pedaltheplanet: 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.