A very Good Friday

We arrived in Bairnsdale last night on the 22:30 train from Melbourne. We rode to the NRMA Bairnsdale Riverside Holiday Park and set up next to a pool in the dark. It was a long train trip to get here, but the showers at the holiday park are brilliant and it sure beats driving!

I went to the toilet block and ran into a local from Ballarat: Matt Britton — who runs the CycleScape bike shop — on his way to Merimbula with his extended family. What a coincidence! Small world… We hit the sack pretty quickly, and we were comfortable enough.

Due to the late night, we slept in to 08:00 and got off from Bairnsdale later than planned as a result, but we had a truly lovely day. We had a coffee and a bacon and egg roll at the coffee truck in the holiday park before we left. It got hot pretty quickly: 26°C (79°F) and sunny all day with not a breath of wind, but the scenery was great and when we stopped — and thus no longer had the sound of our tyres on gravel drowning out the silence — we heard plenty of birds and it was delightfully peaceful.

There were quite a few big old wooden trestle bridges remaining of the old railway and lots of road passes where they have placed two gates slightly ajar: about 30 degrees parallel to each other making turning through them tough with heavily loaded touring bikes. We felt they could be a tad wider apart and not compromise on safety whilst also not forcing us to skid through the gravel, but we can see why they are placed the way they are. I’m sure it was designed and thought through by somebody more knowledgeable than I. It was awesome, however, not having to deal with motor traffic.

When we arrived in Bruthen, we got a taste of what we were missing: a very long convoy of huge Jayco vans that would surely have ruined our day. Leaving “The Enemy” behind, we crossed over the Tambo River and appreciated our car-free paradise all the more. We saw plenty of birds but not much wildlife — we hope that changes tomorrow if we leave camp earlier. We checked into a kitschy caravan park in Nowa Nowa for $60I was a bit taken aback by the high price for an unpowered site. The fellow tourist we met, who stayed earlier in the week (i.e. not on the Easter long weekend) said he’d paid $40, so it seems ‘peak’ holiday pricing is a 50% markup! The park was lovely, and perhaps I’m just an old tight-arse, but for a patch of grass and a shower that’s steep by anybody’s measure. and met another cycle tourist coming the other way, having spent some days around Cape Conran. While setting up our tent, Danielle was stung by a bee, and then had her pink-painted toes pecked by chickens as we cooked our pasta for dinner in the camp kitchen. It was refreshing to see her hen-pecked for once (hoho 😆)!

We’re now off to sleep. Big day tomorrow!