22 September 2026 – Chiltern to Winton Wetlands – 81 kms
Dhudhuroa, Bangerang and Yorta Yorta Country
Sometimes you get lucky and make a perfect pillow out of your panniers when arranging the soft stuff within. I get lucky on Night 1.
I made the perfect pillow and slept well last night.
I’m not so perfect at pack-up this morning though. I’m a little rusty on the routine, but I’m still ready to roll in a bit over 45 minutes.
It is hard to get the remaining covid muck out of my lungs. It’s that thick and sticky stage of crap, and it sits at the base of my throat. I have to contort my jaw in all sorts of angles, make all sorts of smoker’s cough hacking noises and call on all sorts of weird throat and neck muscles to pull that stuff up that’s settled overnight. It is such a relief each morning, though, when my throat gets cleared of that obstruction and I can breathe deeply again.
We head down the express route to Wangaratta which is just the track that parallels the railway line down through Springhurst to Bowser. We first pass through the peaceful Chiltern Valley with its deep green grass dappled with cattle and sheep against the low, forested or cleared hills as a backdrop. There is little human movement in the landscape as I push into the wind again today.
The railway road is damp in places, sandy in others and has a few big puddles to skirt around. In the distance, sheep tread through grass up to their bellies.
I’m waiting for the helmet-hitter of a magpie to come swoop me close to Bowser. The last springtime ride I did through here, that guy swooped and nailed my helmet for a good 300 metres. But he just doesn’t come. Doesn’t come. And then he does. Thankfully, he doesn’t start in on me until I’m pretty close to the next road, so he only thumps me about three times before giving up.
I stop to fill my water in Wangaratta but don’t otherwise hang around. I take back streets over to Tone Road and then catch it where it has a large parking lane where I can ride.
I follow this out to the Glenrowan Road which shoots us straight into the wind on a gentle incline. Traffic is not too bad – a vehicle every 1-3 minutes – and all the cars come in clumps. The ‘back’ road to Glenrowan through all the fancy pants housing seems to have just as much traffic, I think, so I usually just take the more direct route.
The highway patrol car passes me a couple times – pulling over a speedster up ahead and then passing me again once they’ve finished booking them. I present a bit of a slow-down deterrent for most cars, so they head out to the freeway after that. I then only get one arse of a driver that sees a potential squeeze and guns it instead of slowing down. Nothing says bogan wanker like a canopy ute with a turbo exhaust.
Glenrowan is full of its usual tourists. We’re into the long weekend and there are heaps of people about. This little town is famous for being the ‘last stand’ for one of Oz’s most notorious bushrangers, Ned Kelly. While you are sitting in the park, you can hear the recorded gunfight from the tacky museum across the road that recreates the shoot-out between Ned Kelly and the police.
There is no easy way to get water at the park – no ‘hydration station’ or ‘water refill’ point. There is a water fountain (or water bubbler as they’d say here), however. So I pull out my cooking pot and fill that to then fill my water bottles. It is a slow process, particularly because I’m filling four litres so that I have water for this afternoon, dinner and tomorrow morning. Tonight will be a dry camp somewhere at Winton Wetlands.
While I’m filling water botttles and feeling very dirtbag and smelly compared to all of the other tourists travelling in vehicles, a group of people come up and sit down on the bench that my bike is leaned against. There are other tables and seats around, but no, they sit right there. If their dog pisses on my tyre….
When I return to repack the bike, they ask where I am riding to and how long it will take. They are travelling in caravans and have absolutely no clue as to what cycle touring involves. And really, there is no way to explain it to them. People that have not ridden a bike since childhood and only know the pursuit of comfort and convenience in adult life just do not have the capacity to understand the logistics, drive, difficulties and joys of bike touring. I cannot get away from that conversation soon enough!
The plan is to head out Ashmeads Road into Winton Wetlands, check out one of the camping areas (they are not charging for camping at the moment) and settle in for the night. I note that the paved road that heads out toward the west has been sealed along the edges and is now a full-width road. It has always carried enough traffic that I usually found myself just riding the gravel edges of the one-lane strip down the middle instead of riding the sealed strip and repeatedly dropping off to the gravel with each passing vehicle.
As I turn off on Ashmeads Road, I discover why they’ve fully sealed the other one. They are building another HUGE solar farm along this road. The Glenrowan area is already covered in solar farms, so I guess this is no surprise. But it does make you ponder ‘how much is too much – how many hectares of coverage is enough for one community to have to bear’?
For me, this means the gravel Ashmeads Road has been nicely graded, but it also means there are heaps of worker trucks with flashing lights on top driving up and down the road for purposes I cannot figure out. They are just generating lots of dust but don’t seem to do anything but drive back and forth?
We clear the construction area, turn right and find water down in one of the old swamps. Ahhh, that is nice. A lot of the time it is all just a bunch of dry ground and dead trees. I’m not sure if they are using environmental watering for this, or this is just from the wet winter/spring, but it is nice to see.
Winton Wetlands is the largest wetlands restoration project in the Southern Hemisphere. Back when the Yorta Yorta were the only ones roaming the country, this area, known as Mokoan, was a series of ephemeral wetlands.
When the white people came, some of it was drained and settlers used it for farming and grazing. Then, the government decided it would flood the swamp to create an off-river storage site for the Broken River to support irrigation. A dam and associated infrastructure was constructed in 1970-71. The inundation covered 8750 hectares, displaced 16 farms and killed more than 200,000 river red gum trees.
Because the dam was shallow and the climate was becoming warmer and drier, the storage was plagued by high evaporation rates and frequent blue-green algae outbreaks. It was a failure. It was finally decommissioned between 2004 and 2010, and a large sum of money was put toward restoration of the wetland site.
Between 2013 and 2020, there was lots of scientific research projects going, lots of volunteer days and events and a vibrant cafe. However, the independent Committee of Management couldn’t make a go of it and couldn’t make the site self-sustaining and suffered severe financial losses.
In 2025, the Committee disbanded and the State Government took over control of the site with the local Catchment Management Authority looking after weeds and feral animals, etc. So hopefully the site is not going backwards… but it’s likely not making any restoration strides either.
I ride down to Bill Friday’s swamp, but the campsite is covered in knee-high capeweed and occupied by a car with caravan. No thanks. I retreat and find a flat site in some trees that can’t be seen from the road that won’t swallow me with weeds.
What a shame to see all the tree planting and site restoration work stall. The VIC government is way, way in debt, so this site is not likely to see any help any time soon. Volunteers can only do so much, and the Boomers don’t tend to volunteer much, so this place is going to have to tread water for some time, when water is available.
The chorus of frogs speaks many languages tonight. There’s ribbits and croaks and bonks and clicks – it’s a noisy competition of many different species that drowns out any silence as the sky goes crisp and clear. Satellites zoom or saunter above on various arcs, as the planets reflect the light down to earth in a calming steadiness.
We’ve ridden through so much white people history today, and so much of that is pretty negative, so it is always calming to study the sky and stars and feel that the universe is stable on a human time scale, even if the earth and its inhabitants are not.