Monday 6th & Tuesday 7th March

Common sense got the better of me finally and I did a little test ride. Well, I actually hadn't got all my gear so it would have been difficult to do a practise trip without some major things... like a bike.

After a hectic day scrambling around Brisbane I launched myself into the car to drive to Rathdowney (30km SW of Beaudesert). Did a quick mental check of gear and thought that I was leaving too late. I was right.

By the time I got to Rathdowney it was 5:10 and very cloudy. The very generous couple at the news agency let me leave my car there overnight and I set off about 15 min later. They must have shaken their heads as I wobbled off on my loaded bike in the thickening sprinkle of rain down the highway towards Maroon Dam 27km away.

Maroon Dam is actually 33km from Rathdowney. As I cycled by moonlight and a vague memory into the camp on the east side of the dam, I vowed never to arrive in darkness on this bike ever again. I realised that the 'sundown' feature on my GPS was something I could use. I'd passed that function off as irrelevant only days beforehand. Nice one genius.

Tested most of the gear out and then tried to sleep. It's a bit difficult when it's very gusty, erratic sprinkles of rain fall, everything is new and you haven't slept in a tent for a while. Being slapped in the face by the side of the tent didn't help either, but I'll get used to it.

Tuesday morning I spent trying to pinpoint myself on my topo map. I hadn't done this for some time so was very rusty. After taking 3 sets of bearings I had 'thumbpointed' my location to an area within about 2km... very ordinary on a 1:100 000 map! By the time I got to Mt Maroon on the return leg I was pinpointing myself with an accuracy of about 200m. This is far more useful.

Got to Rathdowney a little slower than the trip out, but enjoyed it more. Stuffed myself with carbo/sugary food at the kindly news agency (I'd forgotten rice and pasta so had had a 'poor' dinner) and then surprised my dad at his place at Beaudesert by showing up unannounced looking like a Telstra technician... or so he thought.

I slept like a log that afternoon. Now I just have to do that for about 80 days straight.

Thursday 15th March

My little sister has been hassling me about when we are going. We're driving my car to Healesville and she's bring it back to Brisbane. It should be an interesting trip.

I found out this evening that I didn't qualify to run the 3km steeple at National Athletics next weekend in Brisbane. I'll be leaving on Tuesday. Far out - I still have so much left to do! Have made a list and it looks like I might have to leave in December sometime... nah, but my thoughts of relaxing for a few days before I left has been shattered.

It's crunch time. I am having visions of Ang driving away at Healesville and leaving me standing there with my bike ...crying. I wonder what getting on the bike will be like.

Tuesday 20th and Wednesday 21st March

Left my flatmates slumbering too comfortably for early start (5:15) on Tuesday to get to Toowoomba. Picked up Ang and did a shuffle of gear to fit Coby (nicest border collie in QLD Australia) in.

Our journey took in : Pitsworth (bypass syndrome) - Milmerran (nice painted tank Keffo)- Gundy (the old grey 'mare' ain't what (s)he used to be) - Moree - Narrabri (watch the huge rivets at the T-junctions... no diamond turns ok) - Coonabarabran (less syllables please) - Gilgandra ($1.07.9/L fuel at Shell... no thanks - I'll go back a few blocks and get an ethanol ULP blend for a thieving $102.5/L... why did I have to reach empty in this place? Nice town though) - Dubbo (great people and super campsite for $12.65 at Westview Caravan Park and the economy's booming so much they can shut their shops at 7pm even though their opening hours say till 8pm... or maybe the dumb QLDer who didn't fix his watch has trouble with the concept of daylight saving).

Slept under the stars - clear sky and Ang would have thought I was a wimp because she was just in the swag.

Woke up at 3am and got into the car. It had started to sprinkle and I was adamant I was not going to start a trek with a damp sleeping bag. Ang rolled over and Coby just watched from the darkness - a little perplexed.

We stopped at the Parkes radio telescope, a little later than expected because Coby had misplaced his toy in the Dubbo darkness. Too early though to be able to look in the visitors centre, but got some photos of ‘the dish’. Massive. It was tracking while we stood there - groaning like in the movie as it panned towards the South Pole/some alien's ship (that's more exciting). Went down the road a bit and climbed over the fence to get a front shot of the dish. Tried to steeple the barbed wire fence coming back over. Didn’t try hard enough and only succeeded in a) tripping and stumbling down the bank b) putting 2 slashes on the top of my good leather boots and c) losing my glasses in the grass. We searched for about 3 minutes (car engine running which apparently interferes with the telescope) and then Ang found them. I was not surprised that I couldn't see them. Made Ang laugh heartily when I compared myself to a close relative who I decided was genetically responsible for the incident (that bit’s especially for you D & G).

Ang drove to just past Forbes then we swapped (“Forbes is a 50km town” says the sign - work that out for yourself - we drove through it in 5min without speeding). The trip continued... Grenfell (Henry Lawson’s birth place) - Young (Cherry capital) - Harden (town with an identity problem similar to Tweed Heads and Albury - why can't they decide?) - Gundagai (saw many tracks winding back... so we must have been on ‘that’ road)- Holbrook - Albury (the city which has a real map-reality compatibility problem) - over the Murray R. and into Victoria (Coby celebrated by licking his testicles) - past Wangaratta and Benalla on the M31 (plus a little place called ‘Winton’, I was too busy typing at this stage but it’s pretty flat round those ‘ere parts) - off the M31 at Euroa (C312?) - Alexandra (worrying about fuel but we didn't stop to get any) - Healesville (drizzling miserably).

NSW has some great little places to visit but there is a problem: being able to pronounce the multi-syllabled odd-consonant-combination names. After conducting a survey in the vehicle I got a response of 66.6% in favour (33.3% unresponsive except to a new squeaky toy) of every town having a phonetic pronunciation of the it's name on the welcome sign as well as the population. With no idea of how to correctly say the name the sign only lets you know how many people you are going to offend/make a fool of yourself in front of.

Thursday 22nd March

Nice and wet. Ang left at about 5am DST (which ends this weekend) with a very cold Coby. He was very very glad to get in the car.

Met with a BNT person called Linda and she was most helpful. Eating trout at her place (the last supper) tonight and going over updates on the trail. Staying at a nice little place on the outskirts of town that is the actual start of the BNT (Ashgrove Caravan Park).

Ride On, Mr. Cyclist :

While unpacking my gear into the cabin I met this bloke called John who was a professional cyclist. He now does a lot of touring after giving cycling away for a while. He just packs up his bike and takes off.

John's ridden well over 3000km in the last 6 months and has gone through 5 tyres (not tubes!) getting about 1600km out of a tyre. Most of this is on the bitumen roads in Victoria.

His next big journey is to ride the entire Murray River from source to mouth. He lives over near the source and has the trip semi planned in his head. He's weighing up whether or not he should take a bike trailer. Apparently there is a long flat stretch towards the end of the Murray and he says that on this he'd like to average well above 60-70km a day - probably close to 100km/day.

This bloke does his touring alone on most occasions as his peers can't keep up with him. John had given up cycling for 40 years - he's seventy-three.