26 September 2026 – Toolangi State Forest: Boundary to Ault Beeac Track – 9 kms
Taungurung Country
Today, the real ride starts. The first five days were just the warm-up, a precursor to the real ride where we climb up gravel roads in the forest, crest ranges and zoom down to valleys. That town-to-town stuff as the main feature of a tour can wait until I’m old and boring.
There was rain overnight and radar shows a lot more rain coming today. If this campsite didn’t have the trail bike riders just over the hill, I’d just sit this day out. I don’t mind riding in the rain a bit further into the season when it’s warmer and your gear can easily dry after the rain has passed. But this early in the season when the high temps are still in the teens, I’d prefer to wait out the rain in the tent where possible.
I pack up the tent carefully so that the inner tent body is folded within the dry side of the ground sheet and the wet tent fly is folded wet-side-in and on the outside of the ground sheet. I want to keep the inner tent dry for when we need to deploy shelter later.
The radar looks like we should get a couple of hours of riding before the rain comes. Let’s get as far as we can before that starts. My little tent can get plopped just about anywhere, though this type of forest with thick ground cover and mid-story plants means I’ll be looking for areas by the roadside instead.
I put the fork bags and tent back on the bike, then push the bike through the creek and up the other side. I then cross with the panniers. And finally I cross with the sleeping pad and remaining gear. Then I get everything strapped on the bike. This all seems to take forever, but we are still away before sunrise. Well, what would be sunrise if the sky was not covered in cloud.
The climbing is gentle but starts immediately. The forest seems fairly flogged – lots of skinny trees and evidence of logging. This entire range burnt at some level of severity in the 2009 fires as well. The road is wide and in good condition. Up we go.
I silently climb a short steep pinch just before the big camping area that is absolutely packed out with caravans and associated trail bikes. Campfires stutter smoke after not being extinguished overnight. Camp chairs cluster around campfire rings and miscellaneous camping gear lies scattered about.
One woman rugged up in a dark blue flannel and black trackpants prods a stick into a fire, urging the embers back to life. But she doesn’t notice me go past. There are a couple trail bike guys awake and standing by a ute, and they look at me with o-shaped mouths and pause, like I’m an apparition and not a real human.
We turn off on North Eastern Road and follow this good gravel uphill. We pass some recent clear cuts where the gravel is rougher and there are no signs of regrowth or retained trees in the coupe. The grade steepens just after this, as the road travels up an old gully. I churn up the steeper bits, trying to keep the front tyre from being lifted when we lump over bigger rocks.
The sky gets darker as we crest that hill and then get a long downhill to the head of a creek. We do a big u-turn in the landscape and follow the creek downstream on the opposite side. Then, as we start climbing away from this into a larger drainage, the fog sets in. Shit. I thought we’d have a bit more time.
We are up into the mountain ash trees now, their tall white trunks reaching up into the fog, strings of bark dangling here and there. We’ve only gone 8 kms, but I will start looking for a suitable spot for the tent now. I’ve ridden enough in the mountains now to know that the low cloud rolls in just before the rain. It is not the type of fog that blankets everything or the type of fog that lifts after settling overnight. No, this is the low cloud at the head of a front. It could start raining at any time.
I pass by what could be a scenic little creek if it didn’t have illegal trail bike tracks leading in and out of it and tearing up the banks. There is a small dam here, and if you didn’t mind rough, rocky ground and all those tracks dumping dirt bikes on you, this could be a spot to camp. I move on.
We start climbing again and eventually the creek heads away from the track. It would be nice to get water and filter it before the rain comes and muddies things up, but I have enough I can ration for today and tomorrow morning. So I move on. I hope I can find somewhere to plop the tent soon, however, because the fog is thick enough that all my gear and clothing will start to get damp soon.
Not too far up the road at a track junction is a spot I can whack up the tent that is not under any tree branches and not in the way of vehicles. I can clear a mostly flat spot that is on a little slope so the tent won’t be somewhere the run-off collects. This is not the first time I’ve camped by the side of the road and it won’t be the last.
Once I get the tent set up, I crawl in and cuddle down in my sleeping bag. Ah, it is so good to be warm and dry and to have dry gear. Nine kms is not much of a day – just 1.45 hours of climbing – but it got us away from all the noise and people.
I go back to sleep. The rain comes about one hour later. I nap further. And further. And further. I sorta sleep the day away. I think this means that I will not sleep at night. But I am wrong. I sleep the whole night through, too.
Wow – I do not normally have such capacity for sleep. But maybe after months of stress, my body finally relaxed. Maybe my endocrine system finally lined up with my nervous system and everything just went, ‘aaaaaaaahhhhhh’.
There’s a couple trail bike guys that go by, stop, talk for a bit and then move on. There are a few 4WDs that come by through the day that pause or slow, but no one actually stops and gets out. It seems to me that it’s pretty obvious that there’s a person in the tent associated with the pushbike and they are just sheltering from the rain.
All in all, maybe 8 vehicles and trail bikes go by before I pack up the next morning. Other than that, it is blissfully quiet except for the wind roaring through the trees high above. It rains off and on the rest of the day and until about 8 pm.
I really have no complaints about today. It’s not one that will be a tour highlight, but we started in on our first steep climbing of the tour this morning, and my body did just fine. We stayed warm and dry and slept the most rejuvenating sleep. That really is a top-rated rain day!
