#38 Victoria’s West Coast |603 km|

Victoria: the second part of my ride from Adelaide to Melbourne  – 7 days in early December, 2017.  Early summer along the famous 250-km Great Ocean Road that all international touring cyclists have on their bucket list. 

Not that it was very summery – cold, wet and windy, more like it – and by the way, there is so much more to recommend this route than just the Great Ocean Road.

Monday 4 December, 2017.  Mount Gambier to Nelson |66 km|

Only half a day’s riding today.  I didn’t get away from Mount Gambier until 12.30, having picked up my repaired phone from the Post Office when they opened at 9.30, and then having to get my bubbled rear tire (and tube) replaced at Daktari Bike Shop after they opened at 10.30.

So, the “Nobby Nic” tire that I got back in Port Macquarie on August 30 lasted 6,800 km – not so bad, and better than the 5,200 km the tire it replaced got – the “Rock Razor” that came with the bike. The only tire Daktari had available was a “Maxxis Forecaster” (27½ x 2.20), which is the same brand/ model as the front tire that I bought in Echuca on October 19.  That one replaced the original front Rock Razor at 8,700 km, and is still going strong at 12,000 km (ie. after 3,300 km travelled), so we’ll see how both the Maxxis go  together.

But enough of the technical stuff.

Mount Gambier never showed its kinder side weather-wise while I was there, but it is an elegant and prosperous-looking city, and certainly has geography on its side. In a word: verdant.  OK, I know verdant is not strictly geography, but it does have all that geography stuff too – where else for example do you find such recently-active volcanoes in Australia – only 4,500 years ago (ie. in biblical times if you’re Jewish) – and this whole thing with the sink-holes and subterranean rivers that permeate the region only adds to the mystique.  About the verdure: most places around here need, and actually own, a ride-on mower, and they use them too! Manicured acreage on this scale has not been witnessed since Noosa.

The ride to Port Mac Donnell was mostly downhill, and the town itself is all downhill too – well, OK, not so bad really, let’s just say…un-flabbergast-worthy.  Since it is the self-acclaimed crayfish capital of the word (and boy, are they picky – don’t ever call them lobsters!), I figured I’d row the boat out, economically-speaking, and have one or two, or at least a smidgen of lobster/ crayfish in a sandwich.  Nothing doing.  Either fork out $95/kilo for a whole beast (and the smallest ones weigh about a kilo) or forget it – so I did.  Forget it, that is.

So maybe I had a downer on the whole place just because I was a tad annoyed at the attitude of the local fishmonger.  At least at the second fish  shop I went into the lady explained the lobster…err, sorry… crayfish industry here really only caters for the whole-crayfish live export trade, which I kind of knew already, but I do think there is a market opportunity here for someone who is prepared to sell a bit of crayfish to a passing tourist – even at $95 a kilo:  Anyone? 100g or even 200g of cray meat would have been a definite goer in my case.

Still and all, I thought the detour (20 km extra) to Port Mac Donnell was worth-while. The road south from the port closely follows the coast and there are some viable camping spots right on the beach, especially at 9 mile creek and Browns Bay, which even has a picnic shelter and a spotless toilet (I know, because I used it).

This time, I didn’t mind the northerly retracing of my wheel-turns to get back to the main road, it being all down-wind, but then I paid the penalty of course for the last 10 km into Nelson against the wind, albeit milder than Saturday’s torture.

Another thing to bear in mind if you’re coming this way is that the main road, the C192 Glenelg River Road, is busy and shoulder-less, with a lot of logging trucks on it, so be warned and be careful!  A mirror is a necessity!

Nelson is not much of a settlement – just a pub, a service station and a bridge over the Glenelg River is about all.  OK, that and a very nice bush-setting caravan park too.  I stayed there on a non-powered site that cost $28 – that is peak season pricing as of 1st December, apparently.  Oh, and there is also another place in Nelson where you could camp next to the pub but it’s a complete dump!

So take my advice and choose the Kywong bush camp that is 1 km up over a big hill on the left-hand side immediately after the Glenelg River bridge travelling south.

Nice people and a nice ambience, and the native wildlife seem to like it too, which is always a good advertisement.

Tuesday 5 December, 2017.  Nelson to Narrawong |99 km|

It wasn’t until 11.15 that I got away from that delightful bush caravan park in Nelson.  To be honest, I was a little under the weather from the bottle of red I polished off the previous night, but also it was just a peasant place to hang around in and spin out the packing-up routine.

I felt really lucky to see a brown snake crossing the road in front of me just after I left the camp, but it slithered away before I could get my camera out. Then only a few kilometers further on, this koala came sauntering out onto the road verge.  I managed to get few snaps because I startled her and she bolted up the nearest tree – it was only a small tree – and she just sat there looking at me.

As I mentioned already and will say gain: this main road between Nelson and Portland, the C192, is dangerous for cyclists: the road surface is in generally poor condition, there is mostly no shoulder to speak of, and the verge provides only an unreliable escape route. But the real danger along here is the proliferation of huge 3-jinker logging trucks speeding by every couple of minutes in the direction of Portland. All I could do as they were bearing down on me was to quickly come to a complete stop, point the bike into the verge, and cringe.

And there doesn’t appear to be any alternative route between Nelson and Portland either.

But, notwithstanding the frightening traffic, it was still an enjoyable ride. Quite cool, not much wind, a bit hilly and pleasant green scenery.

I charged up for 3 hours in the Portland Information Office, where they told me about the free camp at Sawpit, around 15 km east out of Portland near the village of Narrawong, so I decided to go and camp out there for the night.  It’s a really great spot up a big hill about 3km off to the left of the main highway. There were already a couple of dozen people camped there: I chose a picnic table adjacent to a nice friendly retired couple from Melbourne in a caravan.

Wednesday 7 December, 2017.  Sawpit to Warnambool |117 km|

I left the Saw Pit camp around 8.30 and was in Port Fairy by 11, where I went straight to the tourist information office and had to talk them into letting me use their power outlet to charge up for 2 hours. It was touch and go there for a minute, but they huffily relented in the end.

So at 1pm I took off along the rail trail that goes indirectly to Warrnambool via Koroit. Not much to see until the last 10 km or so coming into Warrnambool, but it sure beats taking on the main highway, (though the highway had been tamed since Portland anyway, by the near-absence of any timber trucks).

Warrnambool is a decent-sized city (population ~35,000) and has a pretty seaside precinct, though the CBD is quiet and ordinary.  I stayed in a motel – the Heart Motel – near the centre.

Thursday 7 December, 2017.  Warrnambool to Port Campbell |72 km|

11.15 am, and another late start into a cold grey day; this time due to a telephone conference meeting for work that I needed to attend between 9.00 and 10.45. The motel owner was getting toey about my late departure even though I had specifically arranged for late check-out at 11.00 am: a bit rough I thought, considering my slumber had been rudely interrupted in the early hours by two guys outside my room having a loud and protracted goodnight conversation, and I couldn’t get back to sleep after shouting at them to shut up.

As a side-note, the motel owner’s wife called and left a message during the day – something about me putting luggage on the spare beds and there so much grease on the blanket it had to be thrown away.   But I didn’t buy it – I’d noted the passive-aggressive signs on the 2 spare beds about the luggage issue when I checked-in, and so had studiously avoided putting anything that could be construed as luggage on them. And as for the grease, I’d left my bike outside and had only brought the trailer in to just inside the door and parked it at the foot of one of the spare beds (there were three single beds in the room).  She threatened all sorts of dire consequences over the line in her message, so I did call back and got her husband on the line.  I apologized for his wife’s obvious upset but stated my case as above.  My thoughts on the matter:  I know very well I behaved and used the room as per any typical guest would, and if they felt the need to go into a rant like that against me, well… they’re in the wrong goddamned business!

I did some shopping at Woolies supermarket on the way out of town, intending to have a picnic breakfast at the first opportunity, but when I got to Allansford I thought I’d go in to see the local attraction, Cheese World, and ended up buying a greasy hamburger for lunch instead.

This road, the B100, is also, like the C192 before it, not good for cycling – there is zero shoulder and no verge at all and a fair amount of traffic – but it is at least flat and fairly straight, and the scenery is interesting enough (mainly dairy country).  There wasn’t much wind to start with, and it was from the south-east anyway and so gave me some boost, but soon enough it strengthened considerably and turned around from due south.

This buffeting cross-wind made riding difficult, but by this time I’d come back to the coast and the added interest in scenery made up for the trying conditions. I was officially on The Great Ocean Road now (and in fact had been since Allansford, but the lack of any  ocean for the first 40 km kind of makes it kinda hard to believe).

It was 3pm by the time I got to Port Campbell and used the Tourist Information Office power outlet to charge the bike batteries.  It started raining steadily while I was in there, so I hung on longer than strictly necessary to wait for the wind and rain to abate.  I’d intended to ride on to at least the town of Princetown but the info lady, a lovely, enthusiastic and informative Irish woman,  told me the road is exposed to the worst of the weather along there, and so I took her advice and cycled, in the driving rain, to the town’s “Camping and Recreation Ground” that is operated by the local council.

There were only a couple of caravans in residence, well spread out in their individual semi-secluded camping bays, and there was no one around in authority (you pay by the honor system of depositing the camp fee in an envelope into a mini-safe), so I pitched my tent in under the veranda of the camp kitchen to stay out of the weather.  Later, a few other backpacker-types did come along to use the kitchen, but no one seemed to mind too much me being camped underfoot while they were cooking.  The wind and the rain did stop at 6 pm, but I was quite content to remain there under the veranda.

The friendly camp warden arrived to collect the evening’s taking just as I was finishing packing up:  he didn’t comment that I may or may not have been camped in under the verandah, but his wry smile suggested he probably knew and didn’t mind too much.

Friday 8 December, 2017.  Port Campbell to Skenes Beach |109 km|

The weather was still pretty grim – freezing cold wind from the south and intermittent showers – when I finally pulled out of the Port Campbell Recreational Park at 9.30, but my mood perked up almost straightaway because the ride along the Great Ocean Road really is that good!

After having seen only 3 other touring cyclists in the whole of the past 5 months, today I came across 3 in one day!  The first was Raymond Lei from Taiwan, who I met as he was coming out of the Loch Ard Gorge turnout and I was going in. We stopped and had a good old hail-fellow-well-met kind of chat. He had started in Cairns and was heading to Adelaide and then through Alice Springs to Darwin.

After Loch Ard, I scooted right on past the 12 Apostles – it is far too organized and touristy these days – and not long after, came across my second touring cyclist of the day. This was 50-something Taka from Japan who started his ride in Brisbane and was heading towards Adelaide too – in fact he said he rode together with Raymond a few days back. He complained his luggage was too heavy for him at 20 kg.  Well, I’m toting about 80 kg and then there’s Paddy from Germany who’s all-up weight is 260 kg, so Taka’s load looked extraordinary light to me, and I figured he must be credit-card travelling, as there was no evidence of, or space for, camping/cooking/sleeping gear.

But my last touring cyclist encounter that day really does take the cake.  I had left the coastal part of this section of the Great Ocean Road and just completed the grueling first-stage ascent into the Otway Ranges and was starting the second stage, when I spied an obvious fellow-cyclist coming the other way, and so pulled over to have a chat (he was the one going downhill at this point, so etiquette was preserved).  He was a European guy with a flowing Rasputin beard (Russian maybe?) in his late 60s at least, riding on a very lightly-constructed light blue ladies bike with no gears.  He had masses of tatty pannier and garbage bag cargo on board and a huge – but really huge, 80 litres at least – daggy old carpetbag strapped to his back!!  I mean how can he even manage to get on a bike loaded up like that, let alone ride in such hilly terrain.  I never did find out either, because he just looked at me with a slightly startled expression, motioned with a decisive forward-chopping action of his arm and said a drawn-out “Tooo Ad-e-laiiiide” and continued on his merry way with a well-intentioned “‘Luck” over his shoulder.

Moving right along…I got to the top of the Otway Range at Lavers Hill where I charged up on the generator in a nice grassed BBQ area behind the library for 3 hours. The town pub bistros (there are 2 of them) and the several cafes were far too posh for me, but I had a nice picnic lunch anyway from the food I bought in Warrnambool that was intended for yesterday’s lunch (bread, butter, cheese and corned beef silver-side, plus pasta salad).

The ride resumed at 3.30pm and I sailed on through Apollo Bay, but then got side-tracked into camping at Skenes Beach in the caravan park there, some 8 km past Apollo Bay.  This caravan park is small but situated right on the beach and tucked in alongside the highway; decrepit but clean and functional facilities and a quirky manager, Charlie, who bantered away from $45 down to $25 for a non-powered “site” next to his ute and the BBQ, and opposite the toilets.

A fellow checking-in camper, Sarah, invited me to a party up the other end of the park and so I bought and defrosted 4 huge lamb chops and got 2 big bags of deluxe popcorn to take across (but couldn’t manage to buy any grog).  I went over to the party, but felt uncomfortable in such an obviously close-knit group, and so didn’t stay long at all – no one had even offered me a drink!  So I had my own private BBQ with Charlie’s 3 kelpie-cross dogs, and then it was an early night tucked up in the tent.  Lots of new arrivals – Melbournites, presumably – rolled in with loads of kids full of energy, but it all quietened down by 10pm.

 Saturday 9 December, 2017.  Skenes Beach to Rye |140 km|

I thought about staying an extra day at the Skenes Creek caravan park – it was very pleasant  there – but in the end decided to continue on to Rye to see my daughter Justine and her family while it was still the weekend and they weren’t inundated with school and work activities.

It wasn’t the longest day’s ride I’ve done, but, boy, it sure was the quickest!  I had to charge the batteries along the way – which I did using a council power outlet in the park at Anglesea – and there I realized I might just about make the last ferry from Queenscliff at 6pm if I made haste.  Queenscliff is 75km from Anglesea and it was already 3pm, but with a nice tail wind on offer I thought it was just about doable.

Well, I made it with half an hour to spare, averaging 28kph for those 75 km, even though the wind shifted around to the south for the last 30 km as I continued east.

-ends-

#38  Mount Gambier to Rye |603 km|

15,085 km travelled in 144 days of riding