After the lockdown, and taking encouragement from government to get back to “COVID-normal” I test the waters again with some trips out of Melbourne.
In the meantime, I got myself kitted out for Australian-style long-distance eBike touring. This involved getting hold of a single-wheel trailer and a new petrol generator so I would no longer be limited to a 110 km range before having to find a power source.
I ended up with one of the famous USA-made B.O.B. trailers that I bought second-hand off Gumtree for $200. That was after first buying a new heavy steel Chinese trailer off the internet for $169 that broke before I even got to use it. The lug that attaches the trailer yoke to the skewer broke off – see photo opposite – but in fairness I must say the seller, CyclingDeal, promptly refunded my money, so good on them. [Don’t bother testing your eyesight though: the printing on the photo just says: “Broke here. Braised up but don’t trust it” with the arrow pointing to the brassy braised blob.]
I also bought a cheap new 800w GENTREX petrol generator that weighs 8.5kg (also another good buy, for an incredibly low $319) to replace my beloved YAMAHA 1000w unit that unfortunately weighs in at a massive 13kg (and cost $1,200).
The plan this time was much the same as last time – east to Warburton, north to the border, across to the Central Goldfields, further west to the Grampians etc etc..
Thursday 26 to Saturday 28 November, 2020. Melbourne · Yea · Melbourne |307 km|
I left home in inner-suburban Melbourne at 11.30am in overcast/ cloudy conditions, 17 – 20°C, with some misgivings (about excessive weight mostly, but also the whole COVID thing being still very much up in the air. Was it really over this time?).
I followed my usual eastward route along the Main Yarra Trail/ East Link Trail as far as Ringwood and then the new (for me) and quite pleasant Carrum-Warburton Trail to Mount Evelyn, and hence on to the Lilydale – Warburton Rail Trail.
I made it as far as a trail shelter at Westburn siding on the main Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail, 2 km east of Yarra Junction (78 km travelled), with only 12 kilometres of remaining range showing, so I stopped there for 40 minutes for a quick battery-recharge to get me comfortably on to Warburton and beyond. This was the first time I’d used my brand new generator and it worked like a charm on the first pull of the starter cord. Bloody loud though.
I pushed on through Warburton township up the steep Mt. Donna Buang Road, but with the heavy trailer in tow and the steep gradient the batteries started to run down very quickly and I soon knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to the Cliffview campsite that I was heading to.
So rather than risk the power cutting out altogether on an unforgiving section of road, I stopped to recharge again at a convenient spot. This was an almost 180-degree bend in the road about 5km out of Warburton. Halfway round this blind bend the cleared verge on the downhill side levels out (the road itself is dipping at 10°), creating a narrow platform on the outside of the bend about 2m higher than the road base, and hence well out of danger should a vehicle coming down (or up) the hill crash after failing to negotiate the bend.
It was still only early by this time – about 2½ hours before dusk – and I figured I had only another hour or so more riding to go to get to the Cliffview campsite (but with a lot of uphill still left), so I’d have plenty of time for a proper recharge.
I had 2 battery chargers with me that I intended to use in parallel via a double-adaptor. This is something I’d been doing over some 14,000-odd km of travelling in 2017. However; my new ‘fast’ charger didn’t seem to be working at all. I thought this might have something to do with it drawing too much current from the new mini-generator when working in parallel with the other charger, so rather than risk frying the system altogether I just used the one standard charger.
But this made for interminably slow charging, and with dark now fast approaching and still not enough charge to guarantee making it to a safe campsite in daylight, I decided I’d better stay put for the night. This was in spite of being hounded out of my camp chair earlier on by leaches, which I’m not a real fan of. One of the little buggers had already attached itself to my left elbow and drawn a good shot of blood.
Friday 27 November. Mt. Donna Buang · Yea |116 km|
Well I only had a couple of hours sleep last night at most. At first, keeping me awake was the odd car coming past every hour or so in either direction. Scarily, I was momentarily in the full glare of their headlights as they swung round the bend.
Then, well after the traffic had finally died down, there was a curious, and ultimately tragic, event just before 2am.
A vehicle coming downhill stopped right in the middle of the road about 20m past me. I could hear voices and doors slamming and saw torchlights flashing. I poked my head out and saw an interaction I couldn’t quite figure out. The vehicle, a dark-coloured SUV, had it’s engine off and a couple of figures were moving about who seemed to be females wearing what could have been police uniforms with baseball caps and definitely bearing side-holsters.
The exchange, whatever it was, was pleasant enough and after about 5 minutes a person left the group and started walking determinedly uphill around the bend and out of site, and the vehicle started up and moved off downhill. Pretty strange, I thought, to the extent that I mentioned it to two of my daughters on the phone over the course of the next day.
I packed up and left by around 7.30am, and enjoyed a pleasant ride along the Acheron Way.
It was a good thing that I stopped for the night when I did too, because the Cliffview campsite was still a good hour away over potholed and twisting roads, and traversing it in the dark would not have been a good idea.
At the junction of C507 and C512 roads I chatted for a while to a group of 4 young middle-aged cyclists (well, 50-60 year-olds, whatever they’re called these days), also touring on eBikes. They’d started out from Maryville that morning and were making for Warburton. They were travelling very light as they were staying in pre-booked hotel accommodation overnight. Compared to them, I was carrying 3x the weight and travelling 3x the daily distance. I felt pretty good about that for some reason.
The day warmed up rapidly to the high 20s and I stopped at Buxton (45 km) for a drink and a rest and tried one of the self-proclaimed famous Buxton Burgers from the kindly Greek-accented gentleman who runs the café of the Igloo Roadhouse, and pretty darn fabulous it was too.
At the 60 km mark I stopped in Taggerty for 1½ hours to charge up on the generator once more. By now the temperature was in the low 30s and so when a Spanish backpacker drove up and opened her boss’s cherry kiosk close by, the oh-so-good cherry ice cream was a welcome treat.
Alexandra, 75 km on the clock, yielded another litre of cold beverage and some respite from the heat under the town rotunda, and then it was off to Yea along the Alexandra branch of the Great Victorian Rail Trail, a section I’ve done twice before already in each direction.
Yea is a lovely little town, made all the better by the welcoming reception at the friendly Riverview Caravan park ($17 for an unpowered pitch). I even got my old spot back from 3 years ago – next to a BBQ shelter and close to the camp kitchen and amenities block.
Saturday 28 November, 2020. Yea · Melbourne |101 km|
I forget now just how and when I first got the news there was a search on for a 60-something year-old woman who’d gone missing the previous night – last seen by the police at 2am on the Mt. Donna Buang Road – but I immediately realised the interaction between her and the police is what I’d witnessed last night from my tent.
My daughter had googled the news and she phoned to tell me it had been reported there was a cyclist camping in the vicinity and they were looking for that person – me! So I decided I’d better head straight back to Melbourne, in order to make myself available to make a statement to police should it be required.
It was a pretty tiring but uneventful trip back home – overcast with low 20s temperature, no wind and a few scattered rain drops – with two long hills to climb: Junction Hill, 16km out of Yea and another big one 10 km before the town of Whittlesea, where I charged up yet again for 2½ hours in the car park of the local McDonald’s in the spitting rain (COVID rules – I wasn’t allowed to sit inside and eat).
After I got home I phoned the police and made myself and my situation known to them.
A local detective duly came and interviewed me at length a couple of days later, while the search for the missing person was still in full swing. But about two weeks after that the lady’s body was found – somewhere in the bush in that same general vicinity I understand from the news reports. It seems she’d taken her own life after having fallen into depression over the COVID lockdown situation.
It’s a sobering thought that I was probably the last person to see her alive and it makes me sad to think that had our eyes locked and had we actually gotten to talk to each other the outcome could well have been different. Loneliness can be a terrible thing.
-ends-