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.