East Branch Nicholson River to Marthavale
Gunaikurnai Country
6 March 2025
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. My shoes push against the chunky gravel as I push the bike up another steep grade. Sometimes the handlebars are even with my chest. Sometimes they are even with my chin, as I pick my way up the slope, trying to use rocks and roots as steps as I heave the bike up.
Today is a continuation of Tuesday. Steep ups. Steep downs. Some pointless steep ups and downs.
Slow progress. I walk some, I ride some. I am on and off the bike a hundred times.
Today, we’ve got some fords to negotiate, but I’m not worried about them as the river is low. It’s just a matter of how steep and eroded the approaches are that worry me most. Shoes on and off each time.
The one positive thing I’ve noticed along all the steep pushing on this track is that my grip strength is soooooooo much better than it used to be. I can really grab onto the bars now and manhandle the bike, even with a crap shoulder. I am so much stronger, even with a lighter training load at the gym over the past six months, than I was on the 2023 ride.
None of the river crossing exits today are difficult, but I feel like I could have managed them better than in 2023 if they had been very steep and eroded. I hate going to the gym, but the strength training has paid dividends now, in addition to maintaining bone density long-term.
Up, down… just when you think you can mount the bike again, another unrideable bit appears. Slow going.
We finally get up to what I hope is the final push where this track meets Camms Track coming down a spur. We push our way up that. Then we have to do a really steep downhill back to the river that requires very careful foot placement on the steep gravel as we walk the bike down with our hands clamped on the brakes.
We get down to a river flat where the 4WDs have ruined a campsite by bashing about in bogholes. We then get a bit beyond this and see…
Damn it! Another freakin’ steep eroded bit we’ve got to push up. I had so hoped the push to Camm’s Track had been the last one of those.
Nevermind. I’m able to get up this one by keeping me and the bike both on the centre mound. Luckily, it’s got enough clay content in it that the soil is a little bit stickier than some of the other slippery gravel.
And then, finally, the grade is easy for the final 1.2 kms to Marthavale.
But it is not an easy ride.
The government has put in a bunch of fist-sized, irregular shaped gravel down on the track to keep away the erosion. It’s like riding on angular cobblestone. So we bump our way along that and then get a smooth 50 metres to finish the track. Phew.
There’s a group of 4WDs near the hut, but they are all packed up, and it looks like the guys are getting ready to leave. I camped here in 2023, and the spot I camped then is free. So I ride over there, lean the bike against the picnic table and then rehydrate and refuel.
Once finished, I go over to the 4WD guys – three overweight guys and one skinny guy with long hair that is trying to control what looks like a beagle on a long lead. They are at the picnic table looking at a map, deciding on what they want to do for the day. It’s 11am.
I ask them if they have a weather forecast more recent than Monday. Yes, theirs is from yesterday afternoon. They show it to me on their phone. Three of the guys are probably in their 30s and the one guy is in his 60s. He tells me the cyclone off the East Coast is spinning its way off to New Zealand (it is not, it’s going to slam Brisbane and northern NSW). Originally, the weather forecast had a fair bit of rain forecast for Sunday and Monday with that moisture sinking to the south. He says he keeps an eye on these things since his place runs off tankwater.
The guys are off to do several tracks, including Haunted Stream, before making their way to Omeo for lunch at the pub. The older guy is hankering for a ‘Fishermen’s Basket’. They think they’ll then end up at Swifts Creek for the night. I laugh and tell them it’d take me until late evening to get to Omeo alone on a direct route.
The older guy assures me the weather will be nice for the next week and that it’s not meant to be too cold. I tell them that I’m not concerned about that as I generate plenty of heat on my own pedalling up the hills. They all laugh and one guy says, “Yeah, I bet you would.”
That is my first conversation since Sunday morning. 4 days without speaking to anyone. And if I had been just 30 minutes later, I would have missed those guys and continued my streak. Bliss.
I go back to my picnic table and contemplate whether I should keep riding or spend the afternoon here. I have an aversion to camping in campgrounds because of the noise and the campfire smoke. But I’m not sure which direction I want to head. I was leaving it until this spot to determine my next moves, not knowing how long it would take to get to this point. Any route from here requires a climb back to a ridge, it’s just a matter of which climb we want to do.
So I decide I’ll spend the night here and figure out next steps, how much food I have left and how I will need to ration that based on the route chosen. I just need to not get back to Bairnsdale before Monday because of the long weekend.
So I spend the afternoon figuring out a route and rations. My original route had me doing Haunted Stream track. I still want to do it, but I think I want to do just a portion instead and do a drop-in and climb out from tracks on Engineers Road. To do that, we’d take Quarry Creek Road from here. That track also looks interesting and like a lot of it will be rideable. It was closed in 2023 (the higher portions of it were close to the ignition point for the 2019 fire).
However, that route through Haunted Stream will take me a couple days to do. That means I’d be trying to do that over the long weekend with a zillion 4WD folks. That track seems pretty popular with them, and it was closed for four years after the fires, so there is likely some pent up demand. The guys I just met were heading that way, so I think that one’s going to need to wait for another time.
I think we’ll head down Baldhead Road. It connects with several other tracks and roads that would be new to me. Those tracks won’t have the same level of popularity. So that’s settled. We’ll do the climb out to Baldhead Road first thing in the morning. I’ve done that climb before and only remember one steep bit that was grunty.
Maybe we’ll actually hit double digit kms again tomorrow. Hahaha! At this point I’m resigned to a low key tour with short daily kays and waiting out weird timing with long weekends and weather.
This tour will just be one of those that never has any flow. I’m okay with that now. Instead of a Kermit-like tour rafting down rapids easily, just pinballing off obstacles and finding good flow… I’m going to be doing a Verne, getting stuck on things and dragged into standing waves before finding my way forward.