New Day Rising – Days 3-4

25-26 February 2025

Jaimathang Country

Snowy Logging Road to Omeo Hwy camp

There is always hope when you go to sleep when it’s windy that you might wake up to a dry tent in the morning. I went to bed with this hope last night.

But you know, there’s that saying, ‘he who lives on hope, dies fasting’.

My hopes are dashed this early morning. I have slept straight through and never heard that wind die off or the silent accumulation of dew and condensation. The tent is completely wet inside and out.

It is quite cool this morning. Deliciously cool. I even get goose bumps when I push back the sleeping bag which has been draped over me like a quilt. It has been such a hot, long summer that started a month early and has consistently had temps way above normal for five months now. So I enjoy this awesome coolness, like a sweet cold drink in air conditioning after being out in the sun and heat.

I pack up everything before the sun crests the ridge and then resume the slow crawl up the rest of the Snowy Logging Road. We climb higher and higher, weaving in and out of the long side drainages until we meet the Big River Road.

Here, if you turn right, you drop to a saddle and can meet up with the Australian Alps walking track. You can also drop off the ridge to some informal campsites along the Big River (what the Mitta Mitta River is called in its higher reaches). But that is not for today.

We turn left and follow a 2WD road along the edge of the mountain and get up to 1300 metres as we skirt around a humped peak that features very gentle slopes above us. That gentleness has meant it’s been easy pickings and has been clear cut recently enough that I have to endure that annoying big gravel they put down before the logging trucks come in.

The clear cuts through here are pretty brutal. It opens up some views, but gosh, I just don’t see how the endangered species will ever repopulate this area given the intensity and extent of the logging through here. The forest corporation (a state entity subsidised by taxpayers) was really going hell for leather in its final years (native forest logging was banned in January 2024). How desperate were they? There are even clear cuts along the Omeo Highway, a major tourism drawcard for its scenery. Who approved destruction of a viewscape? And the saddest thing is… for all this destruction, they weren’t even making a profit. All of this destruction was subsidised by the taxpayer.

After a nice downhill fling through some nice, tight corners, we pop out on the Omeo Highway. We need to climb back up to 1345 metres to Christmas Creek Saddle on the main road. The grade is a bit steeper here, but it’s good chipseal, so it is so much easier than the last two days. Ahh, the kms go by more quickly!

I reach the turn-off for Razorback Spur not long before the saddle. My original plan was to take this down to the Wombat Creek track and then work my way through the forest from there. But that route will have one section of a few kms that looks very steep on the topo map – like I might need to pull off the panniers and carry them down separately to the bike which I will then need to walk down.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my back will like that much. I still find it painful to lean backwards – it seems to compress my spine and put pressure on my lower back. Walking the bike down steep downhills means you’ve got your weight pushed back to counteract gravity. So I think we need to be cautious and give it a miss so we can actually ride for the full four weeks.

Let’s ride on up to the Knocker Track and take that down through the forest instead. In dry weather, supposedly you can get a 2WD drive down that road with caution. So it shouldn’t have anything too bad for my back.

So I continue on and enjoy the nice drop down off Christmas Creek saddle before we have to climb again through some short steep and punchy climbs back to another ridge.

It is on one of these short steep bits that my brand new rear rim, which has been settling in the past couple days with a little ping here and there, decides to settle all at once. At least on the non-drive side. As I’m slowly mashing my way up the hill, all of a sudden I hear, ‘ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping’. Ah, shit, that does not sound good.

So I ungracefully dismount on that steep bit, pull the bike off the road onto the gravel shoulder and go to check the rear rim. Ah, shit. The spokes are all pretty loose on the non-drive side. A few of the spokes on the drive side are a little springy, but the non-drive side is most concerning.

When I picked up the bike after they had built up the wheel with the new rim, they said to bring it back in 4-6 weeks so they could retension it after I’d ridden it in. I questioned that time period and said I’d be doing rough 4WD tracks with a full load. So they said, ‘okay, maybe 2-4 weeks’.

I thought, ‘okay, 2-4 weeks gives me time to get Bairnsdale. I’ll just book the bike in to one of the bike shops there as I get closer’.

Stupid me, I should have trusted my original thought. I had actually planned out a one-week tour down through the Lake Cobbler area as a loop out of Albury that would mean I could get the spokes retensioned there before heading back out to do this part of the route I’m attempting now.

But their confidence meant I skipped that one-week route and launched straight into the main ride. Damn. Now what do I do?

For the moment… nothing. I continue on with the climb and get myself up to Knocker Track – the rear rim pinging its way along but not producing any wobble I can feel. The rear brake begins to rub a little, and I can see a wobble when I look down to the tyre as I ride. But it is not desperate, just concerning.

I stop at the Knocker Track turn-off to see if I can get phone reception. I need to see what bus options are available from the next town, Omeo. Then I need to see if there is a bike shop somewhere along a bus route (maybe Bright or Wangaratta) that might be able to squeeze me in to retension the wheel. If worse comes to worst, I know I can get the bus from Omeo to Wangaratta, and the train from Wang to Albury, for $11. I would just need to find somewhere to leave the bike in Omeo, and take the rear wheel with me. Damn. What a hassle.

But I can’t even start to make some plans, as there is no phone reception. So I contemplate whether to take the Knocker Track or just follow the Omeo Highway. The Knocker Track is new to me and would be more fun. It’s actually a shorter distance to Omeo than the highway (it has fewer squiggles). I’ve ridden the Omeo Hwy several times before. It is sealed the entire way and I prefer to ride the logging roads and 4WD tracks on this bike. However, the Knocker track will have more ‘knocks’ – it will be rougher and steeper and therefore harder on the rim. As much as I feel like I’m downgrading my ride to something much easier and less fun, I need to take the main road.

Ugh. The start to this ride has been a bit all over the place! But… the Omeo Highway is very scenic, I’ve just done the only ‘hard’ bit, and it is probably my second favourite sealed road ride in the region.

I empty one of my water bottles to take some weight off the rear wheel, and then I head DOWN through the switchbacks and long straights through the old mining locality of Glen Willis and then on into the Big River Valley. Woo-hoo! That’s a fun fling. I’ve ridden up that section (12% ave grade in parts) twice before, but never down. I manage to hit 58 kph – not bad on 2.8 knobby tyres and me worrying about the rim.

The road here follows the river through the valley. It sits high above the river in places and follows alongside in others. It is very scenic and very easy. This valley does sit in a rain shadow, and it all burnt in 2003, so the vegetation is more dry and spindly than higher elevations. But it really is a fantastic ride.

However, I haven’t ridden this since 2017, and I can’t believe how much more traffic there is!! My memory is just a few cars every 30 minutes, where today it is a few cars every five minutes. I even manage to have a caravan squeeze me on a corner with a motorcycle coming the other way. You’d think caravan people could have 12 seconds of patience since they are usually the ones holding up other people on the road.

I also see a large contingent of motorcycle cops and highway patrol cars heading the other way. I’m sure they are heading out to do speed traps somewhere (they were). Since they sealed the final 12 kms of the road in 2014, it has become extremely popular with motorcycles who don’t always stick to the speed limit. There have been quite a few deaths along the road in that time.

I laugh about them clocking me on a speed camera. I could just see them putting down the handheld radar, looking at me in exasperation and saying, “Hurry up”! Then Verne would say, “I know! I’ve been telling her that for years!”

I miss the dirt track down to the informal camping area I had thought about staying at. Everything looks so much more heavily used and worn out now that I don’t recognise it and miss it. Never mind, we’ll find something ahead.

It’s hot. We’ve dropped down to 700 metres and the sun is shining down without any clouds to provide relief. I go through my remaining water and start getting a bit frustrated with the higher levels of traffic.

Luckily, just when I’ve had enough, I see a dirt track heading down to the river. I think this might be where I camped when I did the big Falls Creek, Dinner Plain, Hotham, Tawonga Gap loop back in March 2016, but I’m not sure. The angle and steepness of the track, and its location along the highway, seem correct. But back then, it was very easy to miss the track, and it was narrow and grassy. Now it’s like road-width and very eroded. Everything now is just so much more heavily used!

So I follow the track down, and luckily, no one is camped down there. I grab the good spot that will have all day shade, get the tent spread out to dry, filter some water, wet down my shirt, rehydrate and more closely inspect the rim. There are no broken spokes, there are no super loose spokes, and they seem to all be of a fairly similar looseness on the non-drive side. I’m confident we’ll get to Omeo without trouble, but we will need to address it then.

So then I set about relaxing and just enjoying a really scenic spot. The river flows deep and slow next to the campsite, but there are shallower sections with ripples just upstream and down. The trout flop about as they leap at bugs on the surface. The dragonflies are in abundance and I watch them line up on a blade of grass.

I keep wetting down my shirt and just hanging in the shade. This is not at all what I was planning to do, but bike touring is all about flexibility and making the most of what comes your way. And given the heat here, I am so absolutely grateful I’m not down in town at my unbearable, miserably hot apartment.

A couple more people come down in 4WDs, hoping to snag this really nice spot, but they are disappointed when they come around the corner and can finally see my bike and tent. A guy comes down later (also hoping to camp here because the fishing is so good here) and has a quick chat before he heads a little upstream to fish. I tell him I’ve been watching them flop about all afternoon. He comes back less than 5 minutes later with a big brown trout! He’s caught his dinner so he heads out to find somewhere else to camp (there is another spot here, but it’s closer to the road and has little shade).

Ahhh… I enjoy doing nothing. I use some firewood left behind as an additional windbreak for my stove and cook up my standard dinner of lentils, rice and peas. It’s amazing how yummy that tastes when you are out in the bush!

The next morning I decide I’m going to stay one more day. It is just such a nice little spot. It will also give my back a day to rest. I think this might have to be the ride structure going forward for a little bit, ‘ride a day or two, then rest a day’. It’s not ideal, but I think it will allow me to keep riding.

The guys float most of the day and I relax in the shade. My back is much happier by the end of the day, and mentally, I’m feeling better about not being able to do the more adventurous tracks. It’s led me to this nice little spot and really, for me, it’s all about just being outside and riding and spending nights in the tent. I’m still doing that, just not quite how I envisioned it. It will all be okay in the end, and I’ll look back on all of it with fondness when I’m sitting at a desk everyday over the next 12 months.