New Day Rising – Day 25

Livingstone Creek to Big River

Jaimathang Country

19 March 2025

You can see the cows’ breath as they exhale. You can see individual droplets of water on leaves formed from the heavy dew. You can feel the cold air creating goosebumps on your skin. It’s another 4C start to the day. There is no wind. There is just the cold, crisp air that has settled in the valley.

We round a corner with a hill rising sharply to our right. To our left, the open woodland with its short, angular trees feels a bit like something from one of the hobbit movies. In the shade of morning, it feels a little bit wild and a little bit creepy, as if the strands of moss and lichen on the tree branches might just reach out to grab you.

The woodland gives way to cleared pastures on private property. Swathes of fog lay against the hills and the heavy dew almost looks like frost on the grass. It even looks cold this morning. 

We roll on through the pastures, stopping to open and close several farm gates along the way. Eventually our nice, gradual downhill through trees and pasture starts to undulate as the valley widens out, and we’ve got to put some effort into the pedalling.

We meet with the Birregun Road – we joined this one further up at the junction with Groves Gap Road in 2023, so the section we see heading up the hill at a moderately steep grade is unknown to us. I have plans to head up that road from this direction and then head up the Dinner Plain Track that branches off at a high point. Some day. Not this trip. 

The road stays hilly as we are often high up on the hill side with the creek down in a cleft far below. As the valley further widens out, and the cleared areas become dominant, we resign ourselves to being in civilisation again. We even see two work utes on the road. 

Up and down we go until we get to the junction with the road that goes to Cassilis and Swifts Creek. This is a sealed road and we rode it back in 2017. I don’t remember the climb up into the hills on the opposite side of the creek being this steep in 2017. However, that time I would have been flying down the hill leading into the creek, so the momentum probably got me up the initial hill a bit. This time we are starting from a dead stop at the creek crossing. Nevertheless, we make our way up in the frosty morning air, climbing high above the creek again nd rolling up and down the rounded protrusions of the hills.

The people I see in vehicles that pass are all rugged up, some are even wearing beanies. I’ve been climbing enough that I’m down to shorts and a t-shirt! We do get a good final downhill back to the creek that gives us enough speed that we have to brake at the intersection with the Great Alpine Road. 

Since we’ve dropped back to the creek again, we have to climb out the other side and get back up on the hillside yet another time. But after this, we have a bit of a downhill into Omeo. 

It’s just on 7am. I stop at the first bakery. This one has been around forever and has all the traditional bakery stuff. I’m hoping for a sandwich that I can ‘deconstruct’, i.e. pull off the meat and veggies to eat with a fork or on corn thins. But none of the sandwiches look all that great, so I wander over to the drinks case and find some juice instead. The proprietor is a woman, likely in her late 50s, with straight, plain brown hair with fringe (i.e. bangs for the Americans) and a face that appears to rarely smile. She says, “Oh my, aren’t you cold!!”

I tell her that I’ve been putting in a lot of energy in climbing, but I’ll chuck on a jacket when I go back to the bike before I cool down. We chat for a few minutes about how it is nice to have some cool mornings after such a long summer. She says it’s been an odd one for them, and they have been way drier than normal. She is hoping that the heaps of rain forecast for tomorrow actually eventuates. The weather forecasters are full of promise but no real accuracy, she says.

I go back to the bike and pull on my rain jacket. I had thought about having a shower in the new public showers on my way through, but it is way too cold to want to get wet. So I go find a place to sit in the sun to figure out where we are going today.  

What I would really like to do is head down the Omeo Valley and then head up the Knocker Track. We’d camp for tonight in an informal clearing along a creek partway up that track. But I am hesitant about this because they are forecasting up to 50mm of rain in Albury. Up here it could easily be 70mm or more. I’m not wild about camping in an informal clearing next to a creek with that much rain. Formal camping areas will usually be high enough not to be impacted by flash flooding, but informal campsites may or may not flood. The other major factor is how muddy that road might get. I know there are many other tracks in that area that have a lot of clay… which becomes impassable after rain.

I ‘um’ and ‘ah’ over the forecast for a little bit. I even switch mindsets and read the news headlines and check my emails before coming back to the decision. The dealmaker comes as I’m sitting there. I can start to feel the wind stirring. It is forecast to be 25-30kph with 45kph gusts from the north today. 

Let’s just stick to the Omeo Highway. Yes, I’ve done it many times. Yes, it’s sealed. Yes, it won’t be nearly as fun as the Knocker Track. But it is still very scenic and I won’t mind being a bit less remote with high winds and a rainy deluge forecast for tomorrow. 

So I churn my way up the steep hill in town, stop at the tiny supermarket to get a couple fresh veggies for my rice and lentils and a small jar of peanut butter, and then pedal on out of town.

We climb and fall over the undulations along the creek, and then, finally, after 35 kms of crossing, re-crossing, following and climbing high above it, we leave Livingstone Creek behind. 

The road climbs to a saddle on easy 5% grades, pulling away from this drainage to drop us into the Bingo Munjie catchment. The road is a straight shot to start, angled up the hillside above the Omeo valley. It then squiggles a bit before making a hard left. You’ve then got the drop to the creek, and then a squiggly climb out before you hit that long section high above the Mitta River where the road just stays level and squiggly for 5 or 6 kms. 

The wind hits as I get to this section. It was just an occasional breeze. But, then, in the time it takes to flick a switch, the wind becomes strong and pushes the upper tree branches back and forth. Each time we squiggle out of a side drainage we hit the wind, then it pushes us as a crosswind until we squiggle into a side drainage where it eases off for a moment. We do this on repeat for a while.

We zoom down to Anglers Rest, where appropriately, we rest. I sit in the camping area (no one is here) and have a gut and protein break. They are still working on the bridge. They’ve redecked it, but I’m not sure what else is being done. 

We fight on into that wind for a while more. It is hefty and it feels a bit sloggy riding into it on chipseal on the mountain bike. The wind is coming right down the valley, so there is no escape. 

My plan is to just get somewhere up along this valley before the Big River camping area and then camp for the night. Then we’ll get up super early again and do the big climb out of this valley down to Lightning Creek or Granite Flat tomorrow. We’ll aim to get to one of those spots before the rain that is forecast to come around lunchtime. 

We see a decent spot near the turn-off for the Bogong High Plains Road, so pull in there. I’ve had enough of the wind, and, for as cool as the day started, it has heated up quite a bit with that northerly. I’m ready for shade and a wet shirt. 

So we spend the afternoon rehydrating, hanging in the shade and catching up the journal. The guys get a float and hang out by the river. I have a nice nap. I drink up the lack of responsibility and not needing to talk to anyone. I enjoy the freedom. The ride is coming to a close and I’ll be stuck behind a computer again soon enough. 

I analyse the clouds that blow by, noting how the clouds high aloft are moving very slowly, but the ones closer to the surface or moving along at high clip.

Then, as afternoon becomes evening, the pre-frontal clouds arrive. Yeah, we’re going to get rain within 24 hours. Just how much and when remains a question. The clouds, the wind and the temp all say to me that it is going to be earlier than lunchtime tomorrow. 

Given the ‘feel’ of things, and the way the clouds are moving, I set my alarm for 5am. We can ride the rest of this valley in the dark tomorrow. It is a very straightforward road, and it is sealed. That should set us up to do the 12 percent grades and climb to Christmas Creek Saddle fairly early in the morning. If we get caught by the rain, I would rather it be after we get past the high points of the road above 1000 metres and the squiggly bits of the downhill on the other side. 

I do not sleep well. I keep waking up to listen to the wind and peep out of the tent at the clouds and sky. Has the wind shifted? Have the clouds come in? Is the sky still clear? Is the rain about to come? The place I’m camped is pleasant enough but would not be real great for sitting out 50-70mm of rain. Can we get somewhere better before that arrives?