Day 579 | Suggan Buggan campsite: this looks real familiar
My first full day riding wet since forever.
Cool too, feels more like a NZ summer than January in Australia.
As soon as I whacked the tent up it was on with the long johns, long sleeved T shirt, my beenie, actually completely encased in Icebreaker, I was in my sleeping bag snoring my way through a three hour afternoon nap, there’s ample bone weariness in this ageing body.
I spent much of my time today in granny cog grinding ever up on this cruise down the Snowy River, considering my options for tomorrow. I’ve got a 600 m immediate climb and, then, eventually I’ll burst out onto asphalt that could take me all the way to Melbourne. That’s via Buchan, a lot of the day would then be losing altitude on a good blacktop surface.
The other option is one I’d surely be taking if I wasn’t on the last legs of this tour, pealing off on another dirt road down steeply to McKillops Bridge, crossing the Snowy River and then needing another long climb up to Bonang, all back on dirt, then a long downhill cruise through tall tree forest to Orbost, joining the rail trail through to Bairnsdale, this option adding two days at least to my perambulations.
There’s odd patches of blue sky up there now, guess it depends on the weather and how my body feels whether I venture on that last procrastination on an already overlong bike tour.
Heading the direct route I’d pass the rapidly overgrowing service station at Seldom Seen where I spent five hours on my previous tour talking with the wonderfully, can I call him eccentric, wild spirit, Dave ?, I’d just call him well grounded with a wicked eye for the absurdities of modern life, ie, anything that’s happened post 1971. Dave died late last year aged 73 in accidental circumstances, having survived the raging 2007 bushfires which ripped through much of Australia’s alpine area by lodging for a while in a farm dam with his dog, his motorbike melting in the heat, a lot of his life up in flames, but he had persevered with his twin pump, diesel and unleaded, one of the most unselfconscious characters I met on my travels.
I should also mention Adam Plate who met his fate in mid-year, a rally driving accident, he of the Oodnadatta Roadhouse and his don’t-give-a-shit attitude to life, enormous energy, had found its niche in the unregulated by local government Oodnadatta, one of the last outposts of the anarchic wild west in Australia, absurdist sense of humour, ie, his Oodnadatta Canoe Hire Company, there is a small dam nearby but really, we are speaking of one of the driest areas in Australia, his hugely informative signage up and down the Track and his laconic response when I asked him what the surface to Finke was like: mate, Jerome Murif came through on his bike in 1896, I think you’ll make it.
As the end of my expedition draws near I guess I am getting more reflective.