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.