30 September 2026 – Shaws Camp to Ezards Road Camp – 69 kms
Taungurung and Gunaikurnai Country
The wind still roars. And roars. All the ash tree leaves are showing off their undersides as they ripple hard in the wind. The sunrise is a dark angry red, too. If you were somewhere with a clear view, the deep maroon of the morning would compete with any of the Outback sunrises I saw over winter.
The wind blowin all night long does mean that I have a mostly dry tent to pack up. I always appreciate that as the dry pack-up days are always fewer than the wet ones.
I’m on the road early. I don’t know how far it is until our turn-off. I’m still in the ‘between maps’ section of my paper maps, and I don’t remember how many kms it looked like on RideWithGPS because I’m not sure where to put the start pin along the Warburton-Woods Point Road. We’re just out there, on top of the Great Divide somewhere with the wind and red sky morning giving us warning.
It wouldn’t matter if I knew the kays anyway. We are just riding as far as we can today down off the range toward Rawson. The kays don’t matter. The turn-offs do, and so does getting as close to the forest edge as we can so that we are out of it when the bad weather is meant to hit tomorrow.
So I pedal along through more left-handers and right-handers and around potholes. One big truck with a tree shredder thingo on a trailer goes by about 7.30am, but that’s the last vehicle I will see until about 2.30pm this afternoon.
The road rises and falls. We climb up little hills and bigger hills. We zoom down the curves in between.
Eventually we get to a 12-kilometre section of sealed road, though we will turn off and not do all 12 of those kays. The grades through here are steeper and go longer sometimes, so I imagine at some point they got tired of doing road re-construction after heavy rains, etc. and just sealed the damn thing. This road would have been used a fair bit when they were constructing the Thomson Dam in the early 1970s, and it has always been a major logging and mining road. So lots of heavy vehicles.
As we get higher, we start getting into heaps of clear cuts. Sometimes it can be two kilometres devoid of any trees on the Murray River side. The only problem with a large open area at the top of the range on a windy day… is that there is nothing to stop that ferocious wind from knocking you around. Some of the gusts almost stop me! Some of the gusts push me right out into the road. It is hard work, and all of the dust that is getting kicked up is getting in my eyes.
The pro-forestry people don’t like to believe the emerging research from around the world, and here in Oz, that logging increases the intensity of bushfires. But goodness, all you’ve got to do is come up here on a windy day and see how any fire advancing through this clear cut would just be blown hard across the road and further into treed areas by the strong winds that accompany big fires. I’m thankful it’s dust in my eyes, rather than embers, but still, it seems incredibly obvious that the more trees there are, the less the wind penetrates an intact forest.
We eventually get to our turn-off, or what I think should be. There are no road signs. I think it is to discourage people from going this way and travelling through the water catchment. We are in the catchments of the Yarra Reservoir and the massive Thomson Dam – two big water storages for all of Melbourne. You are not allowed to camp in the area, and it seems they discourage day visitors, too.
At some point in the past, there were big information boards along the way, but these are just empty frames now, and all of the poles for street signs are empty. However, there’s a big road sign board for people going the other direction. It shows Warburton with an arrow straight ahead and the C-road number. It also shows Noojee with an arrow pointing down our road.
Okay, this must be it. I am pretty sure this road (Nine Mile Road) goes to Noojee eventually. So I head down. We are kinda on a ridge that runs perpendicular to the Great Divide. On our right is water that runs into the Yarra River. All of these tracks are closed off with big metal gates and signs saying No Trespassing. On our left, all of the creeks run into the Thomson Dam (which is piped through the mountains to the Yarra Reservoir above Warburton).
We go down and down and down. Yee-ha! The road is in pretty good condition and isn’t too curvy. So we can get up some good speed as we weave around random potholes. Down, down, down. I’m very happy to be getting off the top of the range.
I’m so thirsty and my teeth are scummy. I had 750 mls of water left this morning. I skipped brushing my teeth to conserve water and drank 500 mls first thing. I’ve got 250 mls left, but I will not drink it until I get to the next water source. But, oh, how I would love to imbibe that right now!
We have a few sneaky climbs along the way. I’m trying to figure out when I should be looking for my next road. My paper map has this road on it, but doesn’t have little numbers for kms beside the little pins. The road itself has km markers for the logging trucks, but I’m still not sure. And none of the tracks are sign-posted. I think I need to pass three turn-offs before I get to mine.
A major road takes off to the left after awhile. I think that’s it. It came about 1.5 kms before I expected it to, but it’s got signs about the area being constantly monitored, and the topography looks right. I lay the bike down. I walk down Nine Mile Road past the next corner to see if things ‘look right’.
I conclude I’m not sure. But this is the biggest track we’ve come across and the hills and depressions seem right. So on we go. The forest is thick and wet through here before we come upon even-aged trees that are probably about 25 years old. We have a big downhill, to the Thomson River itself. Okay, good. Things match my map now.
There’s no way to get down to the water from the bridge with any ease. Oh, man, I’m thirsty. But on we go through mixed age trees and high slopes rising from the road.
And then, oh yes, we cross a creek that we can get down to and treat water. Hallelujah! I fill two litres and put micropur tabs in them. They can purify over the next two hours as we ride – I may run it through the filter or I might not. Being in this protected catchment, I’m not quite as worried about pathogens.
I then down my 250 ml of water remaining. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I then filter a litre. I drink 600 mls of that. My stomach can’t hold anymore or I will puke. So I filter another litre that I can drink over the next 2 hours while the micropur tabs are doing their work with the rest.
This is the absolute highlight of the day. That is one of the things I love about bike touring – life being reduced to the essentials and figuring those out through the day. Where are we going to sleep tonight? Where are we going to get water? What are our food rations looking like? There is such joy in finding water when you’ve been rationing.
Further up the road, once we are away from the creek, I stop and brush my teeth. Ahhhh.
There are some steepish climbs, some gentle climbs and some gentle downhills. The road continues to weave through same-aged stands. I wouldn’t think you’d log at all in a water catchment because of all the sediment that would flow into the creeks during and after cutting down the trees. Young trees also drink up a lot more water than older trees, so less water flows to the dam. But the foresters here obviously had different information they learned at uni.
We pass by the Australian Alps Walking Track (AAWT). It joins the road for a few hundred metres and the little orange track markers note direction for the walkers. Sheesh, every time I’ve ever come across this track that runs from near Walhalla to Canberra, I am amazed that anyone ever completes it. Every time it crosses a road I’m on, it just looks incredibly overgrown. Navigation must be a nightmare. I do know that, in sections, finding water is definitely hellish.
On and on. The clouds come in. It goes from a partly cloudy morning to a high, thin overcast to a thicker overcast as the day goes on. The road is scenic, none of the grades are too hard, and the gravel is in good condition. We planned to take a longer route around the top of the ridges on the other side, but this is actually quite a nice ride itself.
Around 15 kms from the end of the road, we get into the downhill. We just go down, down, down. We weave in and out of the creeks coming in from the side. We stop and eat at one of these – just taking our time to have some food and enjoy the peace and quiet. The day is getting darker, but not so dark just yet that I feel a need to hurry up.
I come across old signs that state when a particular area was planted or harvested (all 80s and 90s), but it’s a bit hilarious, because it’s been clear cut since then. The Labor Government ended native forest harvesting in 2023 and the huge multi-billion dollar payout and readjustment package for the loggers ended just recently. Many of the sawmills just started sourcing logs from Tasmania instead. And now, the Labor Gov is likely to get booted from office at the election this November, and the other political parties have vowed to start up the industry again.
Sheesh- it was unsustainable and the taxpayer was subsidising the logging with hundreds of millions of dollars EACH YEAR before it was shut down. Even Bunnings, Oz’s biggest hardware chain that is not known to be stupendously ethical, would not take their wood because it could not earn sustainable certification. They were constantly having courts find that they were logging illegally and not considering habitat of critically endangered gliders and other animals.
Ah well, it’s been nice to ride in the high country on this tour, and in 2023 and 2025, without the logging trucks. I will, of course, write letters and donate to the organisations that will be fighting the return of logging.
Woo-hoo! The down is fun. Some of it is that perfect downhill where the surface is good enough to really cruise along, but it’s not so steep that you need to brake much, and the curves aren’t so tight that your speed is reduced by much.
About 6kms from the main road, I see my first vehicles since the tree shredder guy this morning. There are 3 hire mini-busses full of people. I can see them all looking at me with big eyes as they go by. Ha!
I start to get glimpses of the dam through the trees in the distance. It’s at 67 percent capacity apparently. I’m not sure if they like to hold the water here or elsewhere, so I’m not sure how ‘natural’ that capacity might be.
Just a km or so before we hit the main, sealed road to the dam, we see a sign that we have left the water catchment. Good. Anything now is fair game for camping. And not far beyond this, I see a track heading up steeply from the gravel road. My map says this is seasonally closed. Maybe we can camp at the gate. The dark sky now looks like it could let out a sprinkle or a shower at any time.
So I push the bike up and find the gate open. Okay, maybe there will be a flat spot ahead. This is obviously a track just used for logging access. And all the veg we pass through is under 10-years-old. It’s a double-track with lots of stuff poking into the track to scratch a vehicle.
I come around a corner and there is an open area. It is quite muddy and a tad bit creepy. The track is not really maintained beyond this, and my map shows it ending uphill somewhere anyway. There’s no great spot for the tent. I spend 5-10 minutes figuring out the best place to put the tent that won’t get too boggy if and when it rains. I end up putting it on the edge of the track, out of the way of the the main wheel tracks, but not by much. It’s a bit rocky, but it will do.
I can get mobile reception here. Oh. Good timing. There is definitely rain nearby. And a whole lot off to the northwest that will come tomorrow. The rain chance today is 0 to 1mm. They have it as 30-40mm for tomorrow. The hourly forecast shows the rain developing around 9am tomorrow.
Okay, so we’ll get up early and race it into Rawson and hang there for the day until I can check into my little cube. I settle into the tent, worry a bit about how much rain is meant to come over the next few days, but then feel satisfied that I’ve sorted some shelter. I can’t control much more than that, and that is under control. I can relax a bit.
The rain comes not much later. It is a light rain that sometimes has a burst of ‘moderate’. But I’m dry, my gear is dry and I’m comfy. It rains off and on all night. I would think it was 4 or 5mm. So much for 0 to 1mm. However, this afternoon, the air did feel thick and heavy. There must be heaps of moisture out there to tap into.
About 10.30pm, one of my worst fears appears. I’m a ways up a dead end road with no way to escape, and a vehicle arrives. I’m not in a designated camping area, I’m not in a popular dispersed site that people would know about from maps or internet searches. It is not somewhere the general tourist would go looking for somewhere to camp after driving up from Melbourne after work. Crap. Crap. Crap. It has to be locals, and locals out at 10.30pm on a weeknight are never good news. Crap. I reach for my torch and my bike pump. Spidey senses are alarming with warnings of imminent danger!!!
And then the vehicle turns around and leaves. Phew!!!! I’m not scared of many things – but late night vehicle arrivals into remote, unmarked and unofficial dispersed sites do freak me out a bit.
Suprisingly, I go right back to sleep. I hear the rain off and on through the night, but I do sleep well. This is not always the case for women my age, so you really do relish the nights when you fall asleep easily, stay asleep and do not wake at 3am.