Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 033 - Mount Molloy to Ravenshoe

Day:  033

Date: Monday, 03 August 2020

Start:  Mount Molloy

Finish:  Ravenshoe

Daily Kilometres:  124 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  3519

Weather:  Cool and mostly overcast with occasional light showers

Accommodation:  Motel

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Egg & bacon subs

  Lunch:  Beef salad roll/Turkey salad roll

  Dinner:  Hamburger with the works & chips/Lasagne & chips, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  Our last hour of riding for the day, down from the highest point (1,162 metres) on Queensland's highest road, to our motel in Ravenshoe (Queensland's highest town) was particularly enjoyable.  We had spent about 60 kilometres gradually, and occasionally steeply, climbing from Mareeba in indifferent weather through the scenic Atherton Tableland to the highest point, and although it had been interesting, we were ready for some downhill.  The last 25 kilometres through very pretty farming and forest country with occasional bursts of sunshine, underpinned by a feeling of satisfaction at completing the climb, was savoured by us both.

Lowlight:  I had a poor night's sleep in our beautiful old hotel because of a mosquito assault that had me itching and slapping in the dark at the tormenting insects I could hear buzzing close to my ear all night.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

Our route for today was to take us across the exceptionally productive, diverse and scenic Atherton Tableland from north to south, including a climb to some of the highest settled country in Queensland.  Although our planned distance was not great, more headwinds were forecast and we knew that the climbs would slow us down.  We sneaked out of our hotel, as quietly as the old floorboards would allow, at 6:20am and rode south out of town on a road still very wet from heavy rain in the small hours.

The road was flat, with very little traffic, the wind was non-existent, and veneers of mist partly shrouded the mountains behind the grazing land to our left, with the large and still Lake Mitchell to our right for some of the time.  It was a ghostly and beautiful early morning.  Apart from a couple of photo stops, we covered the 40 kilometres to the large regional town of Mareeba in good time.  It boasted 300 days of sunshine a year on the town sign, but it was wintry and cloudy when we arrived.  We got breakfast at a Subway and then, after a little bit of shopping, headed south out of town on the very busy Highway 1, which we were rejoining for the first time since Cairns.  This section is also known as the Savannah Way, and we will now be following it, more or less, for a couple of thousand kilometres across the top of Australia.

We were now gradually climbing, our speed was slow, and the busy narrow-edged highway kept us on our toes, with conditions made worse by occasional rain.  Most of the countryside was farming of one kind or another, but there were also some pockets of remnant rainforest.  We just kept plugging away and finally reached another large regional town, Atherton, in late morning where we took another break at a bakery and did some final shopping.  This was the last town we will see of any size until Katherine in the Northern Territory.

The climbing continued after Atherton, but the traffic was much lighter, making the riding more pleasant, and the countryside remained pretty and interesting, with increasing stretches of rainforest as we climbed over the Herberton Range, stopping for lunch at the top of one steep pitch, to our highest point of the day, and trip.

From there, it was an easy run (see above) to Ravenshoe and our motel, where we arrived at 4pm.  While checking in, we met another cycling couple (British), up from Sydney for a week's touring in the area.  We bought dinner at a nearby take-away, there being no microwave in our room, and went to bed satisfied with another good day.