Day four of my Gippsland tour took me along a gorgeous section of trail and up into the hills for more spectacular views.
It was just ahead of Toora that I met another cyclist called Ken, a bloke in his early seventies. We got to chatting and he told me he loved the great southern rail trail so much it had inspired him to move all the way from Queensland to the small town of Foster, where he lived for seven years now.
It was the first of many conversations that ended the same way – falling in love with a place and moving there. “Why Foster?” I asked. “I just fell in love with it,” he replied. “And I just wouldn’t live anywhere else.”
Ken was a thoroughly nice guy and this was a thoroughly nice place. We were standing on a well-made bridge over the Franklin River and being on the rail trail, there were no roads or cars in site. A picnic table sat in a patch of springy green grass amidst a glade of trees.
Wonderful – in fact this whole stretch of the trail had been a revelation and I asked myself how I’d never known about this before. The trail was lined with distinctive plants that felt just a little jungle-y, perhaps some kind of coastal woodland or semi-rainforest. Anyway, this was a long way from a typical Australian bush landscape.
The trail dipped in and out of cozy tunnels of this lush vegetation occasionally coming up on to rises that offered views out to a sparkling blue sea in the distance.
The sun had finally come out (properly, not just for a fleeting glance) and the wind had died down. It was a beautiful spring day, and weather wise my spontaneous night of wild camping had paid off.
I’d slept surprisingly well for someone who’d wild camped for the first time, quite possibly helped along by sheer exhaustion. I also felt well-vindicated by my decision to carry a small stash of dehydrated meals and quick oats on this part of the journey – it had given me the flexibility to stop and camp when I needed.
Getting out of the Mt Hoddle area had been much easier than getting in, and I soon found myself whizzing through some very scenic back roads to meet the rail trail where I’d started it.
Off the back of a morning hike to the peak, it had still taken some considerable physical effort to push the fully loaded bike out of the valley and I scoffed a full packet of Ritz crackers for lunch while looking out over the never-ending emptiness of rolling hills. There was not a soul about.
In fact, except for brief encounters with a group of young bushwalkers and hotel and caravan park managers, human contact had not been a feature of my trip so far, which is why it was nice to have a good chin wag with Ken and find out his life in Foster and the challenges of living so part apart from his adult children through the pandemic.
As spectacular as the scenery had been, my dry biscuit lunch was catching up with me, and I pressed ahead to the town of Toora where I raided the supermarket for pre-made salad and other ‘proper’ food, which I ate hungrily sprawled out in front of a cyclists rail trail shelter, socks and shoes scattered on the grass.
I’d hoped to go to one of Toora’s two cafes, but, as usual, my presence in town meant that everything was closed: I’d rolled in just too late in the day.
Everything I’d read online suggested that Toora was a quiet and adorable little town, and I’d marked the caravan park down as a potential place to stay. However the town was anything but quiet and adorable. Convoys of huge construction trucks groaned through the streets and workers and barriers were everywhere There was clearly some kind of huge construction project in town and it didn’t surprise me to find the caravan park to be completely booked out.
No matter. If the next section of the rail trail was anything like the first, it would be easy to find a nice, secluded place to camp for the night, hopefully somewhere like that outstanding oasis of picnic table peace where I’d met Ken. And now I was a fully-fledged stealth camping guru, so obviously everything would be fine.
Heading out from Toora
My most important job before leaving Toora was to unroll and fill up a two-litre water bladder which I stuck on top of my bicycle’s rear rack, a space I had kept clear for ‘excess capacity’. Wobbling slightly, I headed off down a residential street en route back to the rail trail. THWACK. A man looked up from cleaning his car. That would be my water bag hitting the ground.
Realising I had completely forgotten to secure the bladder in place, I located a spare grunt strap (love those straps) and looped it around the rack. The bike lurched painfully to one side, its kickstand no match for the slope of the hill and the weight of my pannier bags, and – giving up any effort to pretend I knew what I was doing – edged slowly out of the man’s eyesight, finding a safer place to faff about with my gear.
It only took about ten minutes into the ride past Toora for me to realise that there would be no place to camp on the rail trail. The nature of the path had changed complexly, with delightful secluded forest replaced by an overwhelming stench of cow dung. Threading between dry paddocks, the trail was divided from the private land by fences on either side. Instead of picnic tables there were cattle runs with gates and a carpet of cow manure to walk through. A small but unrelenting incline made me curse the unfamiliar dead weight of the water bag and I tried and failed to appreciate the new wide open spaces.
From Welshpool to the hills
Arriving at Welshpool just past 5pm, I had a decision to make. The rail trail veered off south here to its official end at the coastal town of Port Welshpool. But my route plan had me turning north here to climb up into the hills and the Hedley Ridge. Wishing I’d thought this through earlier I called the Port Welshpool caravan park and got an after-hours messaging service.
Taking a deep breath and thinking of the two and a half hours of daylight remaining, I headed for the hills.
Once again the weather proved an antidote for my stupidity / adventuress spirit and the afternoon clouds pulled back to reveal the most glorious evening light. This was a beautifully scenic route, and the perfect time to be riding it as colours glowed blue and green and I hopped off the bike to snap photos.
While I’d left the paddocks behind, unfortunately the unrelenting fences remained, punctuated only by ‘no trespassing’ signs. As much as I was enjoying the scenery the urgency of finding a camp site was starting to bite, as was the fatigue in my legs as I lugged the extra water weight uphill.
Trudging back to the road after scouting unsuccessfully again for a camp site I picked up my bicycle from whatever it was leaning against and wobbled awkwardly onwards. My $10 bar end mirror, a last minute Amazon purchase days ago and now broken, broke off started rolling along the road. Which was obviously a great time for a proper cyclist to come past, one with a road bike and lycra and stuff.
“Are you okay?” he said with kindly concern.
“Oh yes – of course!” I said, a little too enthusiastically, wondering if he’d seen me fossicking around in the bushes.
“I was just getting my mirror. On may way now – bye!”
Just as the light started to fade and with mild panic setting in I finally spotted a patch of bushland which would work as a campsite for the night.
It wouldn’t be the flattest piece of ground but there was a nice log to sit on for dinner and at that point I could have slept vertical. Taking slow, deep breaths, I settled in.
…And woke to this view in the morning. I was ready to tackle the Tarra Valley.
