There’s not much happening around Christmas in these COVID times, so to hell with tradition, let’s go for a ride in the hills around Melbourne.
Xmas Day. Friday, December 25, 2020. Abbotsford · Upper Ferntree Gully and back |116 km|
Well that wasn’t much of a Christmas, festivity-wise! I’d bought a set of Schwalbe Marathon E-Plus tires off the internet from Wiggle (delivered to me in Melbourne from the UK in only 5 days!) and fitted them on Christmas eve. That took quite a while – I don’t quite have the super-human knuckle strength to get the old tyres off and the new ones on, and it took me a good 2 hours to do it. I was beside myself with rage and sobbing by the time I completed the job.
The original Schwalbe Rock Razor tyres had only done 7,200 km and aren’t quite finished yet so I stored them away. The rear one didn’t have a lot of tread left on it, and I blamed this for a nasty fall I had in the wet a few days previously that scarred up my left knee yet again. The front tyre was still ok tread-wise, but it had a myriad of gravel cuts on the running surface and was prone to puncturing. The new Marathons are supposedly more suitable to road touring than the MTB-style set they replaced as they provide less rolling-resistance.
I also reinstated my ‘Jones H bar’ touring handlebar and did a shakedown run with just a light pannier out to the lower Yarra Ranges and back again on Xmas day. 116 km, and didn’t even need to recharge along the way. All good.
Tuesday December 29, 2020. Abbotsford · Yarra Junction |79 km|
Getting more serious now, I decided to make a proper longish tour through the Yarra Ranges and on to Walhalla, then back to Melbourne via Moe and the Wonthaggi coast and Phillip Island – about 500 km over 6 to10 days all up.
However, I ended up doing only 200 km over 3 days, which I put down to lack of…..chutzpa, willpower, whatever..
I started off ok – left it late in the day before I got moving, 11.30am, and then had an easy-enough run of it to Yarra Junction on the Lilydale to Warburton Rail Trail in mild sunny conditions without much wind.
The free camp shown on WikiCamps turned out to be for day-use only but is right next door to the council-owned Doon Reserve Caravan Park which is actually quite pleasant and very family-oriented. That’s where I stayed.
The rather laconic and morbidly obese Kevin runs the site and insists on lugubriously escorting new arrivals to their pitch on his ride-on petrol mower which makes for a slow-moving spectacle that the whole campsite can enjoy. For all his gruff exterior I actually found him to be rather kind and helpful. He was rather terse and stern at first, and the check-in procedure due to all the COVID rules was definitely tedious: I had to fish out and charge up my computer to show him a copy of my passport ID page, as well as a bill addressed to me at my Melbourne address before he would accept that I wasn’t a renegade NSWer who’d snuck across the border illegally.
It cost $27 for an unpowered pitch that turned out to be right on top of a large overly-friendly extended family group of Christian fundamentalists who kept apologizing profusely every time one of their brood tripped over my guy ropes or lobbed their beach ball onto my tent. No harm done. I managed to get all my electronics charged up in the crappy ‘camp kitchen’ close by and while the amenities block wasn’t that great it was quite serviceable and clean at least.
Wednesday 30 December 2020. Doon Reserve · Starling’s Gap |39 km|
It wasn’t far but it was extremely hard work, the ride today. I was thoroughly exhausted by the time I arrived at the Starlings Gap campsite at about 1.30pm. It was a very steep and narrow winding road with a floating gravel surface, giving very little traction and poor steerage-way. I could definitely do with more of the weight distributed on to the front wheel because the bike had a disturbing tendency to rear up and twist around every so often, especially when I had to cut across old car tracks.
When I arrived at the Starlings Gap campsite there was only the one, well-established, tent set up but with no occupants in evidence. I pretty much had my pick of any other place to pitch my tent. But whilst I was dithering about where to put my tent, two intrepid hikers emerged out of the bush and promptly commandeered the best spot down at the bottom of the clearing that I’d just about decided on for myself. So I went the other way, about equidistant from them, from the unoccupied tent and from the drop toilet.
A couple of hours later the two women occupants of the other tent returned in their 4wd ute with a big load of firewood. They were a bit stand-offish but I elicited that they are a couple and had been camping there for almost a week already, and were doing day-trips in their car to the various local scenic attractions.
The hikers were more forthcoming and we had a good chat. They were both toting massive backpacks, were accomplished hikers in these parts and had covered over 20 km in hilly terrain that day and would be returning to their vehicle the next. They both wore stout leggings to deflect snake strikes. My own solution to that particular problem was the emergency snake-bite kit I was toting that basically consisted of a large compression bandage and a how-to booklet on treatment – ‘don’t move and call an ambulance’ seems to be the advice! On the way into the campsite I’d passed two other walkers who were just wearing thongs (flip-flops). I had mentioned the issue of snakes to them and they just said “Oh, we’ve already seen two black snakes, and the one we disturbed on the path just now managed to get out of our way in plenty of time”. Black snakes are the highly poisonous and aggressive ones. Go figure.
A bit later on, an elderly (80?) but superbly fit-looking woman hiker complete with shorts, boots and trekking poles emerged out of the bush looking absolutely lathered. She was decidedly confused and mumbling incoherently – a severe case dehydration for sure.
I’d just used up the last of my water for cooking a freeze-dried meal, but I noticed the two lesbians happened to have a full plastic-wrap case of 24 x 1.5 litre bottles of water stashed beside their tent, so I wandered over and remarked to one of them about the condition of the woman and suggested it would be a grand gesture if they were to perhaps spare some water for her.
Much to my amazement she retorted no, definitely not, it’s their water, it cost them good money and they’re not going to waste it by giving it away to just anybody who never bothered to bring their own! Yikes! Talk about a rotten unfeeling cow!
But her friend overheard us and called her into their tent for a little tête-a-tête. This resulted in the nicer one going across to their parked ute and retrieving a ¾-full bottle of water for the other one to give to the poor woman. Saved a life I did! But of course the stinking cow got all the credit.
Five young people, two girls and 3 guys, then arrived and made camp well away from me. The shuffling back and forth to the cars unloading kitchen sinks, crates of booze and guitars (just kidding about the sinks) did not bode well, but as it turned out they were a rather tame lot and shut down proceedings and were off to bed by 8pm. It was an interesting dynamic though, regarding the placements of the individual tents and the showing-off antics of the males as they vied for the attention of the girls. But then three more young MTB bike-packing lads with hardly any gear at all (one flimsy little pup tent between the three of them, and clad in only shorts and T-shirts) hared up late afternoon and ingratiated themselves to the group. This reduced the chances of the three original lotharios to about zero, I reckon, as the new guys seemed to effortlessly step into alpha-male roles and dominated proceedings.
But really late in the day, just when I thought I could relax and the camping arrangements were all sorted, along came a nasty surprise in the form of my nemesises (I know, I know – nemeses); two 30-something guys (brothers) in their hotted-up utes with their 5 feral kids aged between 7 and 13, who’d never been camping before, so they told me (and never should be allowed to again, imho) and who decided to set up their vast lager right next to me. I knew what I was in for as soon as they arrived and the two 7-year-old girls virtually had to be carried across the grass shrieking about imaginary spiders and screaming for the Aeroguard. And never bloody-well stopped shrieking.
No campground etiquette the lot of them! From jabbering away full bore, to flashing their torchlights at every falling leaf all night long, to the kids squabbling and squealing and yelling out for attention after they were finally sent off to bed at midnight, to the two adults who got morbidly pissed and sat around the campfire until 2 am drunkenly consoling each other over their wives leaving them etc. etc. But the most traumatic thing of all for me was having to listen to this running dialogue – that droned on from 7pm until at least past midnight, and with all the kids joining-in too – about all the various types of shit and of shitting – human defecation, that is – that there are in the world. It was decidedly gross, and at times misogynistic too.
And no, I didn’t yell at them or even ask them politely to tone it down a bit. I was in a fragile tent with my head not more than 5 paces from their shovels and axes and sledge-hammers, and they looked the aggressive-enough types to use them if antagonized. And it wasn’t just me either – the two intrepid hikers, who were camped a fair way away from it all, were equally incensed at the inconsiderate behaviour that had kept them awake too, as we meekly commiserated with each other next morning.
Thursday 31 December 2020. Starlings Gap · Lilydale |71 km|
It started raining with a strange soft pattering noise at 4 am last night, and the light was surreal at 7 am when I finally poked my head out to see what was going on. The campground clearing forms a natural amplitheatre on the southern slope of the range and there was a heavy mist and swirling clouds rushing up through the trees and past the clearing. The pattering was due to globs of mist blowing off the trees and onto the windward side of my tent. Visibility was down to 200m. I packed up quickly to avoid having to be pleasant to my uncouth neighbours and promptly headed out onto a white-knuckle ride downhill on a floating gravel surface with visibility no more than 50m in places, drifting across the sweeping bends at what seemed incredible speed and with very little control.
At 17 km, I met the tarred C245 road and turned right towards Powelltown and Melbourne. If I’d gone left instead, it would have been on to Noojie and Walhalla and points west, continuing my planned circuit of the Yarra Ranges – but I was done. The lack of sleep was probably the biggest factor and maybe I should have just relaxed and stayed an extra day at Starlings Gap, but the thought of being in near proximity to that bunch of ferals for another day was just too horrible to contemplate.
I calmed down enough to enjoy the ride through Powelltown and on to Yarra Junction, and then back along the Rail Trail to Lilydale where I caught a train to Richmond and rode the remaining 3 km back home.
And thus ends 2020 with a whimper – 5,700 km ridden during COVID year.
– ends –