5 October 2026 – Heyfield to Cheynes Bridge – 35kms
Gunaikurnai Country
The sun has gone away again. It’s damp and dark, even after sunrise, with low cloud skulking about. Combined with the lack of sleep last night, I am not exactly bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and raring to go this morning. However, I am not a procrastinator when it comes to getting on the road in the mornings (if only I could transfer this discipline to the rest of my normal life!). So I pack up the wet tent and roll away by 7.15am. No one in the caravans has emerged from their metal cocoons yet.
This is just a short ride today. We should be done by mid-morning, unless I have a huge burst of energy and we decide to do another 45 kms to the next free camping options.
There is a lot of traffic moving about with people going to work and school. Lots of trucks rumble through since those folks are likely already a couple hours into their day. But there is little traffic heading out of town toward Glenmaggie, so I’m not stressed out being in traffic when everyone else is stressed out getting back in the swing of things on the first day back after school holidays.
The road climbs and falls through scrubby bush and then follows along the edge of the lake filled by the Macalister River. The lake is very, very full – I believe they had to release water from it in the past few days.
There are private caravan parks all along the shore filled with annual sites with ancient caravans and their annexes. These parks look particularly ‘bogan’, and I imagine it could be a bit rowdy and noisy along here on a holiday. Today it’s just quiet and grey.
The backhoe and digger that passed me earlier are parked at the cemetery on the top of a hill. There’s a guy sitting on the machinery looking at his phone. He passed me close to town, and in the time it’s taken me to ride here, he’s already unloaded the equipment and finished digging the grave.
The main highway takes off to the left from here to avoid going through the little Glenmaggie village and over the one-lane bridge over the upper reaches of the reservoir. Last time and this time, I take the old road instead.
This weaves along the lake edge and then past lots of holiday homes perched on the hillsides above. It then dives down to ‘town’ and past the memorial hall. This town was shifted uphill when they built the dam – the original Glenmaggie is down on the river under the water somewhere.
We head over the bridge, where the water is right up to the bottom, and then climb around a corner and up a hill past a church with a commanding view. It’s a private residence now, but I imagine that the sun streaming through the north-facing stained glass windows behind the altar area would have been pretty inspiring during a service back in the day.
The road curves on up through steep, rolling, deep green hills backed by higher hills thick with trees. There are a few cows and sheep in the paddocks that look like little white and black dots in the distance. One cow moos loudly, warning of something, and it almost echoes down the steep little valley. We get views down into Glenmaggie Creek where it flows into the backed-up waters of the dam.
Once we join back with the C-road, we wind along the tops of the rolling green hills with higher ranges to the east and west. Then, at Greens Gully, the road dives down through a bunch of twists and turns, losing all the elevation we climbed out of Glenmaggie. We get right down to creek level, hidden down in the hills with nothing but the immediate views of the slopes and the road ahead.
The road then climbs again on an equally twisty and curving route with a few steep pinches. A caravan I recognise from the oval last night overtakes me at the bottom. I can’t get over at all, as the road drops away many feet to the creek just on the other side of the white line. It doesn’t stop the guy from squeezing me and coming within inches of my mirror – at least he’s only doing 40kph at the time. There’s a bit of traffic today, but not nearly as much as when I did this last time. The road over to Jamieson and all points north on that road is still closed for the season, so this road is really kind of a very long dead end of sorts at this point in the season, unless you head way on up to the top of the plateau on Tamboritha Road. Your options up there are pretty limited, too.
The road pulls us back up to the top of the cleared, rolling hills where we can see the road ahead along the hilltops. We pass by a pioneer grave and I wonder what the guy buried there thinks about all the traffic passing by within 15 feet of him.
The road then dives back down to the edge of the valley and meets up with the Macalister River. We ride along beneath the valley’s western slopes and weave in and out of a lot of rock fall precipitated by all that rain and gravity over the past week. The river is running muddy and high and loud, but it is not flooding.
The caravan that passed me earlier is already set up at Cheynes Bridge, and the guy is working on a fire. The camping area is really big, but I know more people will show up as the day goes on. I don’t want to breathe campfire smoke the rest of the day, so I head over to the other side of the bridge and camp in a little spot by a track that heads to the top of the range. This might be busy with trail bikes on the weekends, but I don’t think it should be bad today (it isn’t – there’s no traffic at all).
It was nice to have a short day and no logistical and road surface considerations taking up brain space. After the guys have a float and I filter a bunch of water, I have a nice long nap to catch up on the sleep lost last night.
I spend the afternoon just hanging, enjoying the time to ‘just be’ out among the trees. I do my breathing exercises which is about the closest I get to meditation and watch the wind tossle the tree leaves above. I watch the low cloud lift and the cumulus clouds that arrive later shift in direction and puffiness. I write a couple letters to my oldie friends who prefer paper to email. I think about timing a little bit and what routes we might do to still get back to Albury for resupply before the Melbourne Cup long weekend. And I just enjoy being out on the type of ride I love the most.
It’s meant to rain again tomorrow, so I might take a rest day here (not that I need one right now) to sit the rain out since it’s meant to arrive mid-morning. I’ll see what it looks like outside in the morning.