New Day Rising – Day 28

Eskdale to Albury

Jaimathang, Dhuduroa, Wiradjuri Country

22 March 2025

The difference between the air temperature and the dew point is quite close. The heat of yesterday has seeped away; the humidity remains. The water vapour has condensed into tiny water droplets suspended in the air. It’s supersaturation down here at ground level, as if the earth has exhaled all that moisture from the rain and it’s now just hanging in the air.  Maybe it’s a sign we’re finally moving from summer into fog season.

The sky is clear above me as I pack up. It is still very dark. My plan is to get going early and get past the Lockhart Gap turn-off before everyone is awake and wanting to drive into Albury-Wodonga for their Saturday shopping and errands. Most of the traffic will turn that way and then I won’t be cursing close-passing cars on the curves and climbs. The early start will also allow me to escape another conversation with Queensland Man.  

I’m rolling away just after first light. To the east, there is light sky and all of that water vapour pushed up against the hills in long banks of fog. It is cool and damp but I build up internal heat quickly as the road climbs and falls along the western valley wall.

Not too far down the road, I run into patches of fog that become thicker as we go, until the scenery disappears and we are surrounded by cloud. It’s not so thick to be dangerous, but if you’d never been down the valley before, you’d be disappointed not to see much but close views of paddock edges and the road rolling out before you 100 metres at a time.

I’ve ridden this bit of the Omeo Highway once before. The Yabba Road runs on the opposite side of the valley, and I’ve ridden it at least five times. It has considerably more climbing than the highway. I thought I might ride the highway again, though, since I’ve only done it once.

A couple cars pass me before the gap turn-off, then it is blissfully quiet as we ride through the cloud. The road is pretty flat, only climbing and curving through a couple of cuttings. 

The pavement is a bit damp. The cloud condenses on my helmet and drips off my visor. The guys are hanging in the pannier so they don’t get too wet. 

We are blasting it down the road today. I had plenty of food for dinner yesterday, so I’ve got plenty of energy today. I am keeping the average speed over 20kph which is quite quick for big-arse knobby tyres. 

We whip through the fog. I’ll only have another two cars pass me in the 30 kilometres, so it’s just me out there in the cloud moving down the valley.

A couple times, a ray of sunshine eeks through but then the sky goes dark again. Finally, as we get lower in the valley, the fog slowly starts to lift. A mountain peeks through, its ridgetop visible, its base still covered. Then it all disappears again until we can see blue sky above us but cloud all around.

Finally, it edges away and we get good views across the valley floor and up into the hills above the road. Life begins to return to the landscape. 

We are still booking it down the road, putting so much power through the pedals. Zoom. We climb a squiggly bit through the trees before passing the Pigs Point camping area which is quite packed out. I hold my breath as we pass through all of the campfire smoke hanging in the air.

Not far beyond this and we are climbing the last hill up to the Murray Valley Highway. The secret here, if you want to go to Tallangatta, is to turn west. Just beyond the turning lane for the eastbound traffic, you want to dart across the road. Once in the shoulder, you will see a rough vehicle track heading down to the rail trail. If you turn right onto the highway and catch the rail trail just before the long bridge over the Mitta River, you’ll have to just climb back up the hill on the rail trail.

We power down the rail trail, too. I don’t know how many dozens of times I’ve ridden it, so I don’t pause for photos or views. The dam is low enough that there is no water backed up this far, so it’s just dead, drowned trees and flat paddocks today.

We get to Tallangatta at 9am. I had thought this might be as far as we made it today. 45kms sounds like a lot when you’ve been struggling for every kay on the steep gravel. But give me some flat ground and a good meal and away we go! We will be able to make it all the way home today, no worries.

The wind is doing its normal thing in Tallangatta. There’s always a pretty good breeze blowing down valley in the mornings here. So we’re not going to laze around town very long before using that push until it does its normal swap to the west or northwest. The goal is always to get back to Wodonga, and the shelter of buildings, etc in town, before the wind swap. 

So I go to the bakery to get a chicken and salad roll. The bakery here does good stuff for decent prices. The takeaway shop here is fine, too. I’m not too sure about anything else. Tallangatta has always been a bit of a try-hard town. There was once a couple that had a nice coffee shop with good donuts. But the redneck nature of the town drove them away. And that says it all for me.

I pull the sandwich apart and eat it on the last of my corn thins. Then we’re heading out of town on newly chipsealed trail that is just as rough as it was before. They didn’t bother to fill in the holes or cracks – they just spread more chip on top.

So we bump along – encountering a few people out for their morning walks. I yell ‘on your left’, roll over into the gravel and zoom by the disrespectful people that walk two abreast down the middle of the trail. A bit further along, I lead some lady’s dogs on a long run. She has them off-leash and they decide to come for a run with me. The last I heard of her in the distance, she was yelling at them to come back. They paid no attention to her and kept right up with me at 20kph for at least 750 metres. It will take her awhile to catch up to them. Maybe she’ll keep them on-lead next time.

Once we get a bit out of town, there’s very few people on the trail. I’m heartened to see that about 70 percent of the people today are putting in the good effort on real bicycles instead of e-bikes. I don’t count oldies in that percentage – just the folks under 65.

As I roll into Huon, I see a person on a loaded touring bike heading away in the direction I’m riding. I stop for a toilet break, but it doesn’t take too long to catch the woman on the hill ahead. I’m just hammering it down today. When you are riding something you’ve ridden a million times, it becomes more about the bike and the ride than the scenery. 

I slow down to ride with the woman. She’s probably in her 30s and has ridden out from Wodonga to Tallangatta for the night. She’s from Wodonga. She’s on a drop bar touring bike with brand new-looking Ortlieb panniers and a bag across the rear rack on top of the panniers. She asks where I’ve come from and I say I’ve just spent a month up in the mountains and am heading home now. She asks where, and I just say, ‘oh, just logging roads and 4WD tracks – that’s why I’m on the beast of a bike’. 

She says, “Yes, that looks more than capable.”  

I wish her well and am glad to see a solo female touring newbie. I hope she loves it, gets addicted and continues with it. I zoom off and keep hammering it down.  Down past Ludlows Reserve which is packed out with caravans, down past Ebden Reserve where the water is way out to the ‘island’, down under the highway bridge, up the gentle hill to Mahers Road and then on past the old Bonegilla Station Site where some lady is handing out religious pamphlets and has cornered some guys on ebikes. Haha! That’s at the top of the hill where people stop to rest – she’s got a captive uphill audience.

Then we zoom on down that hill to the flood plain, up and down the old embankments and narrow pedestrian bridges. Down over the river and through the gravelly, muddy section to Whytes Road. Back onto sealed trail where the tyres hum loudly and I keep hammering it down. 

I dart across Victoria Cross Parade – good god, they still desperately need to put in a pedestrian crossing there! There is so much traffic and not only do you have the drivers coming off the roundabout nearby, but you’ve got all the people peeling out of the shopping centre, too. There’s a centre island, but it needs a zebra crossing with flashing lights or a stoplight.

Zoom. Zoom. All the way through Wodonga. It’s now about 11.30am. We’ve been keeping the average speed at 20kph which is as good as I’d manage on the touring bike. I decide we should drop down into Belvoir Park and get a cold drink from the coffee van and then have lunch a bit further along. 

So I head down and am totally enveloped by humanity. There’s people everywhere! I weave through the mass of humanity on the bike path – kids sitting on the ground next to their scooters, people with dogs on leads too long, a bunch of old guys sitting right next to the path in chairs as they captain remote controlled sailboats on the little lake. There’s whole families, women with wide-ass prams…. It is crazy.  Some old lady on a bike somewhere behind me is furiously ringing her little bell as a warning. There’s some constant dinging going on back there.

And I do all of that… for nothing. The coffee van is not here today!! I could have ridden the road around the park and not nearly drowned in people, but oh no, the draw of a cold drink…. which came to naught.

So forget lunch in the park, let’s just get home. Let’s hammer it down and have lunch when we get home. We’re about 10kms away.

As I’m riding the long, straight bike path along the Causeway (the old 4-lane divided highway over the floodplain between Albury and Wodonga), I come across a huge group of men walking in some sort of event. They’re dressed in all black. I at first think it’s the neo-nazis. They look at me steely-faced and don’t want to give me my half of the bike path. I just keep riding and looking back at them steely-faced. I don’t cede any of my half of the path and buzz by those macho-looking men. I am not afraid, you piss-weak f&*kers. A few of the stragglers about 600 metres back do smile or nod or give a wave, but the big glug of them were definitely not friendly. That was weirdo.

(Later, I see that they were doing a charity walk for men’s mental health. Well… they did seem a bit grumpy, but it still seemed very odd.

Then, about a month later I discover that the group is associated with some misogynistic, toxic masculinity group that hates women.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-19/better-bloke-project-blokes-advice-mental-health-toxic/104975574 

If only I’d known, I would have yelled out “Julia Gillard is the BOSS!” as I rode by. She was Oz’s first female Prime Minister and her famous misogyny speech is below.)

Then I’m just weaving through the back streets, back to a bike path over the freeway and up the final hill home. We’ll average 20.8kph today – I’m happy with that.

It’s hot today. Welcome home. And, by the way, some bright spark left all the water bottles in the freezer back in February, so there is no cold drink ready for consumption at home either. It does go with the many frustrations on this ride. Let’s just keep that theme right up to the very end!