New Day Rising – Day 19

Bairnsdale to Mitchell River National Park

Gunaikurnai Country

13 March 2025

There is a certain thrill riding through traffic in an unknown town at peak hour. You’ve got to read the traffic and the road and navigate all at once. It is even more fun without a GPS, because you’ve got to be looking for street signs or businesses as you go, or glancing down at a map, or referring to the mental map in your head (this is what I’m doing after looking at google maps before setting out). 

Sometimes you’ve got to jump up a kerb, ride the edge of a roundabout and dart across exiting traffic, or figure out your own exit strategy when a bike path suddenly ends. I enjoy thinking quickly and riding at the same time.

We’re heading west out of Bairnsdale at 7.45am this morning. We can weave along some back roads to start, but then we need to get right out on the A1 to get ourselves to Bunnings. That big box store is the equivalent to a Home Depot in America. I’m heading there to buy a $2 painter’s plastic drop cloth as extra tent protection for some heavy rain a few days out in the forecast.

I roll up to the A1 intersection, and it’s immediately apparent that I need to dart across the traffic turning into the road I am currently on. I need to get over to a footpath, so I can cross the A1 adjacent to the intersection and bypass all of the backed-up traffic trying to turn onto the highway. The highway is a four-lane divided highway with a wide median with trees and grass in it.

I flick down into a gear that will give me some power to the pedals to scoot quickly. I roll up onto the footpath, and then hover there for a few moments, balancing the bike with the front wheel at an angle. I see a gap in the traffic and slam down on the right pedal as I straighten out the bars. We explosively zoom across and into the median. This is where the bike path (which looks very new) is located. 

It makes sense. If you put it on the side of the road, then a cyclist has to negotiate the entries to a billion businesses. In the middle of the centre median means a cyclist only has to cross a few of the “taxi-ways” – where cars are using a crossover in the median to turn back the other direction. 

So we follow along the bikepath and do head checks to see what the cars are doing on the main road when we are about to cross a cross-over.  Are there cars about to turn into the crossover?  Is there going to be a gap in traffic on the A1, and that backed-up line will move forward as a car turns onto the highway? I weave through narrow gaps between car front and rear bumpers in backed-up traffic on the crossovers and get myself and the crew to Bunnings unscathed. 

The nice thing about the Bunnings website is that you can nominate a store, search for an item, and it will give you all of your product options, what’s in stock, and crucially, which aisle and bay where the item is located. I’m in and out of there in five minutes since I know where I need to head in that massive store.

We cross back over to the median and ride the bike path to its end. We then have to cross back over the lanes of traffic to ride a service road which eventually spits us back out onto the A1.  

I’m trying to get to Lindenow without being flattened. The C-road to Lindenow has lots of ag worker traffic and trucks taking away the loads of produce grown on the floodplain there. I rode that in 2017 and it was no fun at all. 

So last year I rode south from Bairnsdale on what I thought would be a sealed back road heading toward Paynesville, before turning west on gravel roads. But no, that was not a back road. It had heaps of traffic and trucks and no shoulder. So nope, not doing that again either.

That leaves me with the main highway, the A1. But the A1 is just fine. It has a 1 to 1.5 metre shoulder the whole way down to our turn-off at Buchanans Road. 

The clouds hang low today and it is not an overly inspiring landscape out this way. So we just zig and zag down those farm roads, working our way north and west.

One the tiniest gravel lane, a farmer ute slows down behind me. I get over to the edge and he stops beside me. “Are you lost?” He’s an older bloke with a toothy grin and a dusty and worn baseball cap.

I say, “No, I’m just working my way over to Lindenow and staying off the main road.”

He replies, “Yes, that wouldn’t be safe on a bicycle. Do you know which roads you are wanting to take?”

I look down at my map and try to make out the names without my reading glasses. I wasn’t too concerned about the names, as I’m just kinda matching the map to the landscape and working my way toward the phone tower in the distance.

He confirms my path will be fine and tells me to be careful with the fires. The storms last night had ignited several and he’s seen the helicopter out this morning. I tell him I checked the VIC Emergency app this morning and everything looked okay for the direction I’m heading over the next few days.

He’s very happy I’ve looked at the app and remarks that I look like I’m experienced. I tell him that I did three months in the High Country in 2023 with the same set up and have done at least 50,000 kms of touring before.

He replies, “Well, you definitely know what you are doing then. It’s good to see women doing things like you’re doing. It sets a good example for the younger ones.”

I ask him about Iguana Creek Road and he says it is in good condition at the moment and I should have no troubles with it. Then he wishes me well and heads on.

We ride on through Lindenow, which is just a couple blocks of homes, a general store, an oval and rec area, and a few trucking companies. We head down across the floodplain, noting all the leafy crops in every stage of growth. The soil looks black and rich. 

Then we head along the Glenlaladale Road. It runs on the northern edge of the floodplain up against the prongs of hills that trickle down from the main mass of mountains to the north. The road curves around some of those prongs and goes over the gentler ones. We can see little fluoro dots spaced out in distant fields – ag workers tending the crops.

We stop at the beginning of Iguana Creek Road at a pull-out with eight mailboxes. I eat two protein bars. In that time, I see four cars coming down the road. That’s half the households! 

There is a curvy and steep climb out of the floodplain – steep enough to be sealed. It’s rideable, though, and we just spin our way up. As the grade backs off, the road goes to gravel and we get good views over the Mitchell River National Park to the hills we were riding in last week. Off the other side of the road we can look back down into the Mitchell River floodplain and the hills on the other side.

We continue climbing for awhile between tall trees that line the road. Eventually, the road appears to disappear down a steep hill. Ah, this must be the ‘big dipper’ that the info centre’s husband described. 

We fly down into a deeply incised creek through a bit of an ‘S-turn’ and then find ourselves cranking up a similarly steep exit back to the hilltops. Grunt. Grunt. 

We weave along the tops of the hills for a bit and then… wait… what is the road doing? He said there was just one big dipper. But you know what is near the Big Dipper, right? Yes, the Little Dipper.

So we go flying down a straight drop past two farmhouses below the road to a causeway. There is no water in the creek and we just hang on as we fly across the concrete back to the gravel. The climb out of this is steep and straight, too. I’m not sure which dipper was bigger, but Iguana Creek Road has two ‘dippers’, not one.

We ride on to the national park, weaving along, finding the best line along a very corrugated road. There is no one in the picnic area, so I leave my bike to go do the short circuit hike while no one is around. 

Since it’s my birthday, I thought I would like to go visit the Den of Nargun again. It’s a sacred women’s site for the Gunaikurnai. The park also has dry rainforest and some of the most southern examples of warm temperate rainforest in the gullies. 

After the hike, I roll on down to the Echo Bend Camping Park. There are a couple people living there permanently, but no one else is around. It’s tucked right down in the hills and there are plenty of places to pitch a tent. When I called to book, they just said to set up wherever and they’d come to collect the money in the evening. I stayed here in 2017 and it’s really pleasant. There’s rainwater available for filling water bottles. 

The guys and I hang out in the quiet. Later on, a couple in a caravan arrives and spend forever deciding where to set up. Their yappy dogs go nuts while the couple make decisions on what is the flattest spot. 

I just laugh and think about how I can set up the tent just about anywhere. It is nice to be self-contained with just four bags, too. It means you never lose anything and it never takes long to stop, set up the tent and get organised for cooking dinner. When you only have two shirts, one cooking pot, one spoon, etc. life is simple, and it actually takes some effort to be disorganised with so little gear. The caravan couple appear to have a whole lot of crap required for an overnight stay, and they rummage around in various compartments for ages, arguing about where things might be. Oh man, I’m so happy to be solo and self-contained!

The sun finally tries to come out late in the evening, but another round of clouds from the south overtakes any open spaces of sky, and the day ends as dull as it began. 

The outake photo – Verne has taken a tumble just as I’ve taken the photo. He says the Nargun pushed him over.