28 February – 1 March 2025
Jaimathang and Gunaikurnai Country
Bus from Omeo to Bairnsdale
It is still very dark. We’re getting toward the end of daylight saving, so 6.00am still features total darkness. But Omeo is bustling in that pitch darkness. The bright lights of a bakery shine into the blackness, beckoning forth the addicts like moths to a flame.
There are tradie utes towing work trailers. There are guys in mining company utes. There are guys in big utes related to some energy company. There is an older guy with a younger woman with an old ute towing a horse float. There’s a guy with an immaculately clean big-arse caravan. And there are at least four to six of those ‘could be any brand’ small SUVs that have taken the place of sedans. There’s a few sedans, though, too.
The main street has more traffic now than most times of day. The bakery begins serving coffee at 5am, and it’s probably the only place in 75 kms to do so. It’s a constant revolving door down there with people going in and out. I count 20 vehicles in the 20 minutes I’m sitting there.
The bus turns up right on time. It runs Mon, Wed, Friday but goes down early on Friday to take the kids to their TAFE courses (Technical and Further Education – think construction, beauticians, cooking and aged care classes, etc). The driver helps me get the bike underneath and absolutely refuses to take extra money for the bike. Then it’s just me, about 5 kids aged 15-20 and an Indian guy who’s heading to Melbourne. The coach is very new and modern. We pick up three or four more students along the way. Since all the kids are travelling for free or very cheaply on their student cards, that leaves just the Indian bloke and me paying $11 each. I wonder how many services are like this – heavily subsidised but vital for regional residents.
We head down the Great Alpine Road to Bairnsdale. The road follows the Tambo River much of the way. That means it’s a narrow and very winding road for much of the way. It just plunges down through canyons where the walls above the river close in tight and all of the severely burnt vegetation from the 2019-20 fires towers over in burnt nubs, scaly black prongs of branches and furry epicormic regrowth. It is five years on, and it still looks like the fires could have been just 9 months ago. It burnt so very hot through a lot of this. We’re probably about 15-20 kms from the ignition points through here.
Where the valley opens up, the land has been cleared and steep, rolling hills of brown pasture edge up to the forest in the distance. Then we plunge back into canyons again, a super winding road not for those subject to car sickness. It is very scenic, but I’m glad to be viewing it from a vehicle.
I have ridden two sections of this road where I could not avoid it. The bit from Bruthen to Playgrounds Rd wasn’t so bad. I got a very early start, there’s not too many blind corners in that section, and some of it has a bit of a shoulder. However, the bit I rode from the Buchan-Ensay Road up to Doctors Flat was pretty terrifying. Lots of blind corners and absolutely nowhere to go – just rock wall on one side, river on the other with a rock strewn gutter on the inside. There are sections of the road with a bit of a shoulder but other sections with blind corners and none at all.
Yet, that cycling group from yesterday will be riding down this today. I feel so sorry for all the heavy vehicles that will get caught up trying to edge by over 20 riders strung out along the road with so little room to overtake and such short sight-lines.
I have this conversation with the driver when we get to Bairnsdale. He’s curious about what I’m doing and where I’m going. We talk about how perilous that road is and I assure him that I’m likely to ride back to Omeo later on, but I’ll be threading my way up the forest roads in the mountains to get there. He’s really impressed with what I’m doing and that I’ve got the guts to ride alone on remote roads.
He says they’ve had organised rides along that route where riders have died in the past. He is also critical of the timing for the Peaks Challenge which runs through Omeo on the Labour Day weekend. That coincides with Beef Week – the largest cattle sales of the entire year which sees hundreds of people (all towing livestock trailers) from all over the state and other states come to buy and sell cattle. Alpine cattle are considered to be good, tough bloodlines, so they are in high demand.
I tell the driver I’m very aware of road safety and that my ex has driven heavy vehicles and coaches for more than 35 years, so I really understand what’s involved in driving such big vehicles on substandard roads. We both agree that auto drivers should have to go on a ride-along with a truck driver before they get their licence so they better understand about stopping distances, blind spots, manoeuvre-ability, and just all the things truck drivers have to manage in a truck. I tell him I think people should also have to pedal along a road on a bike and have cars pass them within a metre’s distance at various speeds, so they have an understanding of that, too!
Then I head on over to the bike shop. They are friendly, and when I tell them that I don’t need the bike back so immediately, they say they’ll still do it in the next couple hours. I show them the loose spokes and they think it will be really straightforward to retension.
I head off to start gathering up supplies and to figure out how many days of food I think I should buy. They ring me just a couple hours later and the bike is ready. Awesome service and staff – I thank them profusely for the help. They don’t see as many people doing mountain routes, so they are curious about where I’m going. As always, I get the reaction, “ohhh, that’s steep” at least once. I just say, “Well, that’s why you don’t look at the grades too closely when you plan a route, otherwise you’d talk yourself out of it, and what sort of adventure is that”!
The weather forecast for tomorrow is for rainy periods, and I need a bit more time to scope out these routes and where I might hole up for the long weekend next weekend. It’s Labour Day weekend, so there will be heaps of people out camping and the formal and informal campsites are likely to fill up. With my original proposed route now out the window, I need to do some more thinking about where we’ll go. This, then, influences how many days of food to purchase. You don’t want to carry too much because of the weight penalty, but you also want enough so you have the energy to ride those “Oh, that’s steep!” roads.
So I get a motel room for two nights (because the caravan park here has absolutely terrible campsites and the cabins are booked out) and will have an extra day here tomorrow to get everything together. I’m going to be out in the bush for at least seven days, so that requires a bit more planning, even if I don’t follow any route I plan now exactly.