A craving for bush camping leads me north of Orbost after some strange homestay conversations. I then battle dirt roads, hills and headwinds to make to the beautiful Cape Conran coastal area.
“I’m actually bit of a conspiracy theorist,” admitted Wally.
I stared back, my mouth opening and closing like a goldfish as I searched for the right thing to say. I was staying at a room in his house which he rented out cheaply via booking.com, an alternative to camping out in the cold.
Wally’s views on COVID had become fully apparent when I came back from a visit to the local brewery, one of their very first openings post-lockdown.
Firmly in the anti-vax camp, Wally was excluded, and I could see him wrestling between wanting to speak his mind and knowing he needed to keep a lid on it for the paying guest. Or maybe he was subtly trying to recruit me to a cult – who knows?
We’d been watching ABC’s Australian Story in front of a beautiful open fire, and as the program ended Wally asked me if I liked science fiction.
“Absolutely,” I answered.
“But do you know these films?” Moving to the wall next to the fireplace he pointed to five carefully framed movie posters, all from the 1970s.
“These are some of the most important films ever made,” he explained, taking me through the plot of each one. Funnily enough they all related to government conspiracies and fake viruses and so on.
“But these movies have nothing on real life. Have you heard of … (pause) … Agenda 21 …. (meaningful pause) …?”
Err, no. And it was now time to go to bed.
(A quick google of Agenda 21 told me the following:
Agenda 21 has been transformed in much of the American public mind into a secret plot to impose a totalitarian world government, a nefarious effort to crush freedom in the name of environmentalism.
Oh dear.
He certainly wouldn’t be alone in Orbost in holding anti-vax views. A number of shops and businesses (including the largest pub) were clearly of the same mind judging from the posters I could see displayed in the main street, and I could well imagine that here in far East Gippsland they didn’t appreciate Melbourne telling them what to do.
Anyway, there’s no harm in listening, and despite everything I did like Wally and appreciated his anti-establishment approach to life and his rambling house with its uni share-house vibe.
In Orbost he’d found a place he genuinely loved and transformed his life by getting out of Melbourne and leaving traffic, hassle and shit jobs behind. Wally was living life on his own terms, and even if he had one foot stuck down a conspiracy rabbit hole he had a huge appreciation for what I was doing as well.
“Adventure! You’ve got to have a bit of adventure in your life!!,” he repeated.
Infused with the spirit of adventure I headed off in completely the wrong direction.
Ok, for once I was moving intentionally in the wrong direction. I just really wanted to do some proper bush camping, and the best place for it was north of Orbost, even though my touring route
So I decided it couldn’t hurt to make a detour for a couple of days. Actually it (the hills) did hurt, a lot, but I’ll get to that later.
Woods Point is a free bush campground nestled into a crook of the Snowy River where it cuts a steep gorge through the hills, and would be the perfect antidote to a week spend at tame caravan parks and hotels.
After eight kilometres of delicious asphalt a gravel road kicked steeply upward, combining gradients of 13% with sections of loose gravel and thick, slimy red mud, gouged by tyre tracks.
The first consolation was that I wasn’t in a car. The second consolation was the expression on the other camper’s faces when they say me roll in on a bicycle.
“But … how on earth did you get through that muddy section?,” they gasped. “We nearly got stranded”.
“Well, I mostly just walked around it,” I explained. “The edge of the road was okay.”
Woods Point was worth the trek, even though the 20 kilometre journey had left me exhausted.
I was able pitched my tent right next to the river for a lazy afternoon of reading, walking and building up a fire. The location was famous for its river beach but this had been completely covered by a Snowy that was running higher and stronger than anyone could remember.
It was an epic sight.
There is something so therapeutic about being close to water, and I let the peaceful flow of the water and the sound of birds put me into something of a trance.
As much as I should have been craving human company, I was completely content to decline the kind offers from a neighbouring family to join their campfire and to be peaceful and happy in my own company.
Craving veggies I’d brought a stash of cherry tomatoes, beans and shitake mushrooms and even managed to make a half-decent udon noodle green curry in my little stove.
The next day I did what no cyclist should ever do, and take route advice from a car driver. Instead of going back the way I came, I opted instead for a longer way around, via Cherry Tree track.
The upshot was a series of gravel hills that threw up one of the toughest physical challenges of the trip so far. This was pure bikepacking territory, and with my skinny tires and unsuitable heavy paniers I was quickly learning that gravel hills and smooth asphalt hills are different beasts entirely, and the longer I cycled the worse the surface became.
Up and down the road went, through landscape that at one time would have been green and beautiful. Now, in the wake of the 2020 bushfires, the view was strangely eerie. Each blackened tree was surrounded by a sheath of leaves, looking like wild creatures that had just been handed clothes which didn’t quite fit.
About ten kilometres from Orbost the landscape transformed from fire-ravaged hills to unburnt countryside, but it was the change five kilometres out that made me nearly weep with happiness. Gravel changed to bitumen and I was on my way to the ocean.
Yep – it had taken me three days longer to get here than it should, but sunshine and blue skies were coming in making this the perfect moment to strike out to Cape Conran.
So having inhaled a pie from the (high recommended) Rosie’s Hot Bake Café I set off down Marlo Road, a popular extension to the East Gippsland rail trail.
On a Sunday afternoon there was only the occasional passing car, and I hummed to myself cheerfully. My fandom for the Snowy could only grow stronger as regular grassy picnic areas afforded glimpses of the great river, at long last under blue skies.
Before a 90 degree turn to the east the road cut away from the river for a few kilometres, moving through a wide open landscape that glowed with colour.
Flowers, lakes, hills and big skies, it had everything, and a mobile phone snap was never able to do it justice. (You can also camp here but be aware it’s very close to the road).
It had been a physically challenging day, but the real challenge was only just beginning. For the turn to the east now took me headlong into a vicious head wind which I battled against all the way to Cape Conran.
I was carrying two or three days’ worth of food and it started to feel like a tonne of bricks, despite the magnificent coastal vistas.
Completely shattered, I arrived at Banksia Bluff campground and looked forward to beaches, walks and a well-deserved rest day.
