Lightning Creek to Eskdale
Jaimathang Country
21 March 2025
The waves of hard rain finished in the early hours of the morning when today was just getting its groove, long before any humans were stirring… well, any humans, except the people who can’t make it through the night and must get up to pee at 2.30am.
The rain then continued steady and constant, like so many of the climbs on this trip, until about 5am. Then it backed off to showers – 30 minutes of rain, 10 minutes of pitter patter. It’s now 9.30am.
I peek my head out of the tent. It’s still grey out there, but with lighter grey to the east and darker grey to the west. I’m not confident yet that the rain has ceased. It’s been about 24 hours now since it first started, with 18 hours of that being steady and sometimes hard rain.
Given how high the creek is running and how soggy it is underfoot, I’m really glad I didn’t do the Knocker Track. Plus, depending on which side of the creek that clearing was located, I might have gotten stuck on the wrong side with the water too high to cross. So I guess the easier riding option was redeemed in this case.
It reminds me of camping at Jacobs River in 2012 and the torrential rain from an ex-cyclone that set rainfall records and closed the Alpine Way for a day. We ended up needing 4WD to get up the Barry Way (which ended up being closed for 6-9 months afterwards) and had to cross water that was knee deep over the causeways on the way back to Jindabyne.
Everything now seems damp and smelly. I feel as though I am damp and smelly AND dirty. I am a bit gross at this point – the gear and I definitely need a wash. I’m on day 6 without a proper shower. Much sweating has happened in that time! The bike, on the other hand…. well, it just got a very, very long shower. All it will need is a cloth on the chain to get rid of the grit and then a bit of lube.
The rain has run under the tent, and along with the condensation between the ground sheet, tent floor and me, the tent floor has gotten wet where anything has been sitting and putting pressure on it. The tent has leaked in a few places, but not on me. The only totally safe, dry place is on top of the sleeping pad. It will be nice when we can get everything dried out!
(Falls Creek got 70mm of rain – that’s about 2.75 inches; Mitta got 50mm and we were between those locations so would have got somewhere in between those amounts.)
The rain stops for a bit around 10am. There are tiny clear patches among the drifting low cloud. I have no idea if there is more rain to come, but at least I can pack up the tent while the clouds aren’t dripping.
The creek is running very high. I had dreams last night about it flooding and having to climb up steep slopes where I kept slipping back down. The little creek was really roaring last night. I went through a flash flood in 1997, and that night I saw how quickly the water can rise and how the water will come up in places you never ever thought water would go. So my sub-conscious last night must have been making some connections between the past and present. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing for someone about to start a Disaster Resilience Project Manager role to be swept away in a flood!?
We roll away around 10.30am. Sun glints off the wet pavement before thick puffy clouds move across and block the light. We follow the creek downstream and watch it pouring over small cascades down below the road. Some motorcycle blokes going the other way both give me big waves and nods. I bet they were somewhere dry last night!
I have continued to see signs boasting about the Omeo Highway Upgrades – millions in funding for safety upgrades on this road. The upgrades were done in 2021. However, none of the road seems to have been resurfaced, and that descent from Christmas Creek Saddle really needs a lot of help.
But then I figure it out. They’ve put in a few more of the guardrails with metal at the bottom (so motorcyclists sliding along the ground after falling don’t get clotheslined by a normal guardrail). But there have been soooooo many more advisory signs. There are a whole bunch in every corner of the road, and this road is almost all corners. I think they spent $6 million in signs!
We ride on through the private land and back into curvy bits again when we meet back up with Snowy Creek. A huge RV towing a car, which would be more at home in the US than here, squeezes me with inches to spare, and speeds up to do so! After he passes, I ride out in the lane so I can see him in his rearview mirror and give him the finger. Argh.
And then I get rained on. Not just a little. Totally soaked. I’ve seen wet patches on the drying road where the individual clouds have dumped rain, but this one gets me. It is sunny but absolutely bucketing down.
It is ok. My gear is all damp anyway. The crucial stuff is in waterproof panniers. My clothing and myself could do with a good shower. AND it’s pretty warm and humid, so it actually feels pretty nice.
We roll into Mitta literally dripping wet. I roll down to the public toilets where there is a whole lot of discussion and power tool action happening on the men’s side. Luckily, there are no issues in the women’s and I can peel off my wet shorts and change into my dry ones. I ring out my shirt and put it back on.
And then I go over to the general store to see what’s on offer. There is a group of motorcycle guys taking up a bunch of tables near the fuel bowser. They are dry. I’m looking particularly scruffy. They don’t even really glance over – but they are on bullet bikes and racing bikes. They don’t ‘get’ it like the guys on the enduro bikes with panniers do.
The general store has some gorgeous looking desserts – some elaborate slices and parfaits. They make their own meat pies and sausage rolls here, too, which are reportedly excellent. There are also toasties and fish and chips and similar. But I just get a chicken and salad roll to deconstruct.
The owner is friendly and asks where I’m heading. I tell him probably just to Eskdale. I’m not particularly fond of Tallangatta which is the next town 45 or so kms further on. He raises his eyebrows and says, “Yeah, Tallangatta is just one of those towns…” He doesn’t elaborate, but I can tell it’s not where he directs tourists to go.
I walk back over to the rotunda. It’s going to rain again. I sit there and check the radar. Yeah, it’s full of yellow and orange speckles – heavy rain from clusters of clouds separated by clear skies.
A woman and her partner are walking around and she dictates that they must sit at a picnic table by the river. The partner says, “It looks like it’s going to rain.” She does not acknowledge his observation.
It starts to rain. Hard. They start back to their car. I tell them it is fine to sit at the huge picnic table I’m sitting at in the rotunda. Unlike the bogans from Day 1, I’m happy to share a rotunda.
They sit down. The lady starts to eat her pie, pronouncing that if it has any gristle in it, she’s taking it back to the store and demanding a refund. The store owner promised her it wouldn’t be grisly and that they handmake them. She wasn’t convinced. She’s had a lot of handmade grisly pies, apparently. She doesn’t put up with that sort of thing. (The pie is fine it turns out).
The real question is how her partner, who seems like a nice, environmentally-minded and educated bloke, puts up with her. She talks non-stop and everything that comes out of her mouth is negative. She’s angry at this and that and everything.
She tries to look up something on her phone. She has no service. So she launches into a tirade about Vodaphone. That immediately says she is from the city. Country people do not use Vodaphone because it has very little coverage in the bush.
Thankfully, they leave after eating. I feel bad for that poor guy… but not too bad. I’ve known a lot of people who have stayed in bad relationships because they are comfortable with the known and don’t like to be alone. And so that is your fault if you are miserable and don’t leave. Hopefully, the poor guy gets hard of hearing as he ages and requires hearing aids… which he can just turn off when the lady cannot.
Once most of the speckles of rain on the radar look to have moved on, I take off toward Eskdale. The North Mitta Road is flat and heads across the floodplain. The main highway heads up and through cuttings on the valley hillside. So I take the easy and less trafficked way where I only have to fight the wind.
The caravan park in Eskdale hasn’t changed in 50 years, and that is why I like the place. It’s just a bunch of annuals (permanent sites with ancient caravans with annexes that people come to stay in on holidays), some overnight spots, a basic but clean amenities block and a big camp kitchen. No playgrounds, pools, jumping pillows or fancy shit.
There is no one in the office, so I ring the number on the door. The woman says she’ll be right up.
As she walks down the road toward me, she says, “Is that it? It’s just you and a swag?”
I say, “Yes, though it’s a tent rather than a swag. But same sort of dimensions. Just narrower but a bit taller and a heck of a lot lighter.”
She laughs and asks where I’ve come from. I give her the basics. She says they got about 55 mm of rain – and that it must have been a long night for me in the tent. I tell her the worst is always waiting for a break in the rain to get out to go pee… and then there not being any breaks in the rain.
She charges me just $10 and says I can set up anywhere. She doesn’t have anyone booked in for the night, so she doesn’t care where I go, or if I’m even in a site.
I ask if it was busy over the Labour Day weekend, and she says they had some people in, but they weren’t booked out. She is dreading Easter though. They are booked out and then some. It will be nuts. We then discuss how Aussies all go camping at Easter, as if it is some country-specific ritual that you are born into and don’t question. She is originally from England but has been here forever like me. We don’t get it!
She and her husband have been managing this park for three years. They are doing their big lap around Oz in their caravan and keep getting stuck places. Her husband wants to sign on for another year; she wants to move on when this contract is up. We discuss how you just have to go out and do stuff, because you never know when you won’t be able to. Waiting until your late 60s and 70s to do stuff is too late, because you can’t do the really challenging and fun stuff anymore.
I then go and get all my gear set out to dry and then take a shower. Ahhhh…. it’s pretty hilarious to see the colour of the water gathering at my feet. They’ve put in very fluffy bathmats for people to use. I don’t use one of those, but I do grab one of the soaps they have in a little basket.
I go over to the tiny IGA and get a couple veggies for my rice and lentils and a Caramello bar. It’s not really on my eating list, but I only have one or two a year. And I have not had any birthday treats. So Happy Caramello Bar to me!
Later on, a couple rolls in with a big caravan. They spend forever trying to figure out where to set up. I’ve put my tent up in a corner spot that is shady. They had to chop down two deciduous trees earlier this year, and I’ve set my tent up so that my head is on the high end of a bit of a slope. I’m essentially camping on wood chips from the leftover tree.
The couple then choose the site right next to mine. Their door faces mine. I’m sitting up on a little hill watching all of this while I chat to Nigel (for the first time since Bairnsdale). They have a white, fluffy, yappy dog and QLD rego plates. Once they get their awning set out, they pull out a table and some chairs and settle down with a glass of wine. Sheesh – please just shoot me if I ever turn into that!
I grab all of my cooking gear and head over to the camp kitchen to fix up dinner. I’m getting low on supplies, but there is just enough rice and lentils for tonight. Yum – I don’t get tired of it, and it always tastes good after riding. Having fresh veg to include is always a bonus.
When I return to my tent, the guy from the caravan comes over to talk. He mountain bikes, so he is interested in my bike. He thinks he’d like to try bikepacking (based on that caravan set-up, in my head, I question how much deprivation he could endure). He goes on about the advantages of 1X vs 2X set-ups and all of the riding opportunities in QLD. He has helped build a bunch of the mountain bike tracks where he lives on the Sunshine Coast.
When I tell him I not so interested in riding in coastal areas and ask about what it’s like to ride out towards Charleville and Roma and Winton and Longreach, he looks at me like I’ve dropped down off a UFO. Like why would anyone ever want to ride out there? He says he doesn’t really know as he doesn’t think there are any rail trails out there. As if you’d only ride somewhere with a rail trail?
He asks what I do for a living. I tell him I do project management for the government on short-term contacts. He asks what sort of projects. I tell him the most recent ones have been related to disaster risk reduction. He is interested because he has worked as a firefighter in QLD and responded to lots of fires.
But then, when I say that, ‘in this project, we’re trying to make critical infrastructure more resilient to withstand climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters’, he goes all climate change-denier on me. He describes how there have been bigger floods in the past and that there have been larger fires.
OMG, can no one read a graph anymore!!!?? All of the graphs showing warming, the hottest years on record, the number of declared disasters each year, the rainfall rates and insurance payouts are unequivocable. It’s getting hotter, we are setting all sorts of weather-related records all over the world every year, severe events are more frequent and causing worse damage, etc, etc. How can someone who’s worked in emergency services be a climate change denier!!? How exasperating. I know, I know… he’s from QLD. I get it. The conversation sorta dies after that and he heads off to have a shower.
I crawl in the tent to grab the weather forecast and figure out my plan of attack for returning to Albury. The caravan people’s friends arrive (they live in town after moving here from QLD during Covid, and they are all going out to dinner at the pub). The friends make some remark about the way my tent is facing and not giving the caravan people any privacy. Sheesh! I was here first, and they had their pick of at least eight other sites! I am limited in the direction I can put the tent based on the ground’s conditions!
I hear them once they get back from the pub talking about how cold it is (it only gets down to 11C tonight which is not cold – they should have been here on those 4C nights!), but I don’t fully wake. I hope I snored all night and kept them awake.
My only consolation to that conversation with that know-it-all, rich, climate denying Boomer is that QLD gets hit with two record-breaking floods in the weeks after our chat. Sometimes I grieve for a world populated with scientifically illiterate people. I feel sad for my friends’ kids and the chaos to come.