Day: 013
Date: Tuesday, 14 July 2020
Start: Wondai
Finish: Biggenden
Daily Kilometres: 119
Total Kilometres: 1367
Weather: Very cold and sunny in the morning, becoming milder during the day with an increasingly strong wind.
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Cheese & bacon rolls
Lunch: Ham, salad & tomato rolls
Dinner: Sausages & mash/Butter chicken & rice, fudge & ice cream
Aches: Nothing significant
Highlight: The strong tailwind we had for the last 38km to Biggenden that helped push us up and over a minor range of hills and down into town.
Lowlight: The strong crosswind and occasional headwind we had for the 50km before our lunch stop at Ban Ban Springs.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
Our plans to leave at 7am didn't quite happen, not least because of a reluctance to get out of bed when the outside temperature was 0°C. Eventually, we left our cabin at 7:30am, both wearing an extra layer and cycled into town on a beautiful sunny, clear and cold morning. We stopped at the bakery to buy some food for breakfast and lunch, knowing we would likely not see a store until we reached Biggenden in 119km.
I spent some time reading maps and calculating distances last night, trying to balance our desire to follow back roads with our desire to include Cape York in our itinerary, which means we must not travel too slowly. Our bikes, loaded with gear, are very heavy and this makes any route involving hills slow. Although we are enjoying fast descents, they don't compensate timewise for the slow granny gear ascents. Likewise, our progress has been quite slow on unsealed roads and trails. There are parts of our journey where travelling on hilly and/or unsealed roads and trails is unavoidable, but where they are avoidable, we have decided to avoid them.
Accordingly, today we travelled directly north on a route that will intersect with the Bruce Highway (Highway A1) which we will now follow that north to Cairns. Today's journey began with about 30km of back roads north from Wondai through pretty rural countryside, passing some lovely small rural schools en route. We then joined the busier Burnett Highway, though it wasn't too bad, and battled the strong cold crosswind as we rode north through typical Australian outback country. Farm houses, often Queenslander-style on stilts, ranging from immaculate to dilapidated, sat amidst cattle grazing land and some crop plantations.
At Ban Ban Springs, we stopped in a wayside rest area and ate lunch, closely watched by some prettily-coloured birds. I even caught one perched on my handlebars examining the contents of my open handlebar bag. At the start of the day, I had suggested to Julie that if we did really well, we might get to Childers, just over 160k from Wondai, but the decision point would be whether or not we reached Biggenden, which also had accommodation options, before 3pm. We left our lunch stop at 1pm, giving us two hours, to cover the 38km to Biggenden. Although ably assisted by a tailwind (see above), but not racing it, we reached a motel on the outskirts of Biggenden at exactly 3pm and decided to call it a day.
After checking in, I rode my unloaded bike the kilometre into the small town and bought microwaveable dinner supplies at the small supermarket. Another good day followed by a welcome early night.
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