Movin’ right along – Day 9 – All the joy

29 September 2026 – Little River Camp to Shaw’s Camp – 64 kms

Taungurung Country

We climb up out of the river valley, the bike tyres crunching over small-diameter gravel as my lungs send puffs of condensation into the air. It’s cool and crisp. The wind already pushes the top tips of the trees back high above me. I cut through the calm air down at road level, feeling strong and capable as we pedal uphill.

We climb further on Quartz Creek Road through open forest and then thick forest with even-aged stands of logging regrowth. It’s another area of lots of skinny trees. This area burnt in 2009, but there’s been lots of logging since.

The road curves and curves upward, following a rise and then around the backside of another protruding knoll. We’re still following the rally route. All day yesterday I kept seeing signs saying each road we were on was going to be closed on 17 October for a rally race. I’m not sure where it starts or ends, but we’re getting a good preview of the route it seems.

We drop down to the Royston River on a rougher track, as the wind picks up and starts to subtly roar through the trees above. I really need to get a weather update today – that strong of a northwesterly this early in the morning is a bit concerning.

We follow the Royston River upstream. It flows through dark, dank forest just below the road in places. The road climbs up onto the valley wall and past old logging coupes in other places. There are some short, sharp pinches here to wake up the legs.

This is such a pleasant meander through the forest today. This is exactly the type of riding I love the most – out in the forest, alone, negotiating all the different road surfaces and obstacles, reading the road and picking the best line, the wind roaring above with little puffy clouds skimming along, good water sources, lots of physical exertion and that meditative state you enter when everything is right here, right now and all of your focus is on the pedal cadence and the road ahead. Ahhhh, this stokes ‘the roar’ into every cell inside me.

The feeling I have today, and on these remote high country rides, makes me think of the song below from a current singer-songwriter in the Slim Dusty sort of tradition.

We pick our way through spongy ground, rocks, branches and spiky bushes to filter a couple litres of water at a bridge over the river. I step lightly, trying not to alert the leeches to my presence. This may be our last water source today, but I also have a big climb ahead and don’t want to push heaps of water up that, so I compromise on 2 litres. I have about 3/4 of a litre on-board already.

We push the bike up the short, steep hill beyond the bridge, and then sit down beside the road for morning tea/breakfast/early lunch. I don’t feel in a hurry today and take my time to just appreciate being out doing what I love more than anything else in the world.

The road surface gets crappier from here forward and it is a challenge to keep the wheels both in contact with the ground at the same time as I bump from rock to rock and try to keep on spinning. Inevitably, a big rock will lift the front wheel up and sideways, and I can’t keep the balance. A foot goes down. Sometimes we can get re-started again. Sometimes we can’t.

We pass over the marshy, uppermost reaches of the river and then climb up a ridge beyond it. I end up pushing the bike a fair bit of this through open forest – the grade is rideable, but the surface is not.

Finally, we crest the ridge that’s been in sight most of the way up the climb and have a rip roaring downhill along the backside to a road intersection. Woo-hoo!

The wind continues to roar up above. We’re higher now and can really appreciate the strength of the whoosh up above. It doesn’t impede us down below, though, and I’m grateful to be riding deep in the forest instead of somewhere open on a day like today. The day finally starts to get some warmth to it around 10.30am.

We roll onto Sandstone Road, finally lose the rally route, and zing, zing, zing down the hill. We get up to 55kph at one point, as fast as I’m comfortable going when I don’t know if there will be a tree over the road or some other forest road impediment just around a curve ahead. Oh, I love building the bike handling skills, getting my butt back and making subtle changes in steering and leaning to guide the bike down. We lose 250 metres in 2 kms through this stretch. Yippee!!!

There’s a grader at the intersection with the Cambarville Road that’s working on some drainage stuff, but I don’t see anyone with it. On we go.

Cambarville Road is quite rough, too. The road is all down to road base in most places with no dirt left on top of the rounded rock. It’s sorta like riding rough cobblestone or over a packed-down creek bed. The road climbs in places and falls in others as we weave in and out of the drainages coming off Lake Mountain that is behind and above us out of view.

I think I should probably gather some more water from one of the side streams, but they are all too hard to get to – running in culverts under the road and covered in blackberries and other veg on the ‘above road’ side. It’s becoming apparent our 2.5 litres on board is likely going to have to last us the rest of today and part of tomorrow. At the end of this road, we’ll be continuing along another ridge.

Finally, a vehicle passes us from behind at about 11.30am. I’ve not seen anyone for about 27 hours. The guy slows beside me and asks if I’m okay and have everything I need. I say, “yeah, thanks” and give him a thumbs up.

I roll into Cambarville around noon. This was an old sawmill site with a village. All that’s left are various deciduous trees, a DEECA works depot and two private houses. There are interpretive boards around explaining the history. There are a few cars here and a couple more down by the closed toilet block and picnic area.

I roll down to a picnic table in the sun and get my sleeping bag and all my tent bits unrolled and out to dry. I get the phone on the solar charger and then use 700 mls of water to cook up some tom yum soup with some dehydrated veggies, lentils and noodles.

People come and go. A bunch of them are very disappointed that the toilet block is closed – later, when I get back to the main road, I note that the road sign depicting what’s up the road at Cambarville still indicates there are toilets. Apparently, they’ve been closed for about 8 years.

There is also a loop walk from here to a big old growth tree (that’s not as big as it once was after the top bit fell off), two waterfalls and a big culvert from the original road construction in the 1800s. However, most of the track is closed off due to the risk of trees falling. It’s disappointing because this is just up the road from Marysville and is still advertised on a bunch of websites as a good daytrip and waterfall hike, etc. C’mon DEECA, get your act together and fix up all this stuff!

I can barely get a phone signal here – just enough to send a text and update the BOM app. Oh dear, that forecast is looking even worse. Hmmm…. I’m really going to need to get somewhere decent to sit out rain for Thursday and Friday.

I get everything dry. I finish eating. I look at the maps on the trailhead sign and confirm I’m not going to be able to get along the waterfall walks to get any water. So we are going to have to ration the 1.75 litres of water we have now for who knows how long.

I pack up and head down to the main road that runs from Marysville to Warburton. You can get to this point from Marysville in like 14 to 16 kilometres on the main road, but we’ve gone on a big upside-down u-shape detour over 1.5 days through the forest instead.

However, I can get more phone reception here at an overlook of the Yarra Ranges and that forecast does look iffy. It went from a bit of rain on Thursday a few days ago, to a fair bit of rain Thursday and Friday and maybe Saturday, now, too. I’m thinking I might need to deviate from our original, proposed route and find a proper campground instead of heading over to the Walhalla Road.

But let’s sort that out once we find our campsite for tonight.

I head on down the sealed road as high performance cars and motorbikes overtake me and test their skills on all the curves.

I leave all the vehicles behind where the sealed road turns right and heads down to Warburton and the road along the ridge heading toward Matlock and Woods Point turns to gravel.

I don’t know where we’ll camp, but I figure we’ll just ride until about 3 or 4pm and then start looking for somewhere we can whack up the tent. We’re traversing the Great Divide here, so water on our right heads toward the ocean and water on our left will eventually dump into the Murray River which terminates in the Bight over closer to Adelaide.

The road sits right at the 900 to 1000 metre mark for many, many kms. There is a huge firebreak that follows along the road and only departs from it when the road goes around a hill and the firebreak goes over. It gives the road a park-like feel rather than a remote bush feel. It does mean it is not going to be hard to find a place to camp.

The road is gravel and has a gazillion potholes. I don’t mind potholes. That means the road is flat. And potholes are generally easy to go around on the bike. But, gosh, this would be a frustrating road in a vehicle, and probably not one you’d want to do at night given how hard those holes would be to see ahead.

The frustrating bit for a cyclist is that the road is an unending series of left-hand curves followed by right-hand curves. Going east, every left-hand curve is heavily corrugated and the low-side of the camber. So you bump, shake and bounce through the corrugations and lose all your speed and then have a steeper climb than the general road grade to get back out of the bottom of the curve to the main tyre tracks. And don’t try to ride mid-way up the camber, as the corrugations are awful up there.

So this goes on and on and on and on. It gets monotonous. Left-hander. Right-hander. Left-hander. Right-hander. All the curves look alike after awhile. Lose all of your speed you’ve built going into the left-hander and crawl on through the right-hander through the loose gravel at the top of the camber.

On and on and on. Because the road tends to maintain its elevation, you are either gently climbing or descending the whole time. Any elevation you gain, you lose. Any elevation you lose, you get back on another climb.

Oh, and you can’t ride on the opposite side of the road to stay on the high side of the camber, like I often do. There is just a bit too much oncoming traffic for that – mostly tradies and Forest Fire Management Victoria and Melbourne Water 4WD folks heading back to town after a day out working in the field.

Finally, we get a bit that is straight-ish for awhile. I don’t really know how far along the road I am, as this bit is the one bit I don’t have coverage on my paper maps. I’m too lazy to pull out my phone. I take note of the track names we cross, so I can reference this on the More to Explore app later.

I think we’ll just ride until we put down 60 kms and then look for a spot to camp. That’s far enough, and I know we’ll have climbed more than 1,000 metres by then. I really try to keep my climbing to 800 to 1000 metres at most each day so that I don’t overdo things. We never ever need to bring back that debilitating fatigue from 2017-2022.

A bit beyond the 60-km mark, I see a gravel track leading up onto a flat spot near a deciduous tree. It’s obvious people have camped there before. I think this may be what’s labelled ‘Shaws’ on my big HEMA map. Whatever, it will work for us. Most importantly, it is not under or near any of the mountain ash trees. The wind is absolutely roaring through the tree tops – it sounds like we’re standing next to one big, continuous dumping wave.

I’m so thirsty, but I just sip slowly through the evening so that we’ll have 750 mls of water for tomorrow. We will have to get down off the ridge and get to water at some point tomorrow.

I set up the tent, have some peanut butter and crackers, one sweet fruit chew and 2 granola bars for dinner. Lunch was big, so it should be sufficient.

I have pretty good phone reception here. I look at some detailed weather forecasts and it does not look good. There are two lows hovering around and they are going to tap into the moisture of a northwest cloud band. It’s going to dump some good rain and looks like it could start by tomorrow evening.

I had thought about dropping off the ridge to Woods Point, but I’m not impressed with the camping options near there. Services are very limited there. I’m not sure those campgrounds (one which requires a river crossing) are exactly where I want to be for the rain that is predicted. There is now a Flood Watch in effect.

I look a bit more at the map. I think we should drop off the other side of the range and get to a town. I look at Rawson and Erica – two tiny towns down below the Thomson Dam. The caravan park in Erica is expensive. The one in Rawson doesn’t have a website. But there is a place in Rawson that has cabins, a lodge and caravan sites. They also have what they call ‘campsite cubbies’ – these little cubes that have beds and a heater inside. They are only $50 a night. That’s cheap. That sounds perfect. That is shelter with access to a camp kitchen and it won’t break my budget.

So I book that online, just willing and manifesting that mobile reception to stay strong enough for the booking and credit card to go through the whole time that spinning circle rotates. Phew – success!

I sleep well knowing that we will have a place to shelter for the predicted rain. I think it is the safest option, rather than being deep in the forest with the potential for falling trees and flooding that might see me stuck somewhere. I’ve got adequate food supplies, but my spidey senses are spooked, and I’m not wanting to be in the backcountry for any of the worst case rain scenarios I’m seeing.

The last car passes by about 7.30pm. There will not be another vehicle to pass by until 7.30am tomorrow. But it’s not quiet.

The wind is a constant roar the whole night long. It never ceases. It never diminishes. It just roars and roars and I can hear branches crashing in the forest in the distance. Sometimes, the wind is strong enough down low to give the tent a good shove and shake which wakes me from time to time.

I do sleep well, though. Lots of exertion will do that. As much as I don’t like paying for accommodation, or missing parts of a proposed route, I do like the constant planning and consideration of logistics that you get on a bike tour like this where you are never sure where you are going to sleep that night, where you might find water or what the weather might do.