10 October 2026 – Stratford to Bairnsdale – 58 kms
Gunaikurnai Country
There are some people giving me the side-eye at the park this morning. I’ve got my tent spread out on the grass to dry, as the room was too small for that last night. People are kinda giving me the look like I’m homeless and camped there last night, or that I am a cheap-arse and camped there for free last night instead of just on the other side of the bridge at the caravan park.
I suppose everything does look a bit scruffy at this point. But, gosh, just look at the bike. That is NOT a homeless person’s bike. Even though I guess I technically am homeless since I ended my rental lease before leaving in May.
I sit on the bench in the park figuring out what we want to do with the day. It’s a nice little park along the river with a Shakespeare-castle-medieval-themed playground (the town’s name is Stratford and it’s located on the Avon River), some cool climbing stuff, a pump track, grassy areas and a walking path along the river.
I am amazed at the number of people that pull in for a toilet stop. Must be the right time of day for most people, ha! The wind is already up and blowing little tree blossoms all over the drying tent.
I have a cabin booked at the caravan park in Bairnsdale from tomorrow night. I don’t want to stay there tonight as the campsites there suck. So I ponder riding some of the back roads and trying to find somewhere to free camp tonight along the way.
But… everything between here and there is on that sandy alluvial soil that is so slow to ride and often corrugated. I’ve ridden that crap down here at least four times. I’ve had enough of rocks for a few days – even ones so tiny they count as sand.
Plus, it’s only about 60 kms to Bairnsdale, so riding partway won’t take much time at all. What do I do with the rest of the day? Stratford is tiny and there’s nothing much worth stopping for between here and Bairnsdale.
But then, the weather forecast seals the deal. There is going to be a strong wind from westerly directions today. Tomorrow the wind is forecast to be just as strong, but out of the southeast.
So you know that I’m going to take advantage of a tailwind and scoot on across to Bairnsdale before that becomes a headwind tomorrow. I will torture myself with hills, but not with wind if I can help it.
I’m not sure if the A1 has a shoulder the whole way. I wouldn’t generally ride an A-road, but C-roads are usually more dangerous because they have no shoulder and still carry a bit of traffic. The ones down here on the map don’t look like they’d be a safe alternative. There are no B-roads down here. So I do so some random streetviews, and the A1 has a big shoulder in those.
I do some googling and read some reddit and other forum posts from various sources. One lady says don’t ride it because the shoulders are crap. Another guy says it’s boring, but there’s a shoulder the whole way.
So I’m sold. As long as there is a shoulder of some sort, I’m okay with that. It beats riding alluvial sand for 60 kms.
So off we go down the A1.
It is fine. There is a massive shoulder nearly a lane wide most of the way. Sometimes it’s just a half a lane wide. It doesn’t generally have too much debris. However, there are five bridges where there is no shoulder at all. But you can just watch the traffic and time it to sprint through between glugs of cars. And the terrain is pretty flat with just a few dips to creeks.
The wind is very helpful at times. It’s right up my bum and pushing me along at 27kph sometimes. Most of the time it’s quartering, either from the northwest or southwest, but I can still do around 23kph with that. On occasion, it gets some swirl to it and hits me with a southeast gust. But I just say, “Hey, now. That’s uncalled for,” and it doesn’t do that too often.
I stop at the halfway point at an old roadhouse that is still in business. It actually has cheap fuel prices. I don’t keep an eye on that for obvious reasons, but I do note it is cheaper than it was in Stratford. I get down my own fuel, swig a bunch of water while standing in the shade, and then scoot on along.
It only takes 2.45 hours to ride to Bairnsdale with that wind. I’ve been through Bairnsdale so many times on bike tours because it is an excellent resupply stop and has a bike shop. I almost feel like it’s a second home – like I’ve got a holiday house here or something and duck down on weekends. It wouldn’t be a terrible place to live for a one or two-year contract, but not somewhere you’d want to retire to and live there forever.
I go down to the oval to finish drying the tent. Then I head over to a park to nap before I head to a motel to check in later. The older woman there is very interested in what I’m doing and the bike. She thinks it’s great that I travel alone and go up into the bush by myself. She agrees that it gets harder to do stuff as you get older but that continuing to do hard riding will mean I can keep doing the hard stuff longer than I would otherwise. She says she doesn’t see many women with such fortitude, after I tell her where I’ve been on this trip and where I think I’m going.
I have to get out of the motel office before my head gets too big to get out the door. Conversations like that make me a bit sad though. I don’t think I’m doing anything extradordinary whatsoever. I’m just doing something I love. I like challenges. I like hard things. I like being alone on the bike and being out in the forest in my tent. For that to be unusual and considered to be courageous is just sad. It’s 2026 and it’s not common for women to do such things. That is just sad. Of course, I’ve always been a tomboy and done boy things and never cared what anyone thought. But really, that shouldn’t be that unusual!
I go down to the room and have a shower. Two showers in two days, and more to come in the next few days. Yippee! I never sleep as well in motels and cabins as I do in my tent, but I do appreciate potable water out of a tap and soap and shampoo when those luxuries arise.
Now to plan out our days here. I’ll know tomorrow when my old boss is going to ring to discuss a potential job, and then I’ll know how many days I need to hang around. I’m really not ready to go back and start a job just yet. November looks like it will be just fine for riding. However, a 6 month contract would get me out of the forest in an El Nino summer. Either option at face value seems fine. I guess we’ll see what the details for the job involve and go from there.
Long, long ago, I realised my life was not going to be one of traditional trajectory. Somewhere in my early years in Oz I just decided I had to ’embrace the uncertainty’ – that so many things were out of my control that I just had to get comfortable being uncomfortable, grab opportunities when they came, endure all of the really shit stuff in between and change my perspective on how I viewed the shit stuff. .
That attitude has gotten me through a whole bunch of stuff. Most importantly, it has made me very resilient and helped me develop a good inernal locus of control. I have learned to ’embrace the uncertainty’, and I know that somehow, some way, I’m always going to be okay.
Just don’t mention rocks for a few more days.