West from the Goldfields and into the Grampians, then south to the Southern Ocean.
Wednesday 13 January, 2021. Maryborough · Stawell |119 km|
[Another hot day – high 20s; becoming unsettled later, with a strong head wind. Threatening rain for the last 20 km, but overall good conditions for cycling. The route took in Natte Yarrock, Moonambel, Landsborough, Joel Joel and Stawell, on quiet and mostly flat single-lane paved country roads. Only Moonambel has any services at all (a general store)].
Having ‘done’ the goldfields region (see previous post) I was well and truly on to the back roads now – C276 to Natte Yallock, a lesser road to Moonambel, then C221, Wattle Creek Road, C241 to Landsborough and then through Joel Joel to Stawell.
The crazy thing is: all roads lead to Avoca, and it’s 18 km away! I figure my route must have described an arc, because I passed at least 4 road signs over a distance of at least 15 km apart that all said “Avoca 18 km” away off to the left.
But never mind that – the only settlement I went through that actually had anything to it other than a name sign was Moonambel, which is a cute little town where I bought a really nice gourmet pie. I went through 2 litres of Gatorade and 2 litres of water on the ride today. Just as well I stocked up in Maryborough and again in Moonambel.
I’m starting to get used to having to fork out $37 for just a plain old unpowered grassy pitch these days, but goddamit, I have to say the vile woman running the Grampians Gate Caravan Park in Stawell was a tad nasty and she sure made me resent the outlay! And guess what – I looked it up on Tripadvisor and she’s gotten a heap of bad reviews, so it wasn’t just me! And now I feel a tad sorry for her – she must read all those reviews, surely, the poor woman? I didn’t leave a review, btw.
Dinner consisted of a steak sandwich from the nearest take-away (Sani’s) – expensive at $14, but almost as good as Castlemaine’s $8 effort! Oh, and plus 2 long-necks of VB beer (1.5l) and ½l of rum from the bottle shop in town. After all, it was a cold night ahead. Looked like it might rain too, but all I got were a few drops.
Thursday 14 January 2021. Stawell · Wannon Crossing |80 km|
[Much cooler now – low 20s; no wind and clear skies]
This day took me west into the Grampians National Park. It was a great ride in cool conditions.
First, 15 km along the Grampians Rail Trail, then 22 km on quiet back roads into the tourist centre of Halls Gap, and finally 43 km along a north-south valley runnig between the imposing ramparts of the Grampians Mountain Range.
I stopped in Halls Gap for a couple of hours to soak up the busy tourist scene. And it sure was busy! Within an easy day’s drive from Melbourne, I guess. There was only yuppie-type food at yuppie prices on offer, but I bought up big anyway, as I knew I’d be camping out in the wild, and needed at least 3 decent meals-worth before I hit a decent-sized town further on down the track.
There are several free-camping opportunities along the C216 road that runs north-south along the valley between two parallel spines of the Grampians Range. The staff of the National Park visitors centre certainly weren’t any help in choosing somewhere to stay, so I’m not too sure what their actual job is. However, my WikiCamps app showed a couple of alternatives so I just made for one that I thought I should arrive at by mid-afternoon. This happened to be a site close to the intersection of the south-heading C216 road and the east-heading Yarraman Gap Road. And it was great too – no one else there, and just a drop-toilet and several cleared camp-fire sites in terms of infrastructure (which is fine by me).
Later on, several young guys did arrive for an extended drinking session and an overnight stay in their lager of small pup tents, but they were a couple of hundred metres away from me and so no bother at all.
This little guy above, a male Superb Blue Wren, pitched up too and entertained me with his flitting about my camp for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, attracting female admirers. Kangaroos and wombats abounded, as I noted firstly from all the fresh droppings near my tent and later on, after dark, by all the thumping about, grazing and growling close by. One wombat got very inquisitive and I could even see his/her snout persistently nuzzling up again the flysheet of my tent. I didn’t want my tent getting chewed up so I gave the snout a swift flick of the wrist and the startled beast hurriedly scampered off.
But the really most precious thing to behold that night was the panorama of the night sky when I poked my head out of the tent to check on my wombat visitors. The Milky Way was absolutely staggering in its vivid detail. They say up to 10 million stars can be visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere. Well, I didn’t count ’em, but I can believe it!
Friday 15 January 2021. Wannon Crossing • Koroit |118 km|
[The day started off cool, calm and clear but quickly deteriorated. A strong head wind sprang up from the SW that was nudging 40 km/h by the halfway mark. Then localized storms started coming through and I got soaked to the bone 6 times (and dried out 5 times). My route took in the gentrified towns of Dunkeld, Penshurst, Hawkesdale and Koroit on good quality, reasonably quiet paved country roads].
The 40 km ride down along the valley through the Grampians Ranges to Dunkeld was rewarded with nice views. Once I cleared the range, though, about 5 km before Dunkeld, I was suddenly exposed to a strong south-westerly wind and the going became a lot tougher.
Dunkeld, as befitting it’s new-found status as the “southern gateway to the Grampians”, has forgotten all about it’s rural roots and is steadily yuppifying it’s main street. The eateries are no longer ‘”fish ‘n’ chips” but “courgette quiche and lemon curd doughnuts”…well, you get the drift. I didn’t mind so much – the Cornish pasty I got was a reasonable facsimile of the real thing!
The weather was by now looking decidedly bleak. The first rain squall of the day greeted me as I got back on the bike and headed out of Dunkeld town, and the southerly hit me full-on as soon as I turned south off the eastward B160 Hamilton Road onto the southward C178 Penshurst Road. A long struggle lay ahead and there was no doubt I was in for a hard slog.
In fact I only made it as far as the town of Penshurst when I had to stop to recharge the bike batteries. This was after only 28 km from Dunkeld (and only about 65 km total distance since starting out this morning on full batteries).
So I stopped there for 2 hours, with the generator chugging away, under the verandah of an abandoned building in the middle of town. The raging wind threatened to blow the flapping galvanized iron roof sheeting off the verandah at any moment, and bursts of stinging rain were driving in. I suppose I could have found shelter on the leeward side of some other building on the main street itself (I was just around the corner on the main road heading south out of town), but I was conscious of the excessive noise the generator puts out and didn’t want to draw attention to myself or disturb anyone going about their business. [Actually, I didn’t think it through properly and completely under-estimated the force of the wind, but by the time I realized, it was too much of a hassle to pack up everything and simply move around the corner].
So I moved off from Penshurst about 2.30 pm directly into into that unrelenting wind and spitting rain. The atrocious weather peaked at around about Hawkesdale, which isn’t much of a place and denied me any respite, so on I plodded. But the weather then eased a bit and the scattered showers moving across the open plain from SW to NE mostly missed me, so I even managed to dry out completely for what I assumed would be the final time just before I got to Koroit.
Koroit, when I arrived there at 4pm just in time for my sixth and final soaking of the day, proved to be a nice little village of 1,800 folk. The Tower Hill Caravan Park is Irish-themed and very laid-back and friendly. I pitched my tent in a flat grassy area near the back boundary fence of the park (a hedge, really). There are no marked-off specific plots that you have to keep to, which is a rather nice way of doing it.
For neighbours – but still pitched at least some 20m away from me – there was a family of 8 from Melbourne, with their people-mover and trailer-disgorged set-up of various tents, shelters, bikes, blow-up mattresses etc. . The dad, a Portuguese-Australian by the name of Jorge, came over to chat with his two youngest kids as I was setting up tent and fixing a puncture in my trailer tyre. He is an avid mad-keen follower of all things cycling and was very interested in talking cycling technicalities. He even lent me 2 coffee-table sized books on cycling to read in my tent that night (they were far too heavy to take with me). He came out to Australia on a 2-year stint as a Catholic lay missionary, decided he liked Australia and left the direct employ of the church to become a community bus and parcel delivery truck driver around Melbourne.
In a break in the rain I dashed up to the main street for some food – a steak sandwich and chips, a vanilla slice, a bag of lollies (sweets) and 2 cans of rum and coke. Yummo! It rained quite a lot during the night, including when I was sitting in my cosy tent chowing down on my excellent fine repast as well.
– ends –