New Day Rising – Day 9

3 March 2025

Gunaikurnai Country

Deptford to Barmouth Creek Crossing

The trees arch over the road, their pale green leaves hanging vertically but defying gravity and holding onto the dew. The clouds are hanging about the ridgetops and the air is still. It feels a little expectant and a little bit creepy this morning, as I shove the bike up a steep grade at the very start.

For some reason, the sharp violin and crashing drumbeat of Vic Chesnutt’s song ‘Coward’ enter my head. Goodness, I haven’t listened to that song in years, I wonder why the instrumental parts of the song bubble up from the bottom of my brain. 

The darkness of that song does match the relative darkness of the morning though – dingy and damp as it is. The beat of that song in my head propels me forward though. I step in time to the beat, shoving my bike forward on a grade that has me leaning forward, too.

The plan for today is simple. Leave the Nicholson River behind by pushing the bike up quite steep grades back to the ridge on the east side of the river. Then, we’ll dive straight back down to the river again a few kilometres further upstream. It’s going to be a short day in ‘kays’, but not necesarily in ‘metres climbed per km’. 

And so we push and push the bike. The first five kays are all hike-a-bike. The surface quality is good, only deteriorating where it is super steep and they have not put in water bars. My main problem is that I like to push from the left side of the bike. This is how I have the most power. But that requires reaching across those wide handlebars, and my crap shoulder gets tired after a while. I still don’t quite have that amount of reach back for long periods. It means I have to swap over and push ‘wrong-sided’ at various intervals, and this tires me out quicker because I don’t have as much strength.

But so we go. It is hard, grunty work there for the first five kilometres. It’s a steepness that means you heave forward for 10 or so steps, then need to stop and get your breath back while your heart beats furiously in your chest. It’s definitely a HIIT workout, maximal effort in 30 second bursts followed by 40 seconds of rest.

On occasion, there’s a short section with a rideable grade. Sometimes this lines up with the location of a water bar where there is a lump of earth across the road and a ditch on the uphill side of the lump. This directs the water off the road. It can be super steep on the downhill side of the lump for a few feet, then there is a momentary flat reprieve on top of the lump, and then a foot or two of downhill into the ditch before the sustained grade begins again. Sometimes water bars are the only relief from a steep grade. I have pushed water bar to water bar more than once in my life!

But should the water bar line up with a rideable grade, you can push to the top of the lump, mount the bike and get a good push off on the short downhill so you can catch the pedal with your other foot to keep going.  

There are other times pushing up the road when you think you might be able to ride and get a start on a teeny weeny decrease in grade. You’ve got one foot on the down pedal and push once or twice with the other foot, trying to get just enough momentum to get your foot on the pedal and the pedal pushed forward to get going. Sometimes you aim the bike on an angle, sometimes you hope to ride straight across the road and then steer quickly back uphill before you hit the gutter on the other side. Trying to do it all on gravel with rocks ranging in size from golf ball to baby head makes it all the more difficult.

And that is our first three hours of the day. The track heads up a large tributary, climbing up and away from the river into the upper reaches of the drainage. We round a knobbed hill and the grade backs off and we can ride from time to time.

We reach McDonald Road. We’ve got phone reception again so I quickly download the most recent weather forecast and send off a quick text and proof of life photo to Nigel saying we are okay and the tracks I’m planning to take over the next few days. Then there’s a quick email to my parents with the proof of life photo, then the phone gets turned off and put back in the bag.

This road will take us back down to the river. And so it does, after a few undulations along the top of the spur. But then it dives right down on a pretty freshly bulldozed road. It’s a bit soft, but it’s pretty smooth, and we just ZOOOOM. Oh yeah, I can feel ‘the roar’ underneath that adrenalin surge as the back tyre gets squirrely on a few of the tighter corners and underneath a few momentary thoughts of ‘oh shit’ when I don’t quite get the apex right. There is nothing like mountain biking with a full load – and it is a pretty full load with 8 or 9 days of food on board!

I fly down the hill and lose all of the elevation we laboriously gained over three hours. This takes me less than 20 minutes. Oh, there are so many ups and downs on the road, both literal and figurative. While I’m flying down the hill, I lose that dark VIc Chestnutt song and a Gen X classic hits me as I ride out that ‘roar’: Blister in the Sun.  It is definitely not a day that we are going to blister in the sun with all the dank clouds around, but the upbeat, silly and non-sensical lyrics and beat match that stupid, shit-eating grin of joy you get on a fast, twisty downhill.

There’s a clearing down the bottom that would have once been a nice informal campsite. But the extensive logging and fires (2006/07 and 2019/20) mean there’s little shade left (not that it matters today). The area is not used much it would appear, as there are lots of little bushes that are regrowing throughout. I stop anyway to check it out, as I want to camp along this creek instead of the river, as the water quality will be much better. But it’s impossible to get down to the creek and it’s a fair walk down from the cleared area. 

So we continue on 50 metres or so to the creek crossing. Oh, this is one of those that you’d get a big surprise if you were being macho and trying to ride through. One side has a big sand glug at the bottom of the track that sorta directs you into the other tyre track. That tyre track dumps you directly in a hole that would send you right over your handlebars. Beyond the hole is another sand glug on one side and some big rocks on the other. 

I lay the bike down on the rocks and wander on up the road a bit. The bulldozer has pushed all the regrowth right back along this track, too. It’s pretty fresh – some of the pushed-over veg still has green colour in its leaves. 

I walk on to the river crossing. Nup, nowhere better to camp over there. So I head back to the Barmouth Creek crossing and pull out my sleeping pad to sit on for lunch. We’re done for the day here because I am not sure about camping options further on and we have access to water and a flat place to sleep here (once I do some pebble rearrangement). 

The guys and I have a glorious afternoon, just hanging out. I see no humans. I hear no humans. The guys get several untethered runs down the river, bobbing along the little rapids. Then they float the rest of the afternoon and evening away under a tree fern that is slowly being pulled into the river by gravity. One more good flood and that fern will be in the water. 

This is good, good stuff. This is exactly the sort of ride I enjoy – some hard climbing, some pushing, a roaring downhill, camping along a water source and no humans anywhere. More of this please, please, please!!