6 June 2026 – 92 kms – Mittyack to Lake Hattah
Wadi Wadi, Nyeri Nyeri, Wergaia, Latji Latji, Jari Jari Country
There is a point in every tour that the rhythm of the road becomes established. You wake up one day and realise that you don’t have to go home soon and that this is more than just a short holiday taken from your annual leave. Your sleep, eat, ride routine has defined itself and your butt no longer hurts.
The rhythm of every tour is different. There are mediating and moderating factors in the equation that reflect season, climate, weather, budget, health, age and interests, among others.
The rhythm of this tour becomes: early starts, packing up a wet tent, headwinds, dodging rain, waiting on rain and figuring out what roads are open and/or dry enough to ride. It’s long kays, ‘zero’ days and short sunlight hours.
This tour rhythm becomes apparent about now – as we pack up the saturated tent once again and ponder whether the thick fog is descending or lifting. It is often clear just before dawn and as the sun rises, but then the fog rolls in (I’ve noticed this at home, too, on early morning walks to the gym).
I decide the fog is probably lifting and visibility makes it safe enough to ride. I pack everything up, carry it back to the road in three trips and reload the bike. And then we’re off.
The highway shoulder is much less generous on our way to Ouyen, but there is always a place to be and it doesn’t feel unsafe. To have a shoulder at all in Oz is never a given, even on major roads.
I also get tons of recognition honks and waves this morning. It’s the highest concentration of this that I’ve ever experienced. Right on, that is a nice start to the day.
The ride is more rolling hills on red sandy soils underneath a cold, leaden sky. The fog lifts to grey, enveloping cloud. The highway rises and falls and occasionally curves around or up and over a particularly big dune. The dunes continue to clump together in places or thin and space out more gently in others.
The only thing of real interest this morning that gives me a giggle is the vegetation that is encroaching on the shoulder. Someone has come through and spray-painted onto the shoulder the word ‘veg’ in white paint with an arrow pointing to whatever is growing over/onto/into the shoulder and needs to be trimmed. Couldn’t someone have just given that person a pair of loppers instead of a can of spray paint and been done with it?
It is so cold and grey when we roll into Ouyen that I put on another layer as soon as we roll up to the busy public toilet block on the edge of town. It’s 6C with a feels like temp of 2.2C. Brrrrrr…. come on sun, break through that cloud and warm us all up!
This part of the state was not settled until the early 1900s, so Ouyen feels sorta ‘new’. You pass a motel and defunct caravan park on the way into town from the south. Then you either continue along the highway or turn left and over the rail line to reach the ‘main street’. On the western side of the rail line, the town rises away from the tracks on a large sand hill. You pass one of those small, ancient War Memorial pools and turn right to the main street. The main street is about 3 blocks long and is mostly single-story buildings from the early 20th century. Down near the tracks is a pub.
It is about 10am on a Saturday morning of a long weekend (it’s Kings Birthday long weekend – official start of the ski season). It is very busy in town with the local farmers coming in and a bunch of tourists. Everyone is rugged up against that cold and making comments on it.
The town is very neat and tidy. And very, very white. It feels very Mayberry which I find very unsettling. Too many white people dressed nicely (either in neat farm gear or city fashion) and greeting each other with hugs outside the bakery is just not my scene. My parents would love it though! They love that small town, Norman Rockwell, 1950s vibe.
The IGA supermarket is up the northern end in a building that looks nothing like a supermarket. I think it has a more bowling alley or roller skating rink vibe as it has big, rounded roof and no windows. But it’s well-stocked and the fruit and veg are not withered. Those are my priorities, of course. When I return from inside, my bike is surrounded by mobility scooters. I regret not taking a photo of this!
The sun starts to break through as we ride north on the Calder Highway. The shoulder is still pretty stingy for an ‘A-road’ (federal interstate highway), but everyone seems to be in holiday mode and is giving me plenty of room. There are few trucks today.
And so we ride up and down the long hills with mallee scrub lining the road and broadacre crops beyond. We, of course, have another headwind today out of the northwest, but it is only 15-20 kph instead of the 25kph and higher of yesterday, so I have no complaints. I just put my head down and pedal. Up and down. On and on. More waves and happy honks.
We get to Hattah. There is nothing to Hattah but a roadhouse. You can camp for free out the back and they do have some basic showers and toilets. There are a bunch of ag workers camped out the back right now.
The roadhouse is busy. There are trucks and road trains and caravans and people towing boats. There are 4WDs with massive amounts of camping gear on the roof and in the back ‘boot’. There’s sedans and utes and one touring bicycle (i.e. me). I get peppered with questions from multiple people as I stand there and fill water bladders with the three litres I bought in the store.
The national park is about 6 kms from Hattah. The visitor centre is about 4 kms from the road. You climb and curve through mallee bush to get there.
Hattah-Kulkyne National Park lies adjacent to the Murray River and preserves several ecosystem types. The lakes system is fed by a creek system that overflows from the river in times of high flow (before river regulation disrupted this). It is a RAMSAR site and one of the Living Murray icon sites – which means they’ve done a bunch of infrastructure work so they can deliver environmental water (water purchased by the gov to restore environmental function). The lakes naturally have wet and dry periods.
There are several vegetation types/ecosystems to see here. There are river red gum forests along the rivers, creeks and the edges of the lakes. Floodwater replenishes the creeks, billabongs and wetlands as rainfall in the area is low (it’s considered semi-arid here). There are black box woodlands on a bit higher ground where flooding isn’t as frequent. Cypress pine and buloke forests are found on the rolling sand plains (though there is very little of this ecosystem left and a lot of what remains is in poor condition). The mallee eucalypts occuypy the higher, dry and less fertile sand ridges. It is also one of the most biologically diverse national parks in the state with over 200 bird species found here.
The visitor info centre is a nice, mud brick-looking 1980s building. There is a lot of info inside. The building is unlocked even though there are no park rangers there.
There is a campground not far away, and even though it’s a long weekend, there is only one big caravan there on a site close to the lake. I snatch up the other really nice spot – up the end under some black box trees near two covered picnic tables. I spread everything out to dry and put the sleeping bag on a table under cover. After the sunny period earlier, the clouds have returned and there are random showers apparent on the radar (mostly to the south of here – sorry, Ouyen).
I then go do the Lakes Discovery Drive. Unfortunately, there was no QR code or hard copy pamphlets in the visitor centre that explain what all the numbered posts mean that I come across. Still, I enjoy looking at the transition away from the lakes from river red gum to black box and the salt bush that grows on the saline plains between the lakes. I also enjoy thinking about what this would look like and how the water would flow between the lakes in times of flood.
I am worried about tyre punctures (every plant here is spiky or thorny and a threat to tubes) but luck out and have no issues. I do get rained on for a few minutes as I spin through sand and avoid corrugations on the track back, but everything back at camp is under cover in the picnic shelter or in the tent, so I am not worried.
In the evening, I do a bit more reading about the mallee ecosystem and the mallee trees, so I can be a bit better informed when I go back to do the nature walk and lookout tomorrow morning. I love the form of mallee trees, and how they can tolerate fire, drought and heat so well, but I have never spent much time in a bioregion that features them. We are remedying that on this trip!
(You might note that my recorded kms never seem to match the ridewithgps map. That is because I don’t use ridewithgps when I ride. I just make up the maps when I get home for the journal. They are always approximate and never have all the ‘ride around town kms’ or the extra kms ridden after/before the to/from route – like today’s Discovery Trail ride. My odometer on this trip is really close though – it under-records just a tiny bit, so if anything, I’ve ridden further than noted).
