Julie and I were supposed to be hiking the 5,000km Continental Divide Trail in the US in 2020, but COVID-19 derailed that plan. Instead, we will have an adventure in Australia, circumnavigating the country on our bikes, a distance of about 16,500km taking approximately five and a half months. We will use minor roads where possible and occasionally catch ferries across rivers and inlets to avoid busier inland routes. We will camp some of the time and stay in motels, hotels, etc, at others. There will be stretches of up to five days with no accommodation or resupply available, so we will need to be self-sufficient.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 119 - Harden to Marulan

Day:  119

Date:  Wednesday, 28 October 2020

Start:  Harden

Finish:  Marulan

Daily Kilometres:  175 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  12737

Weather:  Cold to cool, mostly overcast and breezy

Accommodation:  Motel

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Egg & bacon rolls

  Lunch:  Pastie & donut/Chicken salad roll

  Dinner:  Kentucky fried chicken & fries, ice-creams 

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  Our late lunch at the Goulburn bakery, a compulsory and favourite stop on my many driving trips to and from Melbourne.

Lowlight:  None really

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

Another 4:45am start, and as soon as we turned eastwards out of the motel driveway we could feel the cold headwind that was to be a feature of our day, though it wasn't as strong as yesterday (averaging 20kph according to the weather bureau).  Rather than wind, hills were the feature of the day.  According to Julie's watch, we climbed 1959 metres for the day, our highest total for any day of the trip.

For our first leg, we rode along the roller-coaster Burley Griffin Way for 50km, watching a spectacular sunrise in front of us and admiring the beautiful hilly farm country, then joined the Hume Freeway for another 10km to a service station at Yass, where we stopped for breakfast.  The Hume Highway is the major road between Sydney and Melbourne, so there was plenty of traffic, particularly trucks, but it is dual carriageway and there is a wide breakdown lane, so riding is quite safe, so long as care is taken at intersections.

From Yass, it was a hilly 84km to Goulburn, and our late lunch (see above).  Even though I drive this section of road a lot, I never tire of the quintessential Australian rural scenery, with rolling hills, tree-lined creeks, and occasional woodland.  The hills (which, funnily enough, you don't notice as much while driving), had us working hard, but the downs allowed some recovery and sightseeing.   We took one break along the way, and our average speed was slow, so it was 1:30pm by the time we reached Goulburn.

After lunch we only had another 30km to Marulan and our booked motel, the first 5km of which was through the regional city of Goulburn.  After that, there were more hills as we climbed into the Southern Highlands, with forested mountains in the near distance on both sides and some lovely rural properties.  To the north, some ominous clouds were building, and thunder pealed as we were checking in at 5pm, followed an hour later by some rain, but we stayed dry all day, which was a bonus.

The pedantic motel owner wouldn't let us keep our bikes in our room (only second time for the trip) and even made a fuss about us damaging the brick verandah pillars when we locked them outside our room, but eventually acquiesced when we promised to be careful.

We bought dinner from the KFC next door (no microwave in our room), and had another early night, happy with our day.

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2 comments:

  1. UnknownOctober 30, 2020 at 8:50 PM

    Well done Dave and Julie, I've enjoyed reading of your journey first thing each morning for the past few months. A great achievement and a wonderful way to appreciate our beautiful country! Graham Wye

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