East Gippsland Rail Trail — Getting Out There

Boggy Creek to the Snowy River — East Gippsland Rail Trail, Day 2

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +1100

Awoke this morning to a breakfast of eggy fried rice, with added egg to make it all the eggier 🥚🥚🥚. We set off from camp about 9, and had another beautiful day of rolling gravel, green trees, trestle bridges — or half a trestle bridge! — and a lot of bird life.

We did see some wildlife today: a few rock wallabies, a goanna and a fox! We rolled along through a sun-drenched ‘road’ cut into the forest and lined each side with the greenest fernery, which lit up particularly greenish-yellow with the sun rising in the east and backlighting the foliage for us. It was just as I imagine the road to heaven might look like!

The nicer/harder-packed gravel gives way to an unfinished rougher section about Waygara Road (or just west of it). From there until Orbost (about 14–15 kilometres) it was more of a bush track, and in some parts almost singletrack. We found it hard going on our fully-loaded bikes, as we don’t have suspension [Except for my Thudbuster seatpost] and our wrists and trapezius muscles were quite sore by the time we made it to Orbost.

We did make it OK to Orbost however, and after visiting the tourist information centre — which is housed in a historic slab hut that had been moved from it’s original location on the Snowy River — had lunch at the Orbost Club Hotel. Danielle had a steak sandwich and I had barbeque pork ribs. We had too many beers, some friendly chatter with the locals and then headed back.

To avoid those ~15 kilometres of rough trail on the way back, we followed the Snowy River for a while on the road, then up the hills to rejoin the rail trail at the Simpsons Creek Road crossing. We rode past a farmer rounding up his cattle, and struggled a lot due to the excess of beer and pork ribs. We made very wise commitments for future trips to not drink a lot of booze and eat a lot of heavy food halfway through a ride, which we shall promptly forget the minute we walk into another little country pub somewhere.

We hadn’t quite skipped the rough trail when we got to Simpsons Creek Road: but we only had about 2–3 kilometres of it. Now we’re camped at the rest stop at Partellis Crossing Road. We pitched the tent under the shelter to avoid ants and hopefully have a nice dry tent in the morning. We’re about to cook dinner — spicy lentil tarka daal — call Anneliese and retire.

We covered 70 kilometres all up today; a solid effort which will see us be able to go a bit easier to Bruthen tomorrow.

A very Good Friday — East Gippsland Rail Trail, Day 1

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 21:00:00 +1100

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 $60 [I 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!

Planning for an Easter Quickie — East Gippsland Rail Trail

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +1100

The title of this post is a tad misleading, as though of course we had to plan to take a four-day-weekend off 400 kilometres from home, the amount of planning we’ve done for this one hardly warrants a post all its own!

We’re saving our dollaroos for our long-dreamed-of tour in Europe, so the chance to get a quickie in in our home state, over Easter so as not to use up leave from work, and rough camping to save as much as we can on accommodation means we can still get out and enjoy the beautiful countryside without opening our wallets too widely.

Most of our planning, unfortunately, has had to revolve around the fucking basket-case that is the current state of V-Line, our public regional train network here in Victoria. Bus replacements, planned-then-abandoned industrial action, and general unreliability of the service has forced us to book a night’s accommodation in Melbourne the night before we leave, which probably cost us as much as the rest of the trip combined. The $10 fares make up for it a little, and we’ve booked into the NRMA Bairnsdale Riverside Holiday Park on Thursday night, as we arrive at 22:30. We have an unpowered site for $32, but after years of camping we’re pretty confident we can set up in the dark easily enough.

We are hoping to get about 60 kilometres for the first two days, then 50 and 30 kilometres for the third and fourth respectively, but we’re not sticking to that, merely to the idea of front-loading the distance a little to make things easier for us on Monday, when we need to catch the midday train home.

And that’s it. That’s all the planning we’ve done. We’ll camp where we can, eat where we can, and just see what happens.

200.0 route distance (km)

1,330m elevation to climb

4 days' riding