New Campervanland and the Department of Control

The Molesworth

Buller Gorge

Don't Feed the wildlife!

Pancake Rocks

Fox Glacier

We reckon Mt Cookie

Ever the Directives!

Haast Pass

South Island, New Zealand

It has come to my attention that the English language has been watered down somewhat while we have been away in foreign speaking countries. I had the manager of an international outdoor equipment chain admit to me himself that ‘waterproof’ on a label no-longer meant the item of clothing had to keep the rain out; disappointing when buying a raincoat. To ‘discover’ something one no longer has to be the first to do so; discover for ones-self I suppose, and I was also surprised to find that one can get up late, have an ‘adventure’ and be back in time for morning latte (new word for coffee). No longer is an adventure, as Baggins the Elder remarked back when New Zealand was still part of Middle Earth, “an uncomfortable, dangerous thing that was apt to make one late for lunch”.

It seems that almost every activity in this country must wave an Adventure banner offering Awesome activities or risk seeming dull to the late teen hoards descending from the Kiwi Experience busses and commercially pre-graffittied Campa-vans. One outfit even called itself awesome.com.

Not that there aren’t some adrenaline and endorphin inducing activities on the menu. Every third bridge has an elastic band clipped to the hand-rail, one need only tie a quick granny knot around an ankle, hand a local a few hundred dollars and leap off. For a few hundred more you can step out of an airplane ‘strapped to a beautiful stranger’ as one ad put it. It is lucky I don’t have the money to spare because I am pretty sure I would find out Idon’t have the guts for these kinds of things.

Adventure Capital of the World is the slogan bandied about; Each one all packaged up with a hefty price-tag attached. Am I the first person even to be even slightly un-awed by a visit to NZ.  Perhaps not as I did hear one girl remark that the only thing New Zealand had that Europe didn’t was sandflies. I guess you can’t really fly all this way and spend all that money to go home and tell your friends it is, well…nice.

Enough of the Spoilt Brat complaining I hear you cry so I won’t even mention all the fences and no-camping signs, land poisoned and trespassers will be prosecuted posters and go straight to say that we are having a…well..very nice time.

Thanks Mark and Jenny for directing us over the Molesworth track as it was the best ride we have had here although the head-wind at one point blew me to a standstill. This gravel track runs 200kms from Blenheim to Hanmer springs over some pretty rugged country where no campervans roam and even I uttered no discouraging word. At Hanmer we turned right up and over the Lewis pass where the quiet road was pretty gentle up and steep down through the eerie Victoria Forest to the old mining town of Reefton. In the Pouring rain we rode, down the Buller Gorge to Westport where we hung our clothes to drip onto the authentic carpets of the Albion Hotel and made a side trip to Foulwind Head to see the seal colony. The place lived up to its name.

Since Westport we have followed the coast road (little other choice) past the pancake rocks south to the Glaciers (where we declined a thousand dollar helicopter flight to view the shrinking ice from above) and on down to Haast under dark blue skies, the only clouds on our horizon being cumulus campervans moving north and south in fronts between mealtimes. The forests, sea and mountains under such a golden light even provoked a few unexpected complimentary adjectives to slip from the lips of a jaded old cyclist though he ensured they never began with an “A”. He had to admit things couldn’t get much nicer.

I believe the root of my sometime discontent lies in the illegality of ‘free camping’ and in fact the difficulty of such, would one, god forbid, choose to flout the Department of Conservation regulations and do so while cycling touring in NZ. Hypothetically speaking of course, if one did opt to flout, one might have to spend perhaps 60% of nights in official campgrounds thus veering further from  the already straining budget. There are DOC (guess that acronym) campsites which are mostly well placed, simple and cheap though not often reachable two nights in a row by bicycle.

Riding through the countryside here and chatting with the locals’ one becomes at least partly aware of some of the problems affecting the land. One major one is pests and the spread of non-native species. There is (are) Didymo algae or ‘Rock Snot’ spreading and suffocating the rivers where trout have already ousted many native fish. This foul life-form lies fetid on the riverbed like a seventies pub carpet and it takes but one transferred cell to infect a new river.  There is the wilding pine problem in the Marlborough sound area with the unusual solution of drilling and poisoning all trees in a designated area while they are grown as a crop in another. Perhaps the problem with the most controversial DOC solution though is the poisoning of stoats, rats, possums and other undesirables with something called 1080, this was the name of a cheap strong cider available when I was a teenager; that was pretty toxic too. The problem is that this poison works its way up the food chain and takes out the native species as well. DOC’s opinion is that the natives will recover when the pests are gone. The introduced species have decimated their trusting and naïve cousins who naturally had few predators, the poison is reducing their number further to the extent that the thickest wildest forests that we have encountered around the world are almost totally silent. A lot of people don’t trust this radical approach and believe their water is being poisoned, the birds are disappearing and the predator numbers are higher than ever. I for one have nowhere seen so many stoats trundling across the road, they even pop their little heads above the grass sometimes to watch us having breackfast. With other issues such as the threat of widespread  “ Frac “ oil-mining which could also potentially pollute further the water table, it seems there is trouble in paradise.

Bumbling through New Zealand

All we could see of Mt Ruapehu was a thin band of snow and rock beneath a battleship cloud. The wind, sucked down from the unseen, icy heights, bored through our clothes, chilled us to the bone, and slowed our progress to a pedestrian pace. We struggled for the best part of a day across what is called “The desert Road”, an open stretch of highway over a high moorland saddle at the foot of N. islands mighty mountain. Could we have picked worse weather? Well, the day before was spent huddled in the tent in the shelter of some bushes as a storm raged over us for two nights and a day and the rain never stopped. This is New Zealand’s summer, the coldest and wettest in the memory of septuagenarian Sheppard’s, even their flocks look a little miserable.  It does not help that someone told us the English are in shorts and T-shirts right now. The weather is all upside-down.

We have had some fine times though and the sun is hot when it deigns to shine. After leaving the sanctuary of Auckland family (Thanks Wendy and Co for a great time) well fed and rested, we took a ferry to the Coromandel peninsular and were left on a small remote jetty where we pedaled off into the last of the 22 countries we have seen since leaving England.

In a house on a hill looking back towards Auckland lived Trevor, a retired Sheep farmer who invited us to stay the night and share a home-grown dinner of tomatoes, roast potatoes and Red Snapper caught that day in the bay. What a welcome to rural NZ.

The next day turned to heavy rain and we rolled wet into the shelter at Port Jackson campsite where we met Monty and Penny and their bus and boat. We were treated to more delectable red Snapper and advised to stay on the beach as the country didn’t get any better than this. After two days it seemed we had found paradise and had no reason to go any further. After a days unsuccessful fishing (will we ever catch another fish) we pushed and pulled our way around the peninsular on the dirt roads, tracks and paths to Hot-Water beach where we found the backpacker crowd digging holes in the sand and bathing in the volcanic springs.

Next morning riding in the other direction came two adventurous looking types on touring bikes, all bagged and tented out with road dust on the visors of their helms. It was Mark and Jenny the Australians we met a year ago way up in the Nepalese Himalaya. This pair had been on the road in Europe and the Americas and were just finishing a tour in NZ.  It was great to see them again and we spent a great day and an evening in a wood chewing the fat and telling tales of the road. We rode off in different directions the next morning, I wonder where we will meet them again.

Onward we rode through sulfur smelling towns and past hot steaming lakes until we came to Taupo, the great lake where we bought ourselves a fly-fishing rod and tried our hand (unsuccessfully until now) at this complex sport. And so to the Desert Road.

On a sloping verge by a crossroads on a backroad in a strange land of cropped round hills and sharp, deep gorges is a picnic table. It is made of steel and wood in a hexagonal form and is stapled to an almost level gravel base with a rusty band of re-bar. It seems to be fairly new.  Of all the hundreds of such tables we have eaten at along the way this one gets  top marks for the view, if its position is a little strange. We looked back as the sun went down to the half-distant white mountain we had struggled past and failed to see. A few farmers passed and waved as we ate our dinner and drank our wine and we pitched our tent by the side of the road. We woke to a frosty morning and a frozen fly-sheet but we slept well and dreamt of never-ending all-powerful winds that blew us back over the miles we had travelled.

After a few days in the gorge-land backroads  we surfaced in Ashurst near Palmerston North and began looking for a campsite, a task not easy on the busy road. Suddenly a sporty car screeched to a halt and a London accent asked if we were looking for somewhere to sleep and if so to ride on a few miles and pitch our tent on the lawn of no.196 and make ourselves at home. And so we find ourselves staying with Sean. He is a wealthy businessman and a former comic and magician, a good one too. The wind has picked up again so we are spending a rare day indoors. Tomorrow we head for Wellington and the boat to the S. Island.

Over and Out.

To The Fat Ladies House

2913 kms from Bradninch

Australia

Well, we had a great time staying in the Hunter valley with David and Sophie even though it rained every minute. This is a rolling hill area studded with horse farms, though the coal-mines are spreading like gangrene. Thanks guys for a great time.

The train back to Newcastle, well Hamilton really, was a pleasure and the sun came out as we set of for Lake Maquarie.  We camped by the water in Swansea (a little different to its Welsh counterpart) and then rode down the surfywild road to Matcham, a beautiful house in the woods, and a ‘welcome to Sydney’ banner hanging over the door.

We met Chris and Rita over breakfast in Bali, I was looking at a map of Australia as I remember, and hearing Chris’s  antipodean twang began pestering with questions about the land downunder. Coincidentally we ended up being neighbors for some days in Samur and they invited us to visit when (and if) we made it through Oz. We spent a great few days being lazy, climbing to the tree house, wrestling alpacas and going to the beach to watch the surf roll in and the experts on their boards. The surf was huge, sadly far too big for beginners like us but fun to watch.

Where the Fat Lady Sings (but it ain't over)

Thanks also Patsy and Julian for good food and good company. We used the time to organize ourselves for NZ, well for the flight anyway, which is always the stressful and boring with the bikes.

Finally we dragged ourselves away from this haven and headed for the big city and the final leg. By Bike to Sydney it has always been and Sydney the goal since you set up and named our blog Derek, and I was too technically retarded to change it. So to Sydney we headed and here we were getting closer with every turn of the pedals.

To avoid a lot of traffic and an unpleasant last day on the road we followed the coast to Manly and hopped on the commuter ferry to Circular key. I am not sure how many boats we have been on since leaving England but I guess over thirty, could be more. This trip was one of the finest. Sydney is a very beautiful city.

We pedaled the few hundred meters to the steps of the opera house and there were Rita and Chris and the Banner. In fact there was a small gathering as Rita, with her exuberant personality had collared a number of passing tourists, largely Chinese, to form a welcoming committee.

Matcham Barbie

We posed in true celebrity style for a photo shoot (Rita juggling four or five cameras) and caused a small amount of interest as people examined our bikes. The photos show us looking a little bewildered and slightly embarrassed but really quite flattered and pleased at such a reception.

Rita is originally from Hong Kong and is a one woman phenomenon. We were taken to a restaurant in Chinatown and had a real feast before she and Chris rushed off to the airport to catch a plane and spend six months in Hong Kong.  Very special people.

We stayed in a campsite on the edge of town, had a look round the next day and went to the airport.

Matcham Pier

I put on a good Mr Bean show for the security camera, putting one boxed bike in the lift, (they wouldn’t fit in sideways on the trolley, turning round for the other and letting the door shut. Pressing the button to no avail I got in the other lift and went up expecting alarms to go off as the cameras picked up a huge unattended box. I got to the top, no open lift. Frantically punching the button I intended to go down again when finally a door opened and an Indian floor cleaner came out with both boxes turned upright on a trolley. He handed it to me, shaking his head and went back down again. Finally Anja appeared with the bag trolley not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Never have I felt so stupid.

We are now in Auckland and have spent a great weekend with  family there, Wendy, Julia and Michael, and are being well fed and looked after. It is very sad that my uncle John died a few weeks ago. I was looking forward to seeing him.

Today we had a look round Auckland and tomorrow we catch a ferry to the Coromandel peninsular and begin our tour of the Land of the Long White Cloud.

East Coast Australia

My favorite book has always been Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. It has been since I was a boy and I

Ingo and a clean-shaven Tom

allow myself to read it again every decade, to reacquaint myself with Doc of course but mainly with Mack and the boys. I never expected to meet these hard drinking philosophers in the flesh but when we pulled into a campsite in Poona, they invited us to share their wine and set the world to rights.

Mack and the boys live in an old Shack called the Palace Flophouse and spend their days seeking enough cash to buy enough whisky or wine to see them through the day. Occasionally they reluctantly resort to working to achieve this. Geoff, Ian and Ronnie appeared to have reached this same level of Nirvana, living in caravans and fishing whenever they could or just walking up the beach with the dog. More happy and generous folks one rarely meets. Thanks guys for a great time and thanks Ian for teaching me how to pump yabbies.

Maybe I should take this opportunity to talk about the people we have encountered in Australia which has been a lot, far more than we met in Europe. A gruff down-to-earthness, particularly in the outbackers, only thinly veils a good sense of humor, and and a genuine kindness. So many people ask us if there is anything we need in way of food or water or fresh fruit and vegetables. So many people here are themselves on the move; the Grey Nomads in their giant off-road caravans and Winnabagoes, the Backpackers in little white vans, the migrating workforces in their Utes with a swag bag strapped on the back.

Riding in the rain

People in the towns we pass through stop to ask us how far we have come and are going. They often tell us of good places to visit or to camp and make us feel welcome. Many people are in no hurry and spend some time talking to us; one guy, Jim, with a vacuum repair shop in Ballina, decided he wanted to oil up all the moving parts on our bikes with a special kind of oil he used for bearings. Martin just out of Broadwater found me in a petrol station looking for a spare tube (I won’t bore you with why we needed one), drove me to the next town where he knew a friend of his would have one, and brought me back again to where we were camped by the river.

We reached the Sunshine coast and spent a great few days with Ingo and Karen. Ingo is some kind of second cousin to Anja, though they had never met. Thanks for everething guys and thanks to Guido for taking us sailing.

The Gold Coast

From here we rode south in the rain through Brisbane and on to the Gold Coast where the sun came out again. Surfers Paradise. Bike repairs. Millionaires Playground. Wild Rocky Headlands. Byron Bay. Rainforest and Rain Rain Rain. An old man in a middle-aged landcruiser stops to ask where we are going and why are we on this backroad. “Heading for Coffs harbor” I reply and he shakes his head at the foolishness of foreigners and informs us that the bridge is 30 feet under water at the Bluff. Amused at our wide-eyed disbelief, he told of how he had seen cows stuck 60 feet up trees along here after the rains receded. The radio later reported the river was 10.6m above normal levels so he was no fibber. I could not see if this guys tongue was in his cheek or not but he proudly told us he had worked at the same bench at the same saw-mill for 50 years and had never travelled more than a hundred miles North or South in his whole life. Some traveller had told him as a boy that there was no more beautiful place on earth than the valley where he lived and he had decided there was therefore little point in him leaving it. Would that we all were so wise. He recounted a day in his youth when he went to Coffs harbor and back in the same day and didn’t get back till after midnight. An experience it seemed had never been repeated. We reached coffs harbor that evening despite detours around the floods.

A car coming the other way pulls up and a woman and her daughter roll down the window to talk to two drowning rats on bicycles. “You should make it to the Highway if you hurry but the water is up over the road already, if you don’t make it through come back and stay with us, we are the blue house at the crossroads back a few miles we’ll dry you out and cook you up some dinner”.

Not Photoshop, honest!!

We made it through to the oxymoronic Pacific highway and draped ourselves in fluorescent roadwork warning flags so we could be seen it the rain by the traffic. Third day of rain, camping in the forest with the leeches and giant spiders. Nambucca heads to Kempsey. We are told the backroads we wanted to ride to Port Maquarie would be under water so we should stick to the highway. Damn highway is dangerous especially in the rain but it seems like we have no other choice. Micky and katriona think we do and pull over in their converted school bus. They are going exactly where we wanted to go that day and we weigh up the options; a day on the highway in the rain, shotblasted by trucks or sitting in a warm bus looking out the window. I am reluctant a little not to cycle every inch of the way to Sydney but find saying yes in such situations leads to interesting situations. Anja needs no convincing. We throw the bikes in the bus and get a ride to Lauriton, perhaps the prettiest place on the coast so far, a small town on a creek between a lake and the sea and lying at the foot of the North brother mountain. We stay for a few days to dry out and be fed and entertained by our new friends.

Mickey and Katriona have been on the move for years in one form of vehicle or another and know all the best free park-ups from Tazmania to the tip of Cape York.  We ride the bikes down a great dirt track and meet them again at Crowdy Head where we camp on a wild peninsular and Anja fishes from the rocks while I drink and chat with Mick.

Old Gibber Road

With reluctance we ride on south because we now have a deadline. We fly from Sydney to Auckland on the 10^th and have some friends to visit on the way. It is not far now but as with the whole of this coast of Australia, there is so much to see.

From Tuncurry to Tea Tardens past the Great lakes is one of the best days rides on our whole trip. If you are ever this way ride the Old Gibber Track to Mungo Bush and camp on the shore of Myall Lake.

From Nelson Bay the road is busy and the rain starts again. David and Sophie meet us in Stockton, wring us out and stick us in the car. After a great meal is Newcastle they take us back to where they live near Scone in the upper Hunter valley. We met these guys in Nepal one day not far from Kathmandu. They were on a 7 month cycle tour in the Himalayan regions and we spent some time there together. Nice to see them again in their native habitat.

It is still raining, unusual apparently for this area in summer but strange weather seems now to be the norm the world over. Tomorrow we will get the train back to Newcastle and ride down to Matcham to see Chris and Rita who we met in Bali. Then we must involve ourselves with airports, passports and bike-boxes. All the stuff we hate. We are glad happy to be going to New Zealand to string out the journey for a few more months because the idea of stopping and returning to Europe is a bit frightening. We have failed to devise a plan for our future and don’t even know which country we should settle in. Sometimes we joke that we should fly to South America and keep on cycling. We laugh but I think we would both like to do this if we could spend a few months earning some money in Australia or NZ. After almost two years on the road, cycle-tramping has become our way of life and it is hard now to imagine not doing it.

Anja studies the menu

The bikes are a bit worn out. The moving parts I mean. We thought everything would make it a few more thousand kms but were wrong. Anja needed a new chainset back on the Gold Coast which cost a small fortune as everything to do with bicycles is here three times the price it is in Europe. I spent the day yesterday in David’s garage doing some long overdue maintenance with good tools and a bike stand which was a pleasure, so we should be set up for New Zealand, but our rims and even our bullet-proof tyres are looking a bit worn out after almost 27 thousand kms.

So, Sydney almost in sight but I feel not the elation of reaching the finish-line of some arduous ordeal, or even of achieving what we set out to do. The all the way overland idea was given way back in Tehran. What we set out to do was to be out and about in the world on our bicycles, heading a little further east each day and seeing what we could see. Always riding into the unknown. This great feeling we achieved way back in Europe, I think before we even got the ferry to France. The Big Tramp. A lifelong dream made real.

We have encountered a number of things on this trip which I never counted on. A too-close proximity to landslides, floods and fires was not something I expected but neither was the amount of people we have met. I have made more friends in the last two years than in the forty that preceded them. Unpleasant encounters with people is what was talked about, worried about I guess, before we left but we can honestly count these on one hand, pleasant encounters are countless.

It is a wondrous planet that we cling to; I would swap it for no other, but from what we have seen the world over, we are not looking after it properly. We need to maintain it more like Saint Exuperie’s Little Prince who regularly cleaned out his tiny planets volcanoes. Individually we are mostly caring souls but en-masse we are a scourge. The world is wide but it is finite. In Asia the crap is thrown all over the carpet, in the West we shove it under but the end result will be the same. The answer:

EVERYONE RIDE A BIKE… 

The Bus

….of course.

CHRISTMAS IN AUSTRALIA

Up Above Down Under


Last year, lest you have forgotten, diligent reader, we spent Christmas somewhere lost in the damp mists of northern India, and Christmas dinner was a damn good meal eaten alone in a typical small town restaurant. We left full but unrestored. 



This year we decided to try and do something a little special, not that we are overly big on this festival but it is a reason to try and make a day stand out from the others. A hard thing to do when so many of our days are outstanding and, with travelling alone in such an unvarying part of the world, difficult to organize. A look on the map showed a National park, The Blackdown Tablelands, a little south of our route and which, with a little planning could coincide with Christmas.



Visiting National Parks by bicycle in the Northern Territories mostly demands at least a few hundred km detour on rough tracks and until now, wanting to keep ahead of the January rains, we had not allowed the time to see any. The Blackdown tablelands designated camp area looked to be about 30kms south of our road and ‘Tablelands’ meant 47000 hectare plateau rising above the plains. Sounded good.

Our Alpine Hut

Reluctantly we left the protection of the Botanical Gardens in Emerald, a park any Capital City would be proud of, and rode a good ride to Blackwater, Queenslands Coal Capital. Here we stocked up on food and serious amounts of water as we were assured that none was available in the park. The bikes were heavily loaded as we pulled out of town hoping to ride the 35kms to the side-road turn off before sundown on the 23rd, zipping up the hill in the morning and having camp set up well before lunchtime on chrisymas eve.

Well, best laid and all that, less than a mile out of Blackwater my freewheel hub decided it had gone far enough and If I was going to ignore its brief but obvious warning groans signifying breaking ratchet teeth, then only I was to blame. When worrying about a slight noise in the first car I ever bought, an older friend at the time had advised that if I was not in a position to do anything about it immediately, it was best to stop worrying and enjoy the ride. Advice I have perhaps taken too much to heart in life.

The Feast

So I had no drive in the back wheel, and a ride back into town revealed no bike shop,( none expected), and practically no-one on the streets to ask for help. I approached all of 7 people, Blackwaters outdoor population, trying to elicit the possible whereabouts of an old bicycle-wheel for parts. I believe most people in Blackwater could fix a 100 ton dump truck before breakfast, but bicycles were pretty much an unheard of machine around these parts.

Back to Anja under the roadside tree. We figured to try and turn the bike into a fixed gear arrangement by locking the cassette with a spare brake cable to the spokes, disconnecting the derailleur and shortening the chain. We were hopeful this would work but the chain kept wandering over the cassette, up and down, no-matter what I tried to do. The sun was setting and we defeatedly pushed back into town. It was lucky we were so close to somewhere with such a breakdown. We always seem to be lucky in this respect.

Strange Land Strange Fella

Figuring to camp in the park, Anja asked a woman in her garden for directions, told of our problem and we found ourselves directed to the Samaritans second hand church shop. Apparently they often had old bikes and might be able to help. They would be closed but they lived right next to the church.

John and Karen were the best kind of Christians. They calmly figured out the best way to help us. Behind the church was the scout-hut and a good place for our tent. We could use the church kitchen and toilets. They had no compatible bike parts but an old mountainbike that had been run over by a car was found under a tree in the yard and a bunch of tools brought out of the garage. Ok, my bike was a nine speed and this one a five speed, the freewheels different, and the best rim the shape of a circular banana but both John and I were confident that something could be done. With the help of a 3 lb hammer I got things straightened out a bit and we were back on the road by 8 am next morning; it looked like Christmas was back on. God bless the Samaritans.



 Headwind, Hot, everything seemingly flat actually uphill. Same old story. By early afternoon we had fought our way to the foot of the plateau. It was bigger and further away than it had looked. Before we even started up the 600m, 6 km climb the whole show ground to a halt. One could not really say that we ever travelled ‘light’, but things had got a bit ridiculous. We had 22 litres of water, a spare wheel and a lot of food, not just the festive fare but enough to reach Rockhampton still some hundreds of miles away. I look back and laugh now but it was serious at the time, we could not even push up the hill let alone ride and we knew that if we found no water on the plateau we would have to come pretty much straight down again.

Laughing Monkey Bird (Kookaburrah)

There were lamb chops, green beans and onions, tins of baked beans and Irish stew, bags of biscuits and a big fruit-cake, large tins of peaches (a far finer invention than sliced bread) and a pot of cream, loaves of bread and jars of peanut-butter, marmite and honey, Kilo’s of hot chocolate and milk powder, (far cheaper to buy in bulk here in Australia). We had a kilo block of cheddar and a box of wine, add to this Anja’s bag of stolen mangoes, 3 litres of Applejuice (on special offer), all the other sundries, staples and snacks I have forgotten and you begin to get the picture. We considered turning around but there was no-where else to go.

We ate the mangoes, cached the spare wheel as we were coming back the same way, and as the water was going down fast anyway we managed to drop a few pounds. After Anja changed into her walking boots it looked like we had a chance of getting to the top. The trees got bigger and the undergrowth thicker and small walleroos bounced between the red-sand boulders. Our minds were diverted by the wonders of the place and we forgot about our troubles. At the top the asphalt road ended and a pea gravel track led on to the camp site but we were done for the day and a storm was brewing anyway.

Walking in a Wonderland

By a lookout post that had a view looking back on the flat expanse of Australia over which we had ridden. The air was dusted with bushfire smoke adding an extra hue to the sunset. Carrying fresh meat in Australia is difficult so we decided to have Christmas dinner then and there. It was a splendid feast but we had to pack up quick as a storm approached.

The only place we could get a tent-peg in the ground was in the bottom of a gully so we put up the inner tent in the ladies toilets. Sounds a bit grim but I must add that these were the cleanest, best designed conveniences in the world. We imagined without difficulty that we were in an alpine hut with two ensuite bathrooms and a bike garage.

Pea-gravel is a simple but apt description of the road material. Imagine riding on a steep track made out of frozen peas. One slips backwards on the uphill sections whether riding or pushing but we made it to the campsite by 9 am and did little but eat and drink for the rest of the day though we made a short walk through the woods in the evening to a cliff-face where the stencils of Aboriginal hands were still bright in red-ochre.

Rainbow Waters

Sitting round our fire in the too brief dusk we were visited by Gary, an Aboriginal with a German father and an unusual name. he was a, well I forget the term he used, but a sort of Native guide and bush-tucker expert though he came from some lands to the south. He talked of plants, of stone-tools and the rainmaker that came down from Arnhem land when he was a boy and understood the beauty of a stone axe. I showed him the stone flake, one of many we found one red-orange evening back in the outback when by chance we must have camped in a quarry that could have been either 100 or 50,000 years old.

On Boxing day we followed the frozen pea road over bare-stone creek beds to Rainbow Waters where a waterfall fell from cold brown pools over sandstone ledges then over the edge of the tableland. To the tribe that gathered fern roots and stringbark on these lands before the cattlemen came, this place represented the source of all life, Moonda Gudda. Understandably so, we sat in a cool and tranquil awe for three early hours until the first of the few and intrepid holiday folk arrived.

Take a Break Mate

As we reclaimed our bikes from the trailhead a pick-up (ute) emptied two tough looking miners who mumbled G’days and I overheard one say to the other, “Jeez Bruce, that’s hell of a bike ride”. They didn’t know the half of it. This isolated world was like Tarzans hidden world on the old Johnny Weismuller Saturday morning show. A forest paradise sitting high and sheer sided above the jungle beneath. We had an unforgetable Christmas.



The Tablelands



Moondda Gudda

This tree grows nowhere else.

Bushwalking

Pea-Gravel Road