My alarm went off at 0630, waking me from a somewhat fitful, yet refreshing sleep. It is hard to sleep peacefully when your legs are yelling at you but I did feel pretty good. As soon as I got up I noticed that my phone and cache battery lights were not lit, indicating they were not charging. I wandered over to flip on the light and ...... nothing! Ahhh, the power was out! Oh, well. There was still hot water so a quick shower to wake up, then pack everything back onto the bike.
I rolled out the door at 7am and coasted down the chilly main street to find the Foodworks, hoping they would be open as the power seemed to be out for the whole town.
Rolling around the corner I was relieved to see the doors open to the supermarket. This is not how your typical supermarket looks in a small Aussie town and there is a tragic reason for that. Marysville was at the heart of the catastrophic Black Saturday bushfires back in 2009. Those fires levelled almost every structure in town as well as taking the lives of 173 people.
I bought a few items that I thought would get me to Jamieson, 108km and 2400m climbing away. I tried not to buy too much as I could restock in Jamieson plus I was already carrying two large protein bars, one smaller energy bar, three Clif bars and a bag of peanut M&Ms that were largely dead weight as I had little desire to eat anything but the M&Ms yesterday
I pedalled back up the street to the bakery, hoping to get a bacon and egg roll or a hot pie at least but it looked shut. I peered through the front door to see someone inside and they came and opened the door. "We have no power" was the reply to "are you open?". Shit, I thought. It turns out they couldn't bake that night but they had made salad rolls and sandwiches, which I grabbed one of each. The roll for breakfast and the sandwich for lunch, later.
Scoffing my roll and washing it down with a bucket of coffee milk it was time to get pedalling. It actually wasn't very cold at all by now but it was 0745 - quite late to be rolling out of town. The trail followed the Treefern Gully Trail out of town along the Steavenson River.
Sorry, crappy low light blurry photo on the trail leaving town.
After a few kilometres the track moved onto a fire access road and began to climb - relentlessly. Shit, here we go again! This morning however, I didn't have any trouble staying on the bike and pedalling all of it. Where yesterday I had felt tired today I felt fresh and my legs felt strong. I think Day 1 of this ride was blighted by the previous 5 days at work and I paid for it with lots of walking.
Not today though! The trail was mostly ok, with some large trees down across it and some nasty rutted/rocky sections but I managed to pedal the lot.
As I crested the climb I popped out onto a sealed road. No doubt this road had climbed out of Marysville and would have been much easier going than the bush track I had just come up but then I would have been exposed to Aussie road users - I'll take the track thanks.
Enjoying the smoothness (with a log stuck in my helmet light mount)
The road climbed for a while, then descended for quite a while. I was carving, staying off the brakes as much as possible and the best thing is that there was zero traffic!
I will come back on the moto for my next explore.
Eventually I turned left into Big River rd which was a big, wide well maintained road. I made quite a few kilometres very quickly but didn't feel much joy as I knew I would need to make that elevation back. After loosing much elevation I saw this sign on the side of the road.
Surely I could find a way across. I would surely be screwed if I had to climb back out to find a way around. We shall see...
There were some nice little creek crossings to filter water at if needed. I didn't need it yet though.
Then I can to Frenchman's Creek bridge. Or where it had been. There was a large excavator jackhammering the remanents of the bridge's foundations. I walked over to talk to one of the two guys working there and politely asked if there was a way past. He couldn't have been less helpful or rude for that matter. There was no way I could walk past them, even outside their marked work site.
Fuck!
So I wandererd about 100m to the left of where they were working (wishing him a crotch infestation of lice as I did) and proceeded to wade across the swiftly flowing creek, then scramble my bike up across a balckberry strewn floodplain, then up a 30m high, 60 degree embankment. Man my bike was heavy!!
Wade
Scramble up this steep. loose slope.
Looking back down on what I just scrambled up.
This took me about twenty minutes, scratched up my legs and just pissed me off for the next couple of hours as it simply wasn't necessary. That twenty minutes would be important later today.....
The good thing about the bridge being out was that there was no traffic.
Nil, none, zilch, zippo. No evidence on the ground that any vehicle had been here in a long time. That made for easy line selection as I climbed and descended, then climbed some more. There were some steep sections that I walked but I used the walk to eat my sandwich or to do something else I couldn't do while riding up a steep climb. (it's all about time management when bikepacking!)
I was still feeling reasonable strong and felt like I was making good progress but the kilometres were ticking past pretty slowly still. I wasn't game to look at my watch in case it was stupidly late. This would just cause a melt down. If I thought I was doing ok, then thats good enough for now....
The road had flattened out somewhat and I passed a great spot to filter some water. Topping up with about two litres I figured that should get me to Jamieson.
There was a 30km sealed section of road, the Eildon-Jamieson rd that I had ahead of me. I knew it had a big climb in it and for some reason I thought it was about 300m(980ft). Well, when I got to 1000ft of climbing on the gps it was obvious that the climb went on for some considerable distance yet....
It wasn't that the climb was steep. It was actually quite rideable with almost zero traffic (it would be a great moto ride) it was the fact that the climb was relentless! I committed the sin of looking at my watch. 2:15pm.
2:15pm!! Shit!!
I needed to get to the general store in Jamieson as it closed at 4pm. I stood and pedalled, sat and span, stood, sat...cursed a bit but still the road went up and up.
Then, it didn't.
After a 500m(1640ft) climb the road went down and down. I was trying to stay off the brakes, enjoying doing 50 through the 30km/h signposted corners. I managed to roll the 2km off route into Jamieson at about 1520 and went straight to the general store. I ordered up big, stacked the front counter with stuff for tonight and in the morning, then sat out the front to check my route notes and stretch a little.
Then the mystical goddess who ran the store brought out my late afternoon snacks. They didn't last long so I made another trip into the store before she closed...mmmm mango icecream....
I love cycling because you can eat LOTS and often!!
A couple of motorcyclists pulled up on adventure bikes and I chatted to them for a while. One on a well kitted DR650 and the other on a rarely seen Aprillia Coponard. They were nice guys who had come down the Big River Rd as well. When I asked about the workmen at Frenchman's Ck they said he was friendly enough. So, the typical discimination that you get for riding a pushy here in Oz had been meted out. I had a feeling I would have been treated differently if I was on my moto.....asshole.
And that asshole had cost me twenty minutes. That is exactly how much I missed the Post Office closing time by. You can see it across the road in the photo above. I was going to mail home all the crap I was carrying but didn't need, like a GoPro, Gorilla Pod, spare batteries for said GoPro, spare cache battery as one was enough plus the bunch of repulsive energy bars that I couldn't stomach. All up around a kilo I thought. Oh well, now to just carry them....
Saddling up for the climb over the Howqua Inlet included more sealed road. This road was quite busy though, with no shoulder and one section that went through an uphill cutting with litterally NO shoulder. I had been riding off onto the dirt when I heard a car coming but there was nowhere to go in the cutting! (think train tunnel with a train coming through) I pedalled my ring out and luckily no cars came past so I didn't have to find out what might happen! There were also a lot of motorcycles along this section. It didn't hit me until a few days after the ride that the World Superbikes were on at Phillip Island in a few days.
This was by far the worst/most dangerous few kilometres of the whole ride.
Turning off the main road onto Howqua River Rd was a great relief and I enjoyed the late afternoon sunshine even if the ups were a bit upity at times. After climbing for a while the route took me onto the Howqua River Walking Track. It was a cracker of a trail and took the focus off tired legs and onto some singletrack fun.
The onto the Lower Feeder Tack....
This trail wasn't as much fun because it was starting to get dark, plus the trail tended to run straight up fall lines that were getting steeper and thus harder to ride.
There was also quite a drop off into the river on the left....
I was off the bike, pushing up a long straight fall line section of track when I heard a rustle up ahead of me. I looked up the hill to see a huge dark stag with antlers about three feet across turn and bolt up, over the top of the ridge line, not 80m away from me. My first stag sighting in the wild in Australia! That got the adrenaline pumping!!
As I continued up the slope I passed this weirldy infected, huge old gumtree. It was as if someone had slashed it's guts open. The timber underneath was all rotted and right in the centre was what looked like rotting, decaying ribcage bones (it was timber though). For some reason it rattled me a bit because it looked some human-esque.
I was starting to think about somewhere to camp the night but I was worried about water. The river wasn't far away but every time I saw it I was about 100ft above it, with a steep drop down to the river. After a while I came to a junction in the trail with a track heading off to the left, toward the river. I followed this and found myself in a mint grove, on the river bank. The smell of mint was soo refreshing!
Mint everywhere!
I filled my Camelbak and bottle to capacity secure in the knowledge that I could camp and drink as much as I liked (to rehydrate) overnight. As I headed back to the track I spooked two female deer (Sambar?) who grunted VERY loudly, which echoed around the hills and scared the poop out of me, then they charged off up the hill!
A little more pedalling and I crested a small ridge that had a flat spot to the left of the trail. This would do. I quickly set up camp, stretched some and ate the sandwich I had picked up in Jamieson earlier.
Reflecting on the gps stats it was another tough day but I had felt much better about the effort today. I felt I was finding my "climbing legs" and lamented having to carry more than strictly necessary up all of these hills (my fault for packing heavily). As you can see below, the climbing is almost the same as the descent. Herein lies the difficulty in this route. Elevation gained isn't held. It is discarded all too soon but that is a function of the way Australian authorities construct their fire management/bush access roads - steeply up, then right back down again.
All in all though, today had been a good day on the bike and so much more enjoyable than Day 1. I think I like the isolation and solitude of being in the bush.
Cheers.
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