, might as well go to sleep.  Two things prevented me from sleeping long and peacefully: I couldn’t get my feet warm, and an army of wombats shuffled and snuffled and grunted and scratched outside my tent ALL NIGHT.  Bloody nature!

The morning was clear and sunny, and freezing.  Who’s idea was this winter bike tour anyway?  I made porridge and tea on my spirit stove and set off for the large regional town of  Sale.  The day stayed fine and clear, but a strong, gusty North-Westerly wind hammered at my left shoulder all morning, taking much of the pleasure out of riding.  After an early lunch in Sale, which was largely closed for business on a Sunday, I set out to follow the Princes Highway North to Stratford, then East to Bairnsdale.  The wind picked up,  and the highway traffic was annoying, so I impulsively turned East on rural roads to cut through to Bairnsdale. 

At first, the tailwind was exhilarating, and I became confident of making Bairnsdale easily by nightfall (5:00 pm in these latitudes at this time of year), but the road became hilly and kept swinging around to the North, and I was battling the wind again.  Having ridden 120 kilometres, I limped into town an hour after dark, exhausted and chilled to the bone, and completely violated my principles by checking into a motel, luxuriating in a hot shower, then heading to the RSL (Returned Services Club) for a rubbery roast (which I enjoyed) and a few revivifying ales.  A very fortunate chat with the barman revealed that there’s another rail trail, this one 97 kilometres long, from Bairnsdale all the way to Orbost.   No highway traffic for the next couple of days!  But I will have to bush camp again, so before I leave, a pair of seriously warm socks is going to be acquired.