Blog # 9

 Blog 9

Departing North Carlton before 9 o’clock and following the Google Maps bike route along bike tracks to get out of the city was simple in principal just by following the Merri Creek but, in practice, it was bewildering. The trail wasn’t a single bike trail, it was a whole web of trails and we found ourselves stopping every two or 300 m to check the GPS, so progress was agonisingly slow.

On a Sunday morning the bike tracks teamed with joggers and dog walkers who all seemed disciplined and courteous and we had no ‘incidents’ so we were rather surprised to get a phone call from our daughter, Sarah, in Tasmania, saying that we had nearly run over one of her friends, Gab. We had met previously in Tasmania and apparently failed to recognise him as we swept past on the tandem.

The first four hours we averaged only 11 km an hour, because of all the stops, and it wasn’t just the stopping and starting which slowed us down, but a moderately strong headwind, too.

About the 50 or 60 km mark the GPS cycle route took us onto a 10km section of gravel road and the threat of yet more, in possibly worse condition, had us looking for an alternative. At the first opportunity, when we next encountered a bitumen road, we set the GPS to follow a car route. That solved the gravel problem but cars are unfazed by steep hills - unlike us. 

Almost immediately, we hit a whole series of short, brutally steep hills, which probably took us over (a different) Mount Eliza, confirmed by the Strava profile showing we had climbed over 700 m. 

Because those first 30 or 40 km had been so slow we began to run out of daylight and it was going well and truly dark before we reached Kyneton at 6:30, feeling totally spent. Amazing how quickly we perked up after a hot shower and a meal.

On Monday morning we checked out of the motel and arranged to leave our bike there all day. During conversation with the motel owner we told her about our charity ride and she very kindly donated $60 to the end polio campaign, saying that this would have been her profit for our overnight stay. Then, we made contact with our hosts for Monday evening, Martin and Vaun, to arrange to arrive at their home in the mid afternoon, leaving us all morning to explore the town. This we did at a leisurely pace, taking in the numerous antique shops and art exhibitions before settling into a cafe for our morning coffee and cake. Unfortunately, being a Monday, many of the antique shops were shut, so we could only peer through the windows. The main art exhibition was of modern sculpture and paintings, which were mostly not to our taste but there was a fascinating exhibition in a side room of beautifully made, distorted chairs - difficult to describe but I’ll include a couple of photos.

In mid afternoon we reached the beautiful home of Martin and Vaun on the outskirts of Kyneton and spent the afternoon in lively conversation catching up on each other’s life history. They were both retired dentists who had spent many years in Northern Territory and on the aboriginal reserves in Arnham Land and had some fascinating stories to tell. They showed us a photo of Vaun sitting on a rock in the water on a ford of the East Alligator River in the 1970’s, when crocodile shooting was still legal and crocs were small and scarce. They then showed a recent photo, taken from inside a 4WD, of the identical location. In front of the 4WD, like a series of speed bumps in the river ford, were about a dozen four metre crocs. 

They then settled in the Wimmera, in Northwest Victoria, before finally retiring to Kyneton, which gave them easy access to Melbourne by train. In retirement, Vaun had developed an interest and an amazing expertise in watercolour botanical illustration and we were in awe of these most painstaking works of art. 

The early evening was again taken up with a polio presentation to Kyneton Rotary club, which elicited a generous donation, after which we returned to Martin and Vaun’s home for another entertaining evening of conversation.

On Tuesday, April 29, the day dawned cold, grey and very windy, with winds up to 30 km an hour from the south. We faced a 100 km ride to Nagambie but, luckily, the terrain was very flat and we were heading almost due north. Martin warned us that some of the roads in the early part of the ride would be busy with trucks going to a quarry in Edgecombe and he pointed out an excellent alternative route. With a perfect following wind, we flew along first 30 km until we joined the main highway near Edgecombe when either we changed direction slightly or the wind turned slightly. The result was a very strong, buffeting side wind for the remainder of the journey, making it tiring and ever so slightly dangerous.

Heathcote was exactly halfway so we stopped there for a sandwich and a coffee. According to the weather report that we looked at whilst we were there, the temperature was 16° but the windchill factor made it feel like 8.5°. It was certainly chilly stood an our flimsy Lycra outfits. The terrain changed at Heathcote from open flat paddocks to slightly hilly forested land and we noticed no vineyards (maybe we weren’t paying attention?), although Heathcote is renowned for its red wines.

We pressed on to Nagambie, rolled into the town in mid afternoon and found our motel, where we quickly had a shower and then headed out to look for somewhere to eat in the evening. The town is situated on the shore of a large lake, which is used for watersports; rowing, sailing and swimming. By now it was late afternoon and too early to eat but just the perfect time to enjoy a sundowner in the bar at the rowing club overlooking the lake. Here we sat for an hour watching, from a glassed in verandah, a magnificent sunset across the lake.

The day finished with a meal in a Thai restaurant and then, as usual, early to bed.

Thankfully the wind abated overnight and the next morning dawned sunny and calm for the 62km ride into Shepparton. Again, before we departed the town, we had a brief conversation with the motel owner who told us that Gerry Ryan, the extraordinarily wealthy owner of a caravan manufacturing company and also the owner of an Australian cycling team in the Tour de France, was very active in the community. She didn’t know if he’d been born in Nagambie but said that he owned many properties in the town.

The conversation then turned to the route we were going to take to Shepparton and the route that we had planned the previous evening was the one recommended for bicycles on Google Maps. We had spoken to a couple of Shepparton Rotary members who had offered to cycle out to meet us at one of the small villages on that route. However, the motel owner warned that this route passed over a bridge which had been closed for several years. So, Plan B. We had to rapidly replan to cycle 56km along the main highway and ring up our Rotarian escorts to meet us in a highway truck stop. They reassured us that the highway was perfectly safe with a wide shoulder and they certainly proved correct. In fact, it was an excellent ride at high speed along a very smooth surface and we couldn’t believe how strong we felt (and, no, there was no following wind, nor had we taken any ‘supplements’)

Having met Clay and Greg in the truckstop, we continued along the highway following our escort, Clay, who set a very brisk pace until we rolled into a cafe at the art centre in Shepparton, where we had coffee and a cake in warm sun on the deck. Clay was a keen and regular cyclist and was both the club president and a professional swimming instructor.

After lunch they escorted us out to the suburbs of Shepparton to our next hosts, Hugo and Karen, who live about 5 km out of town on the Benalla side.

Again, our hosts had an agricultural connection because Hugo ran his own company supplying nutritional supplements to cattle in feedlots So continued our education on agricultural matters! Then, in the evening, we were taken to the Rotary meeting.

The following day, May 2nd, was another short ride of only 44 km to Benalla and again it was along a flat road, so we didn’t need to set off until mid morning and, again, we chose to ride along the highway because it had been such a pleasant experience the previous day. However, everyone was careful to point out that there was a hill on the route. Dookie hill. Turned out to be an oversized speedbump and not sure if we even changed gear. Folks who live in flat landscapes get a little overwrought by hills.

Our hosts for the evening were Bill and Sally. Bill had been a state politician during the time that we had lived in Myrtleford so we certainly knew of his name but didn’t realise that he had been a veterinarian and was now, in ‘retirement’, a farmer raising beef cattle on his property just out of town.

We rolled into Benalla just after lunchtime and went to a cafe for lunch before phoning Sally to come and escort us from there to the Rotary shed in the middle of town. Here we would leave the bike and then go out with her to the farm in her car. Both Bill and Sally proved to be wonderful hosts and we so enjoyed our time with them, especially the sundown glass of red as the sun sank between the gum trees on their property. Bill took us on a tour of the farm in his car and, again, we learnt an awful lot about farming (starting from a very low base, mind). Who knew that when a water trough ran dry in the paddock cattle were prone to ‘overdrink’ when they were refilled…leading to death from water intoxication. Surely not a Darwinian survival advantage?

May 3rd and we had only a short ride to our destination at a friend’s house in Wangaratta and were pleased to take up Sally’s offer of a tour of Benalla local area in the morning. She was very keen to show us the silo art in two small villages out of town. The old concrete wheat silos have been transformed by huge murals stretching up three storeys and these have become a great tourist attraction, such that the villages have become quite gentrified and the usual rural decline has been halted.

Sally also showed us the courthouse in Benalla where infamous bush ranger Ned Kelly was sentenced to death in about 1880.

Speaking of Ned, we passed through Glenrowan (stopped for coffee, actually), which was the scene of his gunfight, wearing armour cobbled together by a blacksmith, with the pursuing police. He was wanted for the murder of a policeman at Stringybark Creek and in the siege of the Glenrowan pub the three other members of his gang were killed.

Finally it was time to press on to Wangaratta for a few days R&R with our great friend, Heather.