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22.03.2001

Day 3 : Thursday – Glen Innes to Armidale (101.17 km)

 I set off at about seven o’clock, which is really first light at this time of the year. It was cold and I wore a long sleeved white top over my riding shirt. A moderately cold wind from the east made riding a little chilly at times even after the sun was well up in the east, but all in all the weather was fairly good for cycling. The route, though, was mainly south, which is a little frustrating when the object is to reach the west coast. It was necessary to head south from the 29^th parallel in order to link up with the Eyre Highway, still many days away and three degrees further south, in order to cross over the Nullarbor Plains.

 Fairly early in the day I rode up the Ben Lomond Hill, which crested at 1410 metres and was, in fact, the highest point that I would reach on the entire trip. We saw numerous colourful cockatoos along the roadside, resplendent in their bright outfits of red and blue and pink feathers.

 At the 50 km stop I checked the map and decided that, to avoid unnecessary bussing of the bike, I would finish the day’s ride in Armidale. This would give me only a shade over 100 km for the day, well below the target, but I felt that there would be time to make up the deficit later. Loading up the bike and driving backwards and forwards was time consuming and quite disruptive. Life was so much simpler if I could ride directly to the overnight stop and ride away again in the morning.

 The short distance that I covered gave us an early end to the day and it was before twelve when we checked into the caravan park in Armidale. The New England Highway doesn’t go through Armidale, so it was necessary to take a by-pass for a few kilometres to reach the caravan park. The last 50 km of the ride was largely downhill. At just about 1000 metres above sea level Armidale is well below the crest of Mr Lomond’s Hill.

 After lunch we strolled around Armidale, enjoying the opportunity to visit a smaller Australian town, so very different from the tourist-infested cities on the coast. Passing a restaurant called “The Upper Crust” in the pedestrian arcade we saw that the display board outside carried the note “9 out of 10 of the staff of The Upper Crust recommend that you eat here”. No doubt the tenth one is now unemployed.

 23.03.2001

Day 4 : Friday – From Armidale to Lake Keepit (161.17 km)

 I set out from Armidale shortly after seven o’clock on a very cold morning, again wearing a long sleeved top over my riding shirt. My unprotected fingers, though, ached from the cold. I passed a young lady out walking her dog and envied her her beanie, gloves, scarf and thick winter coat. It took all of six kilometres to get off the Armidale loop and back onto the New England Highway, heading off in a south-westerly direction to Tamworth.

 Once the sun was properly up it was pleasant for cycling, but inevitably the sun wasn’t satisfied with “warm” and continued to turn up the thermostat until it became unpleasantly hot.

 Before too long I reached the little town of Uralla, that claimed to be the centre of “Thunderbolt Country”. A bush ranger by the name of Frederick Ward, who preferred to call himself Captain Thunderbolt, apparently roamed this area, robbing and looting, and was finally shot and killed by a police constable near Uralla in 1870. His grave is now something of a tourist attraction in the district.

 The going was easier than on the first few days as the altitude was dropping quite rapidly. A little before the village of Moonbi, there was a steep descent that went on for six kilometres, with several safety ramps provided for those with faulty brakes. A sign at the top of the descent advised heavy vehicles to pull over and test their brakes before starting down. I did the same. I pondered briefly on the result of riding a bicycle into a gravel trap designed to slow a runaway road train. The bicycle, I imagined, would stop very quickly. The rider less so.

 I reached Tamworth, billboarded as the country music capital of Australia, after 119 km. With a population of just 31000, I thought it seemed to be somewhat presumptuous to tag Tamworth as the capital of anything at all, but my cynicism was premature. The headline of the local paper screamed out the fact that Bob Dylan was expected in town for a single performance that very evening. Bob Dylan in Tamworth for a Friday night concert? That seemed such an unlikely event that we thought it must be a Bob Dylan impersonator, but, no, it was the genuine Bob Dylan in the flesh. The front page of the paper was full of speculation. No-one, it seemed, knew what time Bob Dylan would be arriving in Tamworth, or, indeed, whether he was already there. The airport manager had reportedly stated that he could have flown in during the night completely unannounced as there was no-one on duty at the airport during the night. In a town of 31000 no-one could find Bob Dylan?

 We thought that there would be little chance of laying our hands on tickets to the concert at that late hour, so we reluctantly turned our backs on the idea of attending.

 At about half past three, when it was still blazingly hot, I left Tamworth and the New England Highway and cycled off down the Oxley Highway. Jane, ever the logistics manager, had found out that there was a caravan park at Lake Keepit, about forty kilometres from Tamworth and we decided that that would be a convenient place to stopover for the night. Riding over this stretch of the country was fairly easy and I was able to maintain a better pace.

 Lake Keepit turned out to be a wonderful spot. Situated on the Namoi River, Lake Keepit is enormous, with a well grassed caravan park on the slope above the lake. We went for a long walk along the lakeside and enjoyed the birds, the trees, the folk water-skiing and the whole holiday ambience. Being a Friday, there were several groups settling in for the weekend, including the inevitable bunch of rowdies with their expensive 4X4s, their beer bellies and their loud voices. Folk of this ilk seem to pop up all over, but we were determined that they would not spoil our enjoyment of the evening. And so they didn’t.

 While cycling today I noticed for the first time that the road workers use a form of shorthand to record in white paint on the tarred surface of the road where road signs should be placed on the shoulder of the road. “60 A”, for example, would indicate a road sign warning “60 kph ahead”. “RWA” would indicate the road sign “Road Workers Ahead”. Get the idea? Try and decipher these ones –

 PTS    

RS      

DS      

RSDS 

TL?

Got them?   

PTS     Prepare to stop

RS       Rough surface

DS       Drive slowly

RSDS  Rough surface – Drive slowly

TL        Traffic light

 

24.03.2001

Day 5 : Saturday – From Lake Keepit to Coonabarabran (138.5 km)

 We left Lake Keepit for the drive back to the Oxley Highway just before seven o’clock. The weather was cool to start, but not cold enough to justify the wearing of a long sleeved top. It was very easy going at first, with lots of flats and slight downhill stretches. Once again we were treated to a colourful passing parade of birds, in flocks of up to forty or fifty or more. Well, I never really counted them, it’s just a guess. There were also large numbers of white cockatoos and it was thrilling to ride through a continuous cacophony of bird-calls.

 After just twenty-nine kilometres we passed through the Gunnedah, a town of over 8000 people nestling in the valley of the Namoi River in an area of very flat plains. Shortly thereafter Jane spotted a wild koala in a eucalyptus tree at the edge of the road. A wonderful piece of luck ably assisted by a pair of sharply peeled eyes as the slow moving creatures are really well camouflaged. When I came cycling along a few minutes later Jane pointed out the dozy little creature and we spent several minutes watching it do exactly nothing. We had read that the koala’s diet of eucalyptus leaves was low in energy and therefore koalas were inclined to be somewhat sedentary and slow moving. No kidding? I’ve seen stuffed teddy bears move with more vigour.

 When I had covered seventy-five kilometres or so from Lake Keepit the roller-coaster started, with the road rising and falling regularly, although the hills were gradual and really not very testing.

 Fifteen kilometres further on I rode over some unidentified object in the road and developed a slow puncture in the rear tube. I stopped and replaced the tube with the spare that I carried on the bike and continued on my way. Within the next few kilometres, on a slight downhill, when I had my speed up to a respectable 40 kph, one of the seams on the new tube came apart. An instant flat with a concomitant instant loss of stability. And an instant adrenaline rush as the rear of the bike weaved from side to side until brought it to a standstill.

 We reached Coonabarabran and booked into a caravan park at about 1.30 pm. Coonabarabran is the self proclaimed Astronomy Capital of Australia, and high in the nearby Warrumbungle Mountains is the Siding Spring Observatory, home to Australia’s largest optical telescope. It is also the closest town to the Warrumbungle National Park and is sometimes called the Gateway to the Warrumbungles. Warrumbungle. Don’t you just love that name?

25.03.2001

Day 6 : Sunday – from Coonabarabran to Warren (178.27 km)

 

Coonabarabran (A) to Warren (B)

 

 I awoke several times during the night to the sound of rain. Not the most welcome sound for a cyclist to hear. In fact only the sound of a strong wind is worse. Normally the sound of rain drumming on the roof is a soothing sound that soon sends one off into a comfortable sleep, but when one is facing the prospect of cycling in the rain it has the effect of keeping one awake, hoping that it will stop.

 When I set out at about half past seven it was in cool and overcast conditions, with the threat of rain in the form of thick, dark clouds hanging low in the sky. The road was very wet and a fine spray was sent up from my wheels as I made my way down the Oxley Highway. I escaped the rain for just eighteen kilometres, then it came down. Hard. I rode for the rest of the day in a yellow waterproof jacket, both to make myself more visible to my fellow road-users and also as protection from the rain.

 The first seventy kilometres was a roller coaster of ups and downs, but thereafter the road levelled off, with nothing but the most gradual of slopes. We went through Gilgandra, a little village with a population of less than 3000, at ninety-five kilometres and stopped shortly thereafter for lunch.

 On the road between Gilgandra and Warren Jane saw a group of wild kangaroos, which had taken cover by the time I arrived on the scene. But a short while later, as I cycled along the highway, a kangaroo appeared alongside the road on my left, just ten or fifteen metres away, and bounded along quite merrily, parallel with the road. It kept pace with me quite easily. I checked my speedometer to find that I was doing twenty-eight kilometres an hour. The ‘roo accelerated slightly, got a few metres ahead and bounded across the road in front of me. It continued to follow the road on the right side for another hundred metres or so before peeling off into the bush and disappearing from view. What a thrilling experience for someone who had never even seen an uncaged kangaroo until a few days before.

 A few kilometres further on I crested a rise to see a fair length of straight road in stretching out toward the horizon. Not an uncommon sight, but I noticed a campervan stopped in the middle of the road. It was OXO862. Jane had pulled off the tar to wait for me and got stuck in the thick mud. Two young Australian men had towed her back onto the tar just before I appeared. No doubt they had a quiet chuckle at Jane’s expense as they went on their way.

 Just seven kilometres later we reached the first serious roadworks since we had set out, with several kilometres of untarred surface. The centre lane, just a little more than the width of a car, was firm, while the outer lanes had become a quagmire in the rain. Jane drove cautiously down the centre lane until she saw a truck bearing down on her from the opposing direction. Nervously she pulled over to the left to allow it through, and found herself stuck for the second time in twenty minutes. Okay, so some folk learn more slowly than others! Luck was still with us, if in a somewhat perverted sort of way, and rescuers arrived within a few minutes in the form of a young couple and several children in a van packed with musical instruments. They very kindly pushed us out, unselfishly wading through the deep mud in order to do so.  With their help we were quickly on our way again, but not without becoming thoroughly coated with very sticky red mud. Spinning wheels throw an incredible amount of mud with incredible accuracy as they hunt for traction.

 With Jane back on the centre island and moving away with all the speed of a lazy snail with no firm destination, I boarded my bike and followed along gingerly. In spite of my caution the bike became thoroughly caked with the viscous mud, which managed to attach itself quite firmly and in great abundance to every moving part.

 We reached Warren after what seemed a very long day in the rain and booked into a caravan park. I hosed the bike down to remove the mud before having a very welcome hot shower that brought back a semblance of civilisation.

 In general we have found the roads to be very good over the first five days, in spite of Jane becoming stuck on two occasions. The road signs are informative and well placed and there is certainly a strong emphasis on safety. I crossed over two bridges today that carried warnings specifically for cyclists – “Cycle Caution : Gaps Between the Boards”. These bridges were constructed of wooden boards, with just the smallest of gaps between them. No threat to a car, of course, but the wheels on a racing cycle are very narrow and the warning was therefore quite welcome.

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