Day 6 of my Gippsland tour runs from the rainforest to the beach, with scones, suspension bridges and servo stops all thrown in.
I watched with detached curiosity as the cyclist fell slowly sideways with a curious grace, as if in slow motion.
He did this mid sentence and, pulling himself upright in a single motion, continuing what he was saying as if nothing had happened.
Perhaps seeing my startled expression he explained: “you know, it’s because of the cleats.”
I’ve never tried cleats or clip-ins myself, so guess this is something proper cyclists just do, without a second thought, and probably very aerodynamically. Because of the lycra and stuff.
Weird falling aside, it was great to chat to a fellow cyclist. He asked about the way I was heading and said my route was a beautiful one. He also strongly recommended taking a newly-paved back road from Woodside to Seaspray, near the coast, which I later followed.
“You’ve got a great gear set up,” he said gazing at my bike wistfully. I was reminded again that what I was doing would be a dream for many people. We’d both stopped at a gorgeous picnic area where picnic tables nestled amongst the tree ferns.
Sadly (and before we fell down the rabbit hole of gear discussion) I had to cut the conversation short. It was very cold and overcast and I didn’t want to stiffen up before the next portion of the climb up to the Tarra Bulga national park, tackling gradients mostly between 6 and 12 percent.
The rainforest road was steep, windy and very very beautiful, and I inched ahead slowly on the lowest gear. In the interests of safety I’d put on a flouro yellow gym singlet over the top of my jacket and set off at 8am to avoid any caravan traffic.
Perhaps my ‘old duffer friend’ had made me paranoid but on hearing the humm of a car engine behind me I cautiously pulled the bike over to the side of the road to . A man in a ute slowed down beside me and wound down the window.
“Are you really gonna stop every time a car goes past?” he asked sceptically, his expression clearly suggesting this was a very lame thing to do.
“Ummm… only because you totally look like the sort of person who’d run me over!” I retorted awkwardly.
Realising I’d just accused this guy of being some kind of hit and run manic I consoled myself that at least I hadn’t toppled over sideways while doing so.
And in fact I knew this guy from the Tarra Valley caravan park, where we’d had a good chat. He was a mechanic from Melbourne and a bit of a free spirit, who’d travelled extensively in his van. He’d given me a welcome hand when I was struggling to get my bike chain back on after cleaning it. (Turns out the mechanism was jammed up by a grunt strap).
After an elevation gain of more than 500 metres, my route reached the summit at around 700 metres above sea level.
My first big climb, and a much needed scone
While not huge to many, it was huge for me – my first big continuous hill climb. More importantly, by this point I was hungry.
It wasn’t just the climbing. I was aware I probably hadn’t eaten quite enough at Tarra Valley. On arrival I’d found out that not only was the café closed (limited to weekend hours only) but so was the camp kitchen, along with its kettle and microwave. As a result I was starting to get worried about running out of fuel, and
Luckily I found a few random grocery items to buy, like Kraft Singles and tinned Irish stew but it might not have been enough to counter the piles of calories I’d been burning out on the road.
Which made it all the more exciting to pull up at the highly rated Tarra Bulga guest house and café in Balook for a cozy morning tea. Today was SATURDAY and finally I’d be visiting a tourist area in standard tourist opening hours.
Puffing slightly and wiping off my steamed up glasses I parked next to the café. A large “CLOSED” sign hung in the window. “Nooooooooooooooo,” I wailed, before noticing someone walking around inside.
Maybe if I begged pathetically enough I might be able to get hold of some sustenance.
A very elderly woman in an apron came out from a back room where she’d been chopping ingredients and looked at me strangely.
“Um, sorry, I know you’re closed, but…” I stuttered.
“Did you want a coffee?” she asked blankly, with no indication if they were open or if I was intruding. Well, actually I was bloody ravenous, but a coffee would also be a dream come true. “We aren’t serving food yet”.
I came in and sat down in a lovely room which wouldn’t have been out of place in a lifestyle magazine, but still seemed strangely frozen in time. Looking around I spotted some scones in a cabinet and asked in a pathetic whisper if I could have some, maybe with a bit of jam?
“The cream isn’t whipped yet,” the lady murmured, drifting away and leaving me completely unsure if I’d ordered anything or not.
A younger guy in ripped jeans walked past in ripped jeans and scowled at me.
Was this place kind of creepy, or was travelling alone making me imagine things?
Just as I was about to do a runner, a cappuccino and giant scone with the most delicious raspberry jam sitting in front of me which I ate feeling watchful and slightly silly.
Stepping up to the counter to pay, I mentioned that the jam was some of the best I’d ever tasted. Instantly the elderly woman’s face transformed from a blank expression to a broad, warm smile. “It’s made with LOVE,” she said, as I backed out the door.
My stop at the café was important since it would allow me to fill up my water bottle, which I did in the bathroom, but using the shallow basin was only able to get the bottle around 8/10ths full.
Tarra Bulga scenic walk
Even with a long cycle ahead I wanted to make time for the 2km circuit walk around the Tarra Bulga Park and its centrepiece suspension bridge. After so much solitude on the road and walking tracks it was strange to suddenly be surrounded by visitors, reminding me that it was, in fact a Saturday.
I passed a dozen or more elderly yet serious looking bushwalkers, many calling out hello until I realised that this was the same group that had passed me in a convoy of nine cars on the winding uphill curves earlier in the day (causing me to unapologetically pull off the road again). “Nice riding!” they called out, beaming.
Before pulling out from behind the visitor centre I popped into the bathroom to use the facilities and fill up my water bottle again. ‘BORE WATER ONLY, NOT SUITABLE FOR DRINKING’ a sign announced. Damn. Now I had a choice of backtracking for an awkward visit to the strange café or to faff about finding and using my water filter, stuck inconveniently at the bottom of my delicately rigged and improvised front fork bag.
Faced with this these options I decided to press on and cover the remaining 60 kilometres on my now three quarter full water bottle. Surely there would be somewhere to fill up en route?
Past Ballook the Tarra Valley Road turns into the Grand Ridge Road, weaving epically for another 20 kilometres across the top of the range. On a less overcast day, I’m sure the views would be magnificent, stretching all the way out to the ocean.
‘Bulga’ is a Gunai language word meaning ‘mountain’, and I was very excited to get off the mountain and onto the downhill stretch, which in my imagination involved rolling all the way from the mountains to the sea with barely a need for feet to touch the pedals.
Riding the Grand Ridge Road
In reality, the elevation profile that had looked so straightforwardly down on my navigation app was – when un-condensed – a series of ups and downs which weren’t quite the reward I’d been looking for.
It didn’t matter. This route felt like proper bikepacking, especially now that the road had turned to gravel, and I’d well and truly left rail trails and tourist drives behind. There was nobody about: not even a logging truck, despite several signs warning that they plied this route. The grim, overcast skies, muted colours and sections of logged forests made for a bleak and sometimes melancholy scene, but I was loving it.
A turn off towards the south, towards my caravan park in the sand dunes, finally brought with the chance to coast downhill. And I’d done my homework well: the Hylands Highway had a nice shoulder which made it possible to traverse this busier road safely.
At 2.30pm, starving again, and – I now realised – really quite dehydrated since there had been nowhere to collect water, I collapsed next to a farmer’s field and pulled out lunch. Four Kraft Singles* and an energy bar. Suddenly I was absolutely buggered. There was still water left in my bottle but I was taking small sips to conserve it.
The only thing keeping me going at this point was the knowledge of the Woodside Servo, which loomed larger and larger in my mind as a Fried Food Mecca. I was desperate to get there before 3.30, when according to a google reviews was the time the hot food ran out. That simply could not happen. At 3.15 I crawled towards the entrance in the manner of a survivor reaching an an oasis in the desert.
When a servo is really an oasis
I won’t specify the number of pies, potato cakes or South Melbourne dim sims I ate, because I really don’t remember, but I do remember needing to go up to the counter three times. Once to eat enough food to get my brain in a fit state to think about groceries for the next two days, another visit to actually buy those groceries, and another one to buy bottled water once I realised all running water at the servo had been shut off.
The servo – which was really more of a general store – had a wild west feel to it, a last chance saloon stop for four wheel drives to stock up before heading out to some secret spot along the vast 90 mile beach. Both 4WDs and their drivers were boxy, rugged and mud-splashed and my bicycle looked faintly hilarious.
During my third visit to the tiny shop a sharp-faced woman in her fifties came into the shop and asked for a bucket of water to wash the wheels of her caravan; to which the attendant, an amiable Sri Lankan fellow, explained in perfect English that the mains water was out and he was waiting on a plumber to come and fix it.
This conversation went around in circles for several minutes while the woman worked out that no amount of speaking loudly and slowly and raising her eyebrows in outrage was going to make the water appear. She stormed out with a haughty “Well I can’t believe the authorities allow you to operate! Surely that’s against health and safety regulations!”
I pushed off wondering exactly what impact it would have on the tiny town to shut down their only shop? And the tourists relying on it? And what on earth would it be like to be a bloke from the subcontinent working in Woodside?
As I crawled the final 10 kilometres into a punishing headwind I also took a moment to pat myself on the back. I’d just cycled 870 metres’ worth of elevation gain (i.e. hills) – not particularly impressive for a seasoned bikepacker but my own personal record. And after 250 days of lockdown I was going to cap it off with a walk along a wild and windswept beach.
*For any readers who didn’t grow up in Australia or America Kraft singles are cheap processed cheese slices.
