24 May 2026 – 94 kms – Corowa to Tocumwal, NSW
Yorta Yorta/Bangerang Country
The clouds to the east coat the sky in a matted, thick grey. The bottoms and edges glow pink with the imminent sunrise. There is rain on the radar to the north that is slowly sinking this way. Red sky in morning, sailors (and cyclists) take warning. We are warned.
Despite my numerous concessions and attempts to keep Nigel happy, including sourcing and paying for dinner and taking it back to the motel and then going across the road later to get him a sundae from McDonald’s last night, he slept poorly and is super grumpy. I cannot leave that grouch fast enough this morning!! Thanks for the lift, though I’m not sure enduring all that Nigel wrath for 14 hours was worth the motel and food expense and saving a day’s riding!
I do get him to take a beginning-of-the-ride photo, and then I’m away as the sun rises.
I stick the guys up in the handlebar bag, as I think they should at least get a few moments up front at the very start of a tour before they get shoved in a pannier to stay dry.
It is quiet. I’m riding roads I’ve ridden before from the time I lived out this way.
There is no traffic. It is just the guys and I out there in a sea of agriculture, working our way west across a mix of dryland ag to start and irrigated cropland further on. There are just four waves to crest out in that agricultural sea, just a few small climbs on some Ordovician outcrops peeking up from all the thick basin sediments.
The road presents a smorgasbord of surfaces today, including every diametre of chipseal a quarry can produce and every combination of melted seal and chip spacing that time and funding can effect. We ride bits of road that are more patches than pavement and new bits that even have a centre line painted. A lot of the chipseal surfaces are a bit like a typical person’s sunscreen application – pretty smooth along the main line, a bit scarce about the edges.
The sky presents a buffet of grey cloud textures – scalloped, tufted, smeared, matted and clotted. Some of it looks knitted like a level of toilet paper ply I can’t afford to buy. We get rained on three times for short periods, but mostly the sky just hangs dingy grey and heavy, and we’re glad there’s not more moisture up there to succumb to gravity.
It is a silent, end-of-the-world sort of day where you think you might be the last person alive after the apocalypse, as there is no human movement in the landscape. We only see two cars until Yates Road spits us out on a main road just short of Tocumwal.
There aren’t many trees and not many birds, but whenever we pass stands of callitris in the road reserve, the ‘pew pew birds’ (I only know them as that, I don’t know their common or scientific name) sing out in alarm. They sound like the guns in Space Invaders – ‘pew, pew, pew’ – only I’m the invader instead of the aliens. Other than that, the only sound to accompany us is the crackle and fizz of the electricity lines when they parallel the road.
It is a change of pace when we hit the main road a bit before noon. There’s a bit of a shoulder and clusters of cars. Quiet, quiet, then car, car, car. It seems everyone is going to Tocumwal or Cobram/Barooga, in the other direction, for lunch. As soon as 12pm passes, the road quiets down.
The golf course on the edge of Tocumwal is busy with golf carts zooming over the grassed sand hills and small figures in the distance walking from tee to tee. The main street of Tocumwal is about a block and a half of single story buildings with a couple two-story pubs up the end. One of the pubs has got a fire going and the woodsmoke wafts down the street, puffing up from a chimney at one end of the 1800s building. It’s busy on this grey May day.
The IGA is well-stocked and I’m able to get tins of salmon and rice crackers at a very reasonable price. Then it’s over to the park to eat this for lunch.
The park lies behind the levee that runs along the Murray River. A bike path runs along the top of the levee. The park is busy. There is a MND ice bucket challenge and sausage sizzle going on. Everyone is all rugged up as it’s just 12 degrees. I’m still in shorts and fluoro t-shirt from the effort of pedalling. I whack on a jacket before the sweat turns to chill from the evaporative cooling.
I ring the caravan park over the river to see if they have potable water or I need to bring that with me. One of my friends has very kindly paid for a cabin for me tonight – insisting that I should not have to spend my first night on a trip wet and cold. It is a very generous gesture, even though we did not get all that wet today and we have time to get a tent set up somewhere along the river before the showers come later. But still, the luxury of not having to unpack everything and set up the tent, etc is very nice after doing nearly 100 kays on Day 1! Thank you!
The caravan park is large but mostly empty. It’s pretty much all annuals (where people pay a fee to leave their caravan and an annex there permanently and then come up to visit on weekends/holidays) and a few cabins. It is eerily quiet. I roll around to the office where the woman is waiting on me.
She is a bit perplexed by the bike but says nothing. Her face says it all – every touring cyclist knows that face. They just don’t get it. She’s friendly enough, and she gives me one of the cabins with a view of a little lake. It would be a good spot if you were going to be here for a few days.
The mozzies are about, so I quickly get the bike and gear inside. Ahhh, they’ve turned the heater on for me. The hot shower is very welcome. My butt will appreciate some softness tonight. The only thing that detracts from the evening is the feral child who screams and runs up and down the length of the next door cabin from about 5pm til midnight. If that was my child…..
The weather forecast remains poor. I think we’ll be able to avoid rain most of the day tomorrow. But the next week does not look promising. We’ll tackle it as it comes. Day 1 is done!
(And sorry for the triplicate maps below – wordpress changed the html embed function and I wasn’t sure I’d actually done it – and I don’t know how to delete the extras).