New Day Rising – Day 16

Tabberabbera Road to Bairnsdale

Gunaikurnai Country

9 March 2025

The panniers are packed up. The fork bags are rolled and clipped closed. I’m sitting in the tent ready to go. I’m just waiting for the rain to ease up just a tiny bit before I chuck the bags outside of the tent and pack the tent as quickly as possible.

I lean back against the bags watching the droplets of rain on the tent get heavier and heavier until gravity grabs them and pulls them down the side of the tent. They streak down like meteors grabbing smaller droplets in their path along the way. I listen to the pitter patter of drops, trying to detect any sign of a lessening in frequency.

The rain that was supposed to come through yesterday afternoon and evening did not start until 5am. I slept in and cuddled in the bag as long as I could. Then when my bladder lost its patience and required me to finally get out and go pee, my mind lost patience, too. It’s 9.30am. That rain could last til noon or later. I don’t have enough food to stay out another day AND I’ve got accommodation booked tonight in town. We need to do about 60kms to get there. So let’s pack up and be resigned to riding in the rain. Ideally, we need that rain to back off just a tad, so we can pack up without getting everything too wet. 

So I wait and wait and wait. Then, around 10.30, it eases off for a moment. It’s enough for me to spring into action. I’ve packed in the rain enough times that I’ve got a routine for this. Surprisingly, it all goes to plan, even though its been a long time without any practice. 

Now we’ve just got about 5 kms of climbing on the saturated and gluggy road to get out of this catchment before a downhill to a creek and another long climb out. It’s warm enough to be sweaty, so I just ride in my shirt and shorts. I get soaked pretty quickly, but it doesn’t matter since it is not cold. In fact, it kinda feels nice.

What doesn’t feel nice is all of the mud getting splattered on my ankles. But I’m a gritty girl so don’t mind a bit of grit and grime. I’m now on day 9 on the road without a proper shower, so I’m already gross. Let’s just add another later. People pay hundreds of dollars for mud treatments in spas. This is absolutely free.

But, oh is it slow! That dirt road is very grabby and soft. Wherever there was accumulated dust yesterday is now thick mud that we sink into and slow right down. So I weave all over the road following the firmest line. All that muddy stuff is incredibly slick on the downhills, too, so we’ve got to keep the speed down on the corners lest we slide right out. 

It’s a nice ride though, climbing and descending through forest that hasn’t burnt too recently and has not had clear-cut coupes. As we climb to ridges and descend to creeks, we can see out and over the drainage we are climbing. It’d be a really nice ride on a sunny day. 

Our average speed is pretty slow given the softness of the road, but I really enjoy it nonetheless. By the time we get close to the forest edge, the rain has eased to occasional showers. There is a nice downhill to the Bullumwaal Road which appears more quickly than I anticipated. I haven’t been looking at the map or kms covered, so all of a sudden I just pop out at the end. 

I look at the bike. Covered in mud. That is going to be a big clean up job! My shirt and neck have mud flecks all over, too. My legs are all gritty, my shoes wet and gritty, too. When I look in the rearview mirror, I laugh. Yeah, Em, you are looking a bit rough!!!

We head on through the locality of Bullumwaal, a collection of homes in a nice,sheltered, cleared valley. There is a community hall with some public toilets should you need those. 

We’re still in the mountains even though we’ve hit civilisation, so there are lots of long climbs and descents to come as we ride up on valley walls and ride from one ridgeline to another. It’s a fair bit of work on that soft gravel.

Eventually the rain ceases and the sun tries to come out. It gets hot and humid, but the forecast headwind is a tailwind, and I am thankful for that. I’m doing all the climbing on two protein bars and the dregs of the peanut butter jar. I’ve been in a calorie deficit for 9 days, and that is starting to catch up with me. I do have a serving of oats and a serving of lentils left, which I had planned to cook up for breakfast before heading out this morning. But I didn’t do that because of the rain, so I ate my ride snacks before leaving. If we want food now, I’m going to need to stop and pull out the stove and cook up the lentils and oats. I do have about 2-3 meals’ worth of fuel left, however. 

So my energy levels are a bit saggy as we work our way over hill and dale and back into civilisation. We pick up more traffic as we head in, and we eventually get to pavement as well. 

As we ride, we go from the bigger properties carved out of the bush to the fancy gate homes on large acreage, to lifestyle properties on smaller acreage to lifestyle blocks on a couple acres.

Some of these developments are brand new which really irks me – these places are incredibly bushfire prone and we shouldn’t be building new homes here in what America calls the WUI (wildland-urban interface). If it was just these individuals’ choice, and they alone bore the consequences, it would be one thing, but you and I pay for this poor planning through our ever increasing insurance premiums. 

The traffic is ever increasing too as we pick up more and more vehicles heading to town. Bairnsdale is growing rapidly out this way. It is made worse by all of the moderately steep climbs out of creeks and when we dip down as we swap one ridge for another. None of the traffic is giving me any room either. I flip off the ones that are way too close, and I give the one vehicle that gives me plenty of room (a NSW-plated Troopy) a friendly wave. It all irritates me more than it normally would because I’ve been on traffic-free roads for 9 days and, at this point, I am HANGRY!

We roll on through the village of Wy-Yung which is now just a Bairnsdale suburb. We get a really big downhill after the pub here that shoots us down to the floodplain out of the hills. They are re-doing the intersection where the Eastwood/ Lucknow (another rapidly growing suburb) road joins in. It’s got turning lanes, lighting and guard rails, and will soon have a traffic light. 

I come bombing down that hill at 60 kph, and luckily, the car that is going to turn into the lane is good at judging oncoming vehicle speed, because he actually waits for me to go past. He even grins and gives me a finger wave as I go bombing past. I give him a thank you wave back. 

I see the bike path/footpath that will lead over the bridge and aim for that at 57kph. Woo-hoo!! I almost get air off the wheelchair ramp. Good stuff!!! 

It’s just a narrow bridge over the river, so I’m courteous to traffic and take the footpath instead of holding up the car traffic on the bridge. However, the pedestrian walkway is just wide enough for two people and there are a couple of people with dogs on there already. I’m sure we could squeeze past each other if I continued on, but I just wait. The couple thank me once they are finally across.

Then I just ride across the floodplain and up a short, kinda steep hill out of the floodplain and we are back in Bairnsdale. It’s about 3.30pm. Not too much is open since it’s a public holiday, but I eventually find a takeaway shop that is drawing everyone in. I get a burger and two extra beetroot slices (to act as the bun). 

I am very conscious that I am covered in 9 days of stink, a morning full of mud, and a day’s worth of fresh sweat since it is really hot and humid today.  So once I order, I go out and sit at a table on the footpath. When the young guy comes out to give me my burger, he sees my bike and says, “Wow, where have you come from!?” I tell him I’ve come from the Tabberabbera Rd this morning. He cannot fathom that you could do that on a bicycle (he rides trail bikes). He says, “Yeah, you must be really hungry for that burger.” I tell him, “yes, you have no idea.” (And he doesn’t, he doesn’t know about 9 days of rice and lentils)!

Burger consumed, I ride down to the caravan park. It is still really busy even though it’s the end of the long weekend. I go into the office, after I’ve taken my shoes off and wiped my sandy feet in the grass, and apologise for my stink and appearance. She says she doesn’t even notice (she’s lying I’m sure!). The stink can’t be too bad, though, because she questions me for about 5 minutes about where I’ve been and all the logistics involved. She is completely amazed about all of it. 

Then she says, “Oh my, but I’m keeping you from a shower and relaxing, go get to it!”  So I make my way over to the cabin, pull out all the wet gear and get it spread out to dry. I knock off the majority of the loose mud on the bike and put it up on the little verandah. I peel off my wet, dirty clothes just inside the door and then go for a very nice hot shower. Aaaaahhhh…..

The caravan park managers have turned the A/C on before my arrival, so it is nice and cool inside which feels so nice after the hot, sticky, mud-covered ride. These are new managers since I was here in 2023. I did not have a real great experience with the previous ones, so I was happy to see the change when I arrived. (I actually go back and chat more to the wife later when going to purchase some laundry powder from the office. These folks are really good, so hopefully they stick around.)

I then wander up to the supermarket to get a bunch of veg and protein to get some nutrients into me over the next two days. Sitting just outside the supermarket door on a small bench are four ag worker guys. They have a box of Magnum ice creams and they are all eating them quickly as they melt. I smile at them, give them a thumbs up and say, “It’s a perfect day for ice cream!”. They don’t seem to speak English, as they just smile back and nod. 

I get back to the cabin and can’t decide what to eat first!! After 9 days of very carefully portioned meals of oats, protein powder, peanut butter, multigrain corn thins, protein bars and rice and lentils… I don’t know what to do with myself!  I settle on popcorn first (it would be my ‘if you were on a desert island and could only have one food’ choice) and then a bowl of mixed berries. 

I go in to lay on the bed while I ring Nigel to check in. I sit on the bed and it swallows me. It is so, so soft and marshmallowy!  I tell Nigel about my morning mud bath and then tell him that if I don’t text by Wednesday and he alerts authorities and they can’t find me, tell them to check the depths of the bed in this cabin. 

And that is it. Lights out for the crew. That’s the longest we’ve ever gone between resupplies (I’ve done 8 days twice before). Now to refuel, restock and map out the next week!