The second half of my long ride down the River Murray from Swan Hill to Blanchetown followed the same pattern as the first half from Tintaldra to Swan Hill. That is: monotonous and dangerous, and wondering why on earth I was so intent on doing it.
Sunday 22 October 2017. Swan Hill · Euston |146 km|
It was bitterly cold and overcast at 7.30 when I trundled out of Swan Hill. It did slowly warm up a little, but that same cold south-westerly as every day for the previous week again blew all day, and today it progressively became quite blustery – from the port bow as they say nautically – as the road changed direction more to the west.
The town of Wood Wood would’ve been a better place to stay than Swan Hill I reckon, and also a couple of caravan parks along the way. Ah well, never mind – next time!
Euston (pop. 800), back over the river again in NSW, where I stopped for the night in the local caravan park ($18), is the little sister town of Robinvale (pop. 4,000) on the Victorian side. But Euston is much more prosperous-looking. This is because there is an absolutely ginormous great ‘registered Club’ in Euston, but not in Robinvale, and this is owing to differences in the laws relating to gambling between NSW and Victoria that existed when the club was first built. Victoria has caught up to NSW (or regressed, depending on your point-of-view) and now has similar gambling laws, but a second massive club so close to an existing one would not be viable, and so Euston gets two towns worth of lucrative club traffic, and Robinvale none.
Yep, the grand ‘Euston Club Resort’ really does take the cake – worse even than the one in Eden in terms of dominating it’s tiny village, but at least it’s 1980’s architecture is not quite so perverse as Eden’s club’s is. I’m sure the locals like it! The Club, and the whole town too I imagine, is fed by Chinese and Indonesian fruit pickers (even the “Don’t Drink and Drive” signs are given in Mandarin and Bahasa around here) who seem addicted to the ‘pokies’ (poker machines).
It’s sad to see them frittering away their heard-earned cash. And no, it’s not alright that they’re bringing money into the community this way and that the community depends on it. It’s a lousy business model. Full stop.
Far too many indolent staff speaks of poor management at the Club, though the meal I had, lamb roast, was excellent and, at $19, cheap enough too, of course subsidized by the poker machine revenue. Thank you, Chinese workers!
Monday 23 October 2017. Euston · Lake Cullulleraine |143 km|
Same sort of day again today! Ideal cycling conditions to begin with (15 – 18°, clear sky, no wind), but after 50 km again came the same battle against a buffeting side wind which became a head wind after Mildura.
I charged up for 2 hours (12pm to 2pm) in Mildura using a power outlet at the Information Office, and by 5pm, hove to on the spur of the moment at a place called Lake Cullulleraine. Yep, I pulled in to the local caravan park there to stay the night, after stocking up with 2 cans of beer and 2 cans of JD and coke for dinner from the Indian-run Servo. I did have some more of that expensive freeze-dried fare to keep me going as well.
I even went for a swim as soon as I arrived! It was strange too: a warm-as-piss top layer about 6″ deep, then icy cold to the bottom at about 2′ deep, water the colour of milk and a virtually level fine sandy bottom.
I got into a friendly conversation with my caravanning neighbour, Craig, a 53-y.o ex-shearer whose chronic back pain is apparently not deemed a sufficiently serious enough ailment to warrant a full disability pension, poor guy, but he seemed a happy sort in spite of that.
Tuesday 24 October 2017. Cullulleraine · Barmera |121 km|
And the day repeats! Cool and overcast, but this time the whole distance in TURBO, 8th/9th gears at 19 km/h due to an incessant buffeting head wind.
I recharged at the border quarantine station for an hour, showing only 10 km range left after a mere 60 km travelled. The hordes of friendly flies were a bloody nuisance!
At Renmark, 27 km further on, I stopped again for a proper charge-up at a BBQ shelter down by the river opposite the Renmark Hotel, while I enjoyed a very nice roast lamb with veg meal ($13!).
Now, just for the record, Renmark gets into my books as an ebike-unfriendly place: the only town on my entire journey where the Tourist Information Office flat-out refused to allow me to charge up my batteries from one of their power outlets. Thanks for that, un-named lady who was working there at 1.20pm on Tuesday, 24 October, 2017! 😁
Fortunately, that BBQ shelter was adjacent anyway, so ultimately no harm done (but surely she could have just mentioned it at least!). It’s power outlets were ‘hidden’ high up in the eaves of the shelter, and I needed to use my 3-legged stool (bought in Roma a couple of months previously) to reach up to plug-in, and I damn-well forgot to retrieve it afterwards, so no stool anymore 😒.
Flies had become extremely bothersome at the several truck stops I rested at that day, and particularly so at the border quarantine station, so I went to an outfitters shop in Renmark where I paid top dollar for a cheap Chinese-made fly net – $16!. Cheap meal/ expensive fly net – kind of balanced out!
My night stop-over at Barmera’s Lake Bonney Discovery Caravan Park was unremarkable, except that it cost a whopping $34 for a sub-standard pitch and barely adequate ablution facilities.
Wednesday 25 October 2017. Barmera · Truro |138 km|
Yet another tough ol’ day.
First, it was 90 km in TURBO mode, 8/9th gears at 19-23 km/h against a stiff head wind to the Murray river town of Blanchetown. I had to limp the final 2 km into the town on zero battery – that is, full manual mode. This was no mean feat given I had 160+ kg on board, and a steep hill to climb! But anyway, I then had a pleasant 2-hour sit-down in the searing heat on the deck of the Blanchetown Hotel overlooking a majestic sweep of the river,
It was here I left the ‘mighty Murray’ and headed west to take a direct line to Adelaide, whereas the river continues on south to empty out lazily into the Southern Ocean at Goolwa.
After Blanchetown, cycling conditions only deteriorated further in terms of the debilitating head-wind. I ran out of power-assist again at the foot of Truro Hill after only 30 km, and had to spend 1½ hours in rather bleak and fly-blown surrounds charging-up, and even then only just made it into Truro itself after just another 20 km. Altogether, that was only 50km at 17 km/h in TURBO mode, 7th gear, and using up about 1.8 lots of full charge – a dismal record, surely.
I stayed overnight at the Truro Motel ($95), which has a passable café attached.
Thursday 26 October 2017. Truro · Paralowie (Adelaide) |86 km|
It was once again cold and overcast and threatening rain when I set off at 8.00 from Truro. But the rain held off and the day improved as it went on, except for the wind which, by the end of the day, had turned around to the south again and became another vicious headwind.
Can’t complain about the ride or the scenery though! – Very pleasant indeed, mostly along cycle paths in the Barossa Valley section, and then onto the Stuart O’Grady cycleway after Gawler on the run down to my brother’s house in Adelaide, where I remained Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights: got my phone fixed, did some shopping, visited the nephews, that kind of thing.
-ends-
9,134 km travelled in 88 days @ 104km/day