The Great Victorian Rail Trail is “Australia’s longest continuous rail trail” – worth checking out, I thought. And the rail trail leads into Victoria’s so-called ‘High Country’ with it’s “stunning mountains, valleys, rivers and lakes […] perfect for relaxation and adventure”. Who could resist!
I camped in the back yard of my friends beach house for 3 days over Grand Final weekend (the Australian Rules Football version of it). The weather wasn’t kind – mainly cold, wet and windy. It was especially bad on the Saturday night (the 30th) when a violent storm knocked my bike over onto the tent with me in it – the pointy end of the handlebar was only arrested by the tent poles about an inch from my eyeball as I lay there quivering. But the socialising was great, and I even caught up with my daughter Justine and her large group down at the beach Saturday afternoon. They were camping out at Bimbi in the Otway Ranges and had come into town for the day.
Sunday 1 October 2017. Apollo Bay · Geelong |118 km|
Heading out late towards Melbourne, I was passed by Justine about 20km out: she flagged me down and we had lunch together at Airly Beach.
Then I launched in to an arduous ride to Geelong in cold and gusty conditions, with a charge-up at Torquay along the way. It was late, I was tired and I was beginning to come down with a bad dose of ‘flu, or maybe a 24-hour bug or something. The woman manager/ owner in my first choice of motel wanted me to post a $200 bond on a $100 room – that’s a first! – and we had a little altercation about it: her saying she’s “trying to run a business” and my retort “well, you ‘re not doing very good at it, and I suggest you find some other line of work if you cant even trust your clientele” didn’t help. Sorry ‘mam.
So in bad humour I found another poxy little dive out of town where the owner and his dog were very friendly and had no problem accepting my Debit card as collateral for a dingy room.
Monday 2 October 2017. Geelong · Melbourne |103 km|
It was a really nice ride after another late start (nearly midday, still ‘fluey) – managed to avoid the tollway, and for a large part rode on dedicated cycle ways right into the heart of Melbourne.
Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 October 2017. Around Melbourne |69 km|
I stayed for 3 nights at the Westin Princess Park motel to get over my thumping great headache and aching joints, got the bike serviced (by Spokes in Abbotsford) and did get to enjoy some cycling around Melbourne’s incredibly good cycleway network.
Thursday 5 October 2017. Melbourne · Tallarook |97km|
The Great Victorian Rail Trail beckoned and so, all rugged up and under threatening skies, I headed north, trundling to the outskirts of Melbourne on yet another excellent urban cycleway, and then criss-crossing the M1 motorway on minor roads as far as Wandong at the 53km mark.
There, I had takeaway for lunch while charging-up under the town rotunda while a long-anticipated heavy rain shower erupted around me – that was very convenient timing!
And then on through some pleasant undulating countryside to the starting point for the Great Victorian Rail Trail at Tallarook, where, after some banter, the pub owner allowed me to free-camp in his backyard provided I bought a pub dinner from him. Which I did – and met some interesting local folk on the pub verandah into the bargain.
Friday 6 October 2017. Tallarook · Mansfield |128 km|
Another cold, wet and windy morning, and with a train roaring through town every hour all night not getting much sleep either, but raring to go and ride that trail, I was back in the saddle and off by 7.30.
Hmmph: not very far though – just 200 metres – brought to a halt by a rear tyre puncture! I fixed it easily enough but the tube must have gotten a kink in it because it blew out when I was re-inflating it. And so a change of tube was required right then and there in the drizzling rain, and I didn’t get going again until nearly 10 am.
After 6 hours in the saddle, plus 3 for charging-up en-route at Yea, I cantered into Mansfield, 130 km away, at 7pm, and made my pitch in the local caravan park for $20.
I’m not singing any praises for Mansfield on a Saturday night either – the place was deserted, and the Chinese takeaway with B&C (bourbon and coke) felt very ordinary in the confines of my little tent as the rain kept coming down.
I do like a good rail-trail though, and this one lived up to expectation!
Saturday 7 October 2017. Mansfield · Everton |149 km|
I cleared out of Mansfield early, but my attitude and my riding were aimless. It wasn’t until I was well underway that I found myself heading towards Benalla, and so I stuck with that.
It’s a lovely town, Benalla. I charged up for a couple of hours at the friendly nd helpful Tourist Information Centre while I had my by now standard KFC meal: 3-piece pack with coleslaw instead of mash, and Solo instead of Pepsi, and had a good look around town.
Benalla wasn’t my final destination for the day though.
I was on the hunt for more rail trails – and I thought I could make it to the start of the Murray-to-Mountains Rail Trail at Wangaratta, and camp there for the night. But then I realised I might as well head over to Milawa instead, and start with the lesser-known Milawa-Wangaratta section of that same trail that doesn’t actually go into Wangaratta itself but arcs around it to the south-east.
This I did, but this section of the trail isn’t great, to be honest, though it did get me onto the trail proper. I then had an epic ride along the Murray-to-Mountains Rail Trail until I thought I’d finally better call it quits and get set up camp somewhere while there was still a bit of daylight left – I was so enjoying myself I felt I could have continued on for another couple of hours.
And so I made my pitch right on the old platform of the abandoned Everton railway station. I wasn’t very well prepared though – just 2 slices of left-over Mansfield pizza for dinner, plus a fruit roll cake that I had bought in Yea, and only tank water to drink.
Sunday 8 October 2017. Everton · Beechworth · Bright |101 km|
I was all packed up and ready to head off early, when some lycra-clad bunny zoomed by without even acknowledging my hello. I set off after him, and I was pleased to see we both took the left-hand deviation up (and that’s the operative word here – ‘up’) to Beechworth. It’s 18 km, and uphill all the way – and I had a battery and he didn’t (although I was on a draft-horse and he was on a thoroughbred, and he was at least 20 years younger than me). I think it completely demoralised him when I breezed passed near the top of a particularly long uphill section: he looked completely blown, trying so hard as he was to stay ahead of me, and had to get off his bike to take a little rest – never did see that chap again.
After an hour in the yuppy Beechworth bakery-café for an apricot danish, cornish pasty and Double Dare iced coffee, it was an exhilarating ride back down those same 18 km in top gear with the power turned off, and then on to Bright. This was a truly remarkable day’s ride on the rail trail through Myrtleford (charging up on the generator there at the 58 km mark) and the improbably-named but delightful Porepunkah.
So good was the riding in fact that it didn’t even faze me at all when I discovered that the odd grating noise coming from somewhere in the back was due to the trailer chassis having snapped clean through near the swivel-bracket.
Using two lengths of aluminium flat bar and some hose clips that I bought at the Mitre10 hardware store in Myrtleford, I made a splint and hoped for the best. [That repair job lasted all the way to Albury, about 400 km away, where I got it properly welded]. The rain that had been threatening the last 2 days finally arrived at Myrtleford but it wasn’t heavy and it didn’t deter me from cycling on the final 20km on to Bright.
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday 8 – 10 October, 2017. Around Bright |42 km|
Loved Bright! I first checked in with a local bike shop, Cyclepath, to see if I could get something moving regarding a replacement trailer, and then I took an expensive tent-site ($45 per night!) at the Bright Holiday Park – that’s the one in Cherry Lane (not the Big4) – for 3 nights. It has a great camp kitchen to hang out in and I met some interesting people, spent some time and some money in the Bright Brewery, some more of each at 13 Steps restaurant and again some with Billy Button wines (Verduzzo, the “red drinker’s white wine” – I recommend it!). Met a few cycling people, for example Dermot who’s toured through Ecuador and all the way from Norway to Romania, and who recommended the welder in Albury where I finally got the trailer repaired properly. Yep, I’d go to Bright again in a heartbeat that’s for sure.
There was a massive and quite impressive thunderstorm on the Sunday night (8th October), but the tent stood up to it fine without any drama. And I finally got around to fixing the puncture in the front tyre too, that I had filled with foam way back in Nelson Bay, 2,400 km ago! It turned out to be a decent-sized hole too, but had only started going flat again in the last week.
I could have happily stayed in Bright for much longer, but even in off-season it’s not the cheapest place to be, and so I decided to head off bush again and to the follow the mighty River Murray all the way down to South Australia. I’d read that’s a ‘thing’.
I decided to make for Tallangatta (no, not “Tallan-gatta: “Tallan-ga-tah“). I was worried about steep hills and maybe the not-quite-up-to-scratch condition of the trailer, and Tallan-ga-tah seemed to be in a direction with less hills. Maybe so, but I still found some big-uns, that’s for sure.
Wednesday 11 October 2017. Bright · Tallangatta |146 km|
It was only 1°C when I left Bright at 8.30. It did warm up appreciably by mid-morning but then became ominously overcast as though another big storm were brewing.
Crossing over from the Ovens Valley into the Kiewa Valley was quite arduous – TURBO mode for 40+km – and I consequently only got 70km range, and therefore had to charge up for 3 hours at a place called Dederang. I also had to change the front tube there too, since I didn’t do a very good patch job the day before.
I stumbled across another rail trail – the High Country Rail Trail – about 10km before Tallangatta. Its not sign-posted very well and I could have been on it for at least a further 10 km already had I realised it was paralleling my route.
The affable guy at the Tallangatta camp ground who trousered my $7 camping fee (I presume he worked there) looked up at the sky and announced we were going to cop a big storm. He suggested I might be better off pitching my tent in under the roof of the “recreation hall”.
I took him at his word and tethered my tent to the bike, to a fusball table and to a ping-pong table in there on the concrete floor. Good move, eh, because when the storm hit about 5 hours later at midnight it was a real humdinger. As it was, the 90kph+ winds and horizontal rain still made for some mighty uncomfortable moments when I thought I was going to lose the lot.
The morning-after shot below doesn’t do it justice; however, the worst outcome of the storm was entirely my own silly fault: on packing up next day, I deflated my sleeping mat before checking I’d emptied the storage loft. I hadn’t, and when I unhooked the inner tent from the poles, the loft slumped sideways and my phone slipped out of the loft – all of half-a-bloody-meter – onto the concrete floor and cracked the screen. It cost $200 to get fixed 4 weeks later in Adelaide.
