Central Flinders Ranges
Next stop Rawnsley Park Station where merinos are farmed and tourists are welcome. Cabins, trails and campsites crouch beneath the magnificent cliffs of Rawnsley Bluff at the southern end of Wilpena Pound.
Our first foray into Wilpena is to walk up to a lookout and survey the amazing Wilpena Pound. Named a pound because it was used to run animals. The landmark was formed when the rock in the centre of the range eroded leaving a circular bowl. Its named means “cupped hand”.
Our next visit takes us up the side of the Pound to its highest peak, St Mary Peak. On the way up we spot mountain goats and on the top a trio of wedge-tailed eagles rise from the valley in an ascending spiral. We look north to see the Flinders Rangers, which locals believe was formed by the Rainbow Serpent - parallel ridges seem to have been pushed aside by the path of a very large snake.
There are also mountain bike adventures along a section of the Mawson Trail and around the rocky boundaries of Rawnsley Park.
Remarkable Melrose
The rain lets up, so we set out, in thermals and beanies, for Alligator Gorge in the northern section of the Mt Remarkable National Park. It is doubtful that an alligator has ever been seen this far south, and helpful signs tell us that it is more likely that a stockman called ‘Ali’, who shepherded his sheep through the area, inspired the name.
The 30-foot walls of the rocky gorge are burnt orange in colour and dotted with optimistic sugar gums that grow out of cracks at awkward angles. We are probably walking along an ancient river bed - our path the once-submerged river rocks and boulders - that is little more than my arm-span wide at one point called The Narrows. Progress is slow, as we take the time to test out our fabulous new camera gear.
As well as unfamiliar scenery, we are introduced to a new animal - the strangely named Euro, who is a cousin of Skippy but has black paws, woollier fur and comic larger ears. We startle a small group of them on the drive out of the park, perhaps with our choice of music - the new Ween album (thanks Scott!).
Time to get my new mountain bike (purchased to replace my much-loved commuter hybrid bike that someone stole from outside of the NGV - curse ‘em) off the car roof and into the mud. I haven’t been this scared in a while - the trails are more tracks for mountain goats and I can’t get visions of me sliding down the muddy hillside out of my head. Ben, on the other hand, is a natural - he has that ability to turn off his brain and trust and so jumps logs and hurtles down gullies safely. Like skiing, mountain bike trails are graded and I am looking for green (easy) and just managing blue (intermediate) but giving a wide berth to black diamond (really really hard and scarey). Mountain biking trails also have curious names like Dodging Bullets, On a Bender, Textbook 10 per cent etc.
In search of a good coffee we head to the bike shop and get chatting to the owners - two young couples who have moved to the country in the last couple of years. They are enthusiastic riders, passionate about the town and the area and dreaming up new ideas for attracting funding, and preserving what few services are in town (having recently lost their kindergarten). They share tips about tracks and invite us to join them at the pub, where we hear travel stories about the places that we are going to see - nothing like some local knowledge!
Up the road to Melrose
We head north out of Clare, which could be mistaken for Country Clare in Ireland, after which it was named. Rolling green hills with old pale sandstone sheds stranded in manicured paddocks, saturated grey/green light, hardy sheep and torrential rain.
We aim for Melrose today - a huge 150 kilometres up the road - and somehow manage to make the trip last the best part of the day. We stop at Gladstone (home of an historic gaol and not much else) and then the well-kept secret that is the Stone Hut Bakery. Along the way we are surprised at the tiny country towns through which we pass - they are neat places where well-kept sandstone cottages look to the road. Perhaps for answers as to how to survive - most towns are in steady demise as businesses close and people move away.
Melrose, at the foot of Mt Remarkable in the Southern Flinders Ranges, is even more surprising. It is a rare mix of country hospitality and historic buildings, with great food and a dynamic and welcoming young local community. There’s a bike shop in town and a group of enthusiastic riders who are determined to put the town on the map for mountain biking. A network of trails has been created on private land between the town and the national park, and the annual Festival of Fat Tyres attracts people from around the world to circumnavigate the peak after which the town was named.
The weather hasn’t let up, infact it blows and the rain thuds through the night, so we decide to leave the tent in the car and move into cabin 3 in the caravan park - a standard hose-out set-up with a noisy heater (the choice is easy - have a conversation or be warm) and a television bolted high on the wall.
The best thing to do on a rainy blowy night is not to sit in a dim cabin, but to venture out to the pub. Especially in South Australia, where the pale ale is cheap and on tap (pity they don’t know what measure a pint is!). The North Star is a renovated old building that has a cellar door, gallery, expansive restaurant, bar with open fire and very friendly staff. It will be our second home during our stay, and is sister of the Prairie Hotel, about which we hear frequently and which we will visit at Parachilna in the Central Flinders Ranges.
On the Riesling Trail
Our new home is a farm just north of Clare. Mundawora Mews means ‘place of water’ - perhaps because of the high rainfall that we experience during our visit. We are staying in a converted stable located between the homestead and the chook shed and on the edge of an extensive vineyard.
We give the Corolla the day off and are taken for a walk around the back paddock by our friendly canine host - a brown border collie called Jackie - then climb onto the mountain bikes to investigate the famous Clare Valley Riesling trail. Once a railway line, this 25-kilometre trail is easy riding and passes soap factories, cellar doors, a Jesuit church, restaurants and cute B&B cottages. The valley was named by the Irish but it was Polish migrants who decided that vines should be planted to provide wine at communion. But it is not red wine but white - fabulous riesling - that they do best in the valley.
Over the next few days as the weather gets wetter and windier and I get a heavy head cold, we sample riesling at cellar doors and restaurants (including lunch at the highly-recommended Skillogalee) and in front of our cosy wood stove. The 2009 Tour de France is underway, so late-night vigils are organised to follow the progress of 190 bold men in lycra.
Parent update: After one litre of blood transfusions, Phil is discharged from the lovely Kununurra Hospital and flies to Darwin on the first leg of the journey home to Armidale.
Nhill to Clare
We made it to chilly Nhill last night and booked into a motel claiming to be the town’s quietest. Our host, who is wearing shorts, dropped in homemade muffins with thick icing to welcome us.
We wake up to the hum of trucks and don’t waste much time getting back onto what is a major transport artery between Melbourne and Adelaide - long freight trains race the road traffic, which is comprised of more trucks and caravans than cars. The vegetation changes - stubby scrubby brush and native grasses set in sandy pale soil - the road is flat and straight and passes through farmland.
Bordertown was once home to Bob Hawke, and is currently home to a really good bakery - a rare commodity in the bush - and to a mob of white roos. We skip the former PM’s house and opt for a great pastie and a look at the strange white skippys, who keep company with peacocks and grey roos behind a tall cyclone fence.
A quick stop at Murray Bridge, a small town set on the famous river, where we see pelicans and houseboats and then we miss our turn north and find ourselves whizzing towards Adelaide on the freeway. No matter, this road takes us through beautiful scenery and the northern suburbs of Adelaide (slowly) and eventually we are back on track bouncing up the B82 to the Clare Valley and Clare.
Along the way there have been updates from my parents - Phil has extremely low haemoglobin, which in turn caused angina; nothing a transfusion of blood flown up from Perth won’t remedy in the short term. We all feel relieved.
Leaving Melbourne
Melbourne farewells us with a grey rainy day - a convincing gesture for two about to embark on a glorious road trip. Our morning is taken up remembering things we have forgotten, finding or buying them, going out for breakfast and taking upsetting phone calls. My dad (Phil) has been hospitalised in Kununurra in Western Australia, disrupting my parents’ own adventure in the Kimberley region, and giving us all a bit of a scare.
At about 2pm, having shoe-horned all of our gear into the Tardis-like Corolla we are off, relieved to finally be underway on this much-anticipated adventure. We head west for Ballarat, then Ararat, then the South Australian border.
Day 1: Launceston to Sheffield
Launceston > Evandale > Deloraine > Sheffield
MC 126kms, BB 140kms
We head out of Launceston - a fairly straightforward pedal past City Park and through a few traffic lights (the last we will see for 5 days).
We ride through the smell of cut straw and earth turned and ready for the next crop of spuds. And road kill. Wallabies, kangaroos and wombats, possums, domestic cats, birds, echidnas and even Tassie Devils; all dead on the side of the road.
We move through farmland along a road fringed with blackberries and brambles - 24 kilometres to Evandale, home of an annual penny-farthing race that was held for the 100th time the weekend before. The finish line is still chalked across the main street where we find a bakery that is heaving with biscuits and preserves.
Over coffee we start to get to know our little pedalling family - Simon (our guide), Stu (his brother-in-law and a Collingwood dweller), Collin (a GP from Newcastle), Steve (‘Dash’) from Hobart, and Noosa cyclists Peter (a real estate agent), and retiree and occasional bike guide in Europe, John. Sam is our dynamic guide - a logistics magician, cheerful energetic force, driver of the support vehicle and generous camp mother.
Another 60 kilometres through rural scenery but we ‘bonk’ (for non-cyclists: a technical term that means running out of food) before reaching our lunch spot (over the bridge, by the river). Sam revives our flagging bodies with a huge picnic spread and a good big wedge of Simon’s mother’s carrot cake.
To the hills and we plunge with heart in throat up the Gog - a brutal ascent with a gradient of 16 per cent that sorts out the boys from the girls. This girl gets off and walked some of the way in her socks, happy to be taking in the views without the pain. I decide against tackling the Gogette - a slightly smaller incline - and so am able to take some pics of Ben and Simon tackling the last 16kms into our temporary home - Sheffield.
Day 2: Sheffield to Tullah
Sheffield > Cradle Mountain National Park > Tullah
MC and BB 110km
Out onto the main road, past the pub, under the stony gaze of Mt Roland. Turn right into a formidable headwind (that John later describes as “a hand on the forehead”) and pass through undulating country and settle down for a 6-kilometre 11 per cent upward grind. Simon’s warning that there is no flat country in Tassie seems to be true. The temperature drops and the wind picks up as we turn off the main tourist road into Cradle Mountain National Park, over the cattle grid and past the scurrying echidna, It’s 10 degrees so after a quick lunch we keep going and head back out into the tourist traffic – a steady trickle of winnebagos - and gusty winds and a short rain shower.
Our next home is Tullah, a former mining and hydro town ringed by mountains. The temporary portable housing sets a certain dreary scene but the rooms are cosy, the showers hot and the view over Lake Rosebery a million dollars. We find a spot beside the lake to watch the wind ripple the black peat-stained waters, and hardy locals jumping off a pier into frigid waters.
Day 3: Tullah to Strahan
Tullah > Mt Murchison > Zeehan > Strahan
MC 80kms, BB 110kms
My knees ache all night. I ‘sag’ (climb into the bus) as the early morning cloud lifts from over the lake and ride the easy way for the first chilly 30 kilometres. As Ben and the other cyclists pedal over the saddle of Mt Murchison and down to Lake Plimsoll, Sam and I chat and take photographs. I jump on my trusty red steed at morning tea to tackle the heavy undulating roads that lead to Zeehan, a mining town famous for its 27 pubs. A patch of sun to enjoy another great lunch at the local Lions park. We are travelling along a busy tourist route used by winnebagos and hire cars driven wrecklessly by holidaying visitors who leave too little room for cyclists. A truck chases Simon, Ben and I up a hill and down over a shakey plank bridge for a 10-kilometre team ‘draft’ with a last minute sprint (won by Dash) into Strahan. Strahan is all about its waterways and people flock to it to appreciate its proximity to the Gordon River and wilderness areas, its location on the west coast, and the efforts of its fishing fleet (Peter bags a crayfish for an afternoon snack).
Day 4: Strahan to Bronte Park
MC 132kms, BB 157kms
Goodbye busy touristy Strahan. We climb up and out, ascending for 13-kilometres through heavily timbered country to take in great views from mountain lookouts before descending into Queenstown. Famous for its ‘moonscape’ landscape that was created by years of copper mining, Queenstown has more trees that I remember when I went there in the nineties. The fellas try out the town ‘velodrome’, a sealed track that encircles the local (gravel) footy oval, before we head out of town. The climb out of Queenstown is a fairly steep and winding 6-kilometre road with great views of the pinks, yellows and greys of the surrounding exposed hills. There’s another 40 kilometres before lunch so we line up and draft efficiently behind the superior power and muscular legs of locals Dash and Simon, all the way to a sunny spot where Sam awaits us at Lake Burbury.
Our task this afternoon is to conquer Mount Arrowsmith. It is a universal truth of cycling that the only way to climb a hill is at your own pace. There is a natural hierarchy when the altitude increases, with part of the group speeding up and the rest settling in for a slow climb. My climb up this formidable and seemingly never ending incline is indeed slow, but rewarded with glimpses of the magnificent Frenchman’s Cap along the way and the rusty colours of high-altitude grassy meadows. At the top, triumphant, we eat lollies and then roll towards our new home in Bronte Park. The final leg takes us through Derwent Bridge where walkers of the Overland Track (Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair) emerge, and past busy echidna. We are in alpine fisherman country (a strange breed that we observe over dinner).
