Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 039 - Normanton

Day:  039

Date: Sunday, 09 August 2020

Start:  Normanton

Finish:  Normanton

Daily Kilometres:  0

Total Kilometres:  4112

Weather:  Mild to warm and sunny

Accommodation:  Motel

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  None

  Lunch:  Fish, cabana & chips/Doner kebab & chips

  Dinner:  Chilli con carne & rice, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  Restful day

Lowlight:  None really

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We slept in, then did some more detailed planning for the next eight days so that we knew what food to buy when we went shopping later in the morning.  Our plan was to visit a cafe for breakfast on our way to one of the small supermarkets, but it was closed, as was every other cafe and pub in town on this Sunday morning.  In the end we visited each of the three small supermarkets in town, a couple of kilometres of walking because it's a spread-out town, and multi-sourced our needs.

We gave up on breakfast, and returned to our room to sort and repack our food, before having lunch at the adjacent Purple Pub bistro.  From there we went for a walk around the more historic northern end of the town.  Like most of the smaller outback towns we have visited, it is quite clean and well-tended with wide grid-patterned streets and some well-preserved older buildings, but it also has lots of defunct businesses, vacant lots and a sleepy seen-better-days feel.  That said, there were plenty of campervans and caravans in town, and regular road trains rolling through, so some business is being done.

On our walk we also visited what was claimed to be a life-sized replica of a locally-shot saltwater crocodile (now protected) accepted by Guinness as the largest recorded of the species.  It was massive.

We then returned to our room and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing before attending to a few other chores and having our usual microwaved dinner.

We expect to be camping by the road tomorrow and won't have internet access, as will often be the case for the next week, so the blog posts will become intermittent.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 038 - Croydon to Normanton

Day:  038

Date: Saturday, 08 August 2020

Start:  Croydon

Finish:  Normanton

Daily Kilometres:  155 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  4112

Weather:  Mild to very warm and sunny all day

Accommodation:  Motel

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Shared egg, lettuce & pineapple sandwich and chilli chicken wrap, and muffins

  Lunch:  Chilli chicken wraps

  Dinner:  Fettucine carbonara/Sundried tomato & chicken pasta, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  Once again, the breaks we had during the day were special.  Even though we enjoy the bush and have plenty of peace and quiet while cycling, the rests, when we can stretch out, relax, and savour the silence, broken only by the quiet rustle of leaves in the breeze or the squabbling of some birds, is magic.

Lowlight:  None really.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We were a bit slower to get going this morning and it was about 6:40am before we cycled out of the caravan park and out of the tiny town of Croydon to the sound of a few barking dogs in the pre-dawn gloom.  Maybe it was because it was the third ~150km day in a row, but more likely it was because we expected the day's ride to be relatively easy with flat terrain and a breeze that was either cross or following.  And maybe it was because we had decided to have tomorrow off in Normanton while we sort out our supplies for the next week's riding.

Our expectations of easy riding were not disappointed and we cruised along at a good pace on an almost traffic-free road for the first couple of hours, stopping for breakfast around 9am with 100km to go.  There weren't as many animals around, just a couple of wallabies and the usual birds in the savannah woodland that bordered our route all day.

That early good progress continued for the rest of the day, with thirty-minute breaks taken after every ninety minutes under the shade of a roadside tree on our little blue groundsheet.  The routine is usually to eat one of the snacks we are carrying, drink lots (flavoured milk/Powerade/Coke), and check Maps.me to see how far we have to go, and in Julie's case, the elevation profile.  There's usually five minutes free to have a pretend nap as well before we hit the road again, and then it's a few hundred metres before the legs start working properly.

As we neared Normanton, we spotted a distant flock of brolgas near a station dam, which was a highlight (though we had seen one solo earlier in the day).  Neither of us are ornithologists, which is a bit of a handicap when we see so many different kinds of birds each day, but that doesn't stop us enjoying and appreciating the variety.

We reached the sleepy Saturday-afternoon Normanton around 3pm and checked into our motel which is attached to the town's Purple Pub.  After showers, we went to the small grocery next door for some drinks and microwaveable dinner, and while there, checked out what was on offer that we could carry for the next week.  There's another small grocery about a kilometre away that we might also need to visit tomorrow to optimise our choices.

Normanton is a decision point for us, and we have decided to continue following Highway 1 and the Savannah Way north-west to Borroloola in the Northern Territory (NT).  There are just a few tiny resupply points, and none for the last 320km (with uncertain water).  The road is also notoriously bad and mostly unsealed, so the riding will be slow.  It's not a route many cyclists take.  The alternative is to head 400km south from here to Cloncurry and then Mount Isa and from there across to Tennant Creek in the NT before turning north.  This route is all on sealed road, with more resupply options, but is a lot further.  I have ridden it several times before, and although it appeals from a "security" perspective, we have decided to get out of our comfort zone and take the challenging route.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 037 - Georgetown to Croydon

Day:  037

Date: Friday, 07 August 2020

Start:  Georgetown

Finish:  Croydon

Daily Kilometres:  148 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  3957

Weather:  Warm to very warm and mostly overcast

Accommodation:  Cabin

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Egg & lettuce sandwiches

  Lunch:  Ham, cheese & tomato sandwich/Chicken salad sandwich

  Dinner:  Chicken Kiev & vegetables, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing significant 

Highlight:  We reached the top of a long gradual climb at 12:20pm about 10 minutes earlier than our planned lunchtime, to find a lone picnic table under a little shelter which was too good to pass up so we stopped for lunch.  It was a very peaceful spot surrounded by the almost soundless forest, and there were long periods with no traffic at all.  After eating our sandwiches, we briefly lay down on the benches and savoured the restful moment, perhaps wishing we could stay there longer.

Lowlight:  It's a toss up between (A) being identified as a father and daughter cycling team by a passing motorist we later met at our caravan park, or (B) Julie misjudging her dismount (failing to release her cleat) in front of our cabin on arrival, and knocking me off my bike in a chain reaction, leaving us both in a tangled mess on the ground, much to the amusement of a passing fellow camper.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

In many ways, today was a copy of yesterday, except that we didn't pass any habitation all day, apart from the occasional side road signposted to a cattle station.  We left about 6:20am, made good time along a flat road almost devoid of traffic through the waking bush.  There were lots of kangaroos and wallabies about and we even had a dingo trot across the road in front of us.

We stopped at 8:30am after 50 kilometres and ate our breakfast, sandwiches purchased from the roadhouse last night, by the roadside entertaining a nearby herd of cattle who probably hadn't had as much excitement in months.  After breakfast, the road was busier, a little more undulating and the roadside bush varied between savannah woodland and savannah grassland.  We took a mid-morning break at 10:30am then continued on into a growing headwind that meant we got no pedalling relief on the flats and downhills.  It gradually wears you down, even though the hills weren't steep.

At 12:20pm we stopped for lunch (see above), with 107 kilometres done and 41 to go.  That remaining distance dragged in places, particularly as the temperature was now in the low 30°Cs, though there was an overall descent and the headwind became more fickle.  We took a short break with 21 kilometres to go and finally reached the old gold mining town of Croydon (which has clearly seen better days, though is neat and tidy) a little before 3pm and checked into our cabin in the local caravan park.  We were both feeling very tired and glad of the early finish.

After showers, we walked to the small nearby service station/grocery and bought overpriced supplies for tonight and tomorrow.  Like today, there will again be no habitation en route to our destination.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 036 - Undara to Georgetown

Day:  036

Date: Thursday, 06 August 2020

Start:  Undara Volcanic National Park

Finish:  Georgetown

Daily Kilometres:  145 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  3809

Weather:  Cool and sunny early. Warm and mostly sunny later.

Accommodation:  Cabin

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Egg & bacon rolls

  Lunch:  Ham, cheese & tomato sandwich/Chicken salad sandwich

  Dinner:  Spaghetti & meatballs, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  None really

Lowlight:  None really

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We left the resort around 6:20am, just as it was getting light, and first had to cycle the 14km back to the highway, primarily eastwards towards the rising sun, so the opposite to our general direction of travel for the day, which was westwards.  It was very quiet, and there were a few kangaroos and plenty of birds about, so it was pleasant riding despite a light headwind and a few hills.

When we reached the main road and turned westwards, the riding became very easy, with a following breeze, relatively flat and almost traffic-free road, and the soft light of the sun rising behind us illuminating the savannah woodland.  We made very good time to the tiny hamlet of Mount Surprise, arriving there at 8:30am with 50 kilometres under our belt.  A small cafe/service station was the only option for breakfast and resupply, so we purchased what we needed, and ate our breakfast at a cafe table.

The road after Mount Surprise was more undulating, and traffic increased, about half of it campervans and caravans, but also a few road trains.  In places, the sealed road was only wide enough for one vehicle with wide gravel edges, and trucks and large vehicles have priority, so we had to head for the gravel on occasions, and were tested by wind and dust as the behemoths passed.  However, most of the time, we had the road to ourselves and savoured the quiet bush and frequent sandy and mostly dry rivers we crossed.

As lunchtime approached, we had to climb up the Newcastle Range, which was scenic but very warm work.  At the top, we found a roadside rest stop and had lunch, purchased from the roadhouse this morning, at the sole picnic table.  With only 28 kilometres to go, mostly downhill or flat, we left in good spirits, and reached Georgetown soon after 2pm.  Before checking in at the caravan park where we had booked a cabin, we bought some drinks and snacks for the afternoon.

We were checked in by 2:30pm, which was great, and had time to do laundry and have a relaxing afternoon, before later walking into town and buying some microwaveable dinner and supplies for tomorrow's ride.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 035 - Undara Volcanic National Park

Day:  035

Date: Wednesday, 05 August 2020

Start:  Undara Volcanic National Park

Finish:  Undara Volcanic National Park 

Daily Kilometres:  0 (but about 15 kilometres walking; click here for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  3664

Weather:  Cool to warm and mostly sunny

Accommodation:  Tent (glamping)

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Bush breakfast (fruit, cereal, eggs & bacon, toast, etc)

  Lunch:  Muesli bars and chocolate

  Dinner:  Chicken schnitzel, salad & chips/Crumbed steak, salad & chips, ice cream.

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  The tour of the lava tubes was awesome.  One of them is the biggest, in terms of height and width, in the world and it was populated by microbats and had the roots of trees from the surface, five metres above, descending like stalactites.  In the places where the lava tube ceiling had collapsed, a kind of terrarium had been created of remnant rainforest.

Lowlight:  None really

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We started the day with the "Bush Breakfast", put on by the resort, which was an "all you can eat" affair in a bush setting a few hundred metres from the resort attended by about ten guests.  A couple we chatted with were retired Queensland cattle station owners who were touring in their own light plane.  Us and them, the two extremes of grey nomad travel!  We ate our fills, because we don't yet know what the breakfast cost, but it I'm sure it will be expensive!

After breakfast, we joined the 8am tour group to some of the lava tubes in the National Park, which turned out to be excellent (see above).  Looking across the vast savannah woodland, you would not know the lava tubes were there apart from the small thickets of rainforest poking up from collapsed tube sections with their little micro ecological systems.

Soon after returning to the resort from the two-hour tour, we headed out on a 14 kilometre bushwalk that visited different parts of the savannah woodland.  The lower parts, near where a swamp forms in the wet season (November to April), it was teeming with birds and butterflies.  There was less obvious life on the plains and on the plateau we hiked along to several spectacular rocky outcrops.  We only saw three other people in the four hours we were hiking, and felt privileged and awed to seemingly have the vastness and peace all to ourselves.

We got back from the walk around 2:30pm, and then spent a lazy afternoon, before returning to the resort's impressive al fresco eating area for dinner.  This time, the kookaburra got the better of us, swooping from behind, momentarily perching on Julie's hand while snatching a chip from my plate, then flying off in a flurry of feathers and turbulence.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 034 - Ravenshoe to Undara

Day:  034

Date: Tuesday, 04 August 2020

Start:  Ravenshoe

Finish:  Undara Volcanic National Park

Daily Kilometres:  145 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  3664

Weather:  Cold early then warm and sunny

Accommodation:  Tent (glamping)

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Egg & bacon roll

  Lunch:  Ham salad sandwich/Roast beef, salad & chutney sandwich

  Dinner:  Chicken schnitzel, salad & chips, ice-cream

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  Although it was very cold, riding down the mountain from Ravenshoe in the pre-dawn light directly towards the large full moon setting in the west was a spectacular start to our day.

Lowlight:  Julie got a puncture in our (almost) puncture-proof tyres in the late morning.  A solid piece of wire had somehow threaded its way in through the tread and out through the sidewall.  We swapped the tube for a new one and will repair the damaged one at some point.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

It was damp, misty and dark as we exited Ravenshoe about 6:20am and found our way back onto Highway 1, the Savannah Way, which began descending from the mountains.  A setting moon (see above) in a misty sky was directly ahead.

Further down the mountain, it got very cold, compounded by the wind created by the speed of our descent.  I was cold, with frozen hands and feet, so I knew Julie, who always feels the cold, would really be suffering.  We just silently hunkered down, willing the sun, which was rising slowly behind us, to generate some warmth and thaw us out.

Eventually it did, though we were still both wearing our jackets at 8:45am when we reached Mount Garnet, where we stopped at a roadhouse for breakfast after 45 kilometres.  This would be the last store we would see for a couple of days, apart from the slim pickings expected at Undara where we were booked to stay for the next two nights, so we stocked up on essentials, such as bags of chips and two-litre bottles of Coke, so we didn't have to pay extortionate prices (we'll just have to live with the cost of the meals).

By the time we left Mount Garnet, we were feeling warm enough to ride in our T-shirts, and we spent the rest of the morning riding along the quiet highway, bordered by scrubby timbered grazing country with cattle rarely seen.  The road was undulating, with plenty of enervating ascents, but there were also long gradual descents and flattish sections that gave us time to recover.

In the late morning, Julie had a rear tyre puncture (see above) that cost us 30 minutes or so, and then further on we took a lunch break at a pretty rest stop in the Forty Mile Scrub National Park, through which we had been riding for the last hour or so.  Four kilometres after lunch, we reached a junction where our road turned directly west, and the traffic became even lighter.  There were long stretches where we had the road to ourselves.  The grades were easy, and together with a slight following wind, we made good time in the warm afternoon sunshine to the turn-off to Undara Volcanic National Park, and the park resort where we had booked accommodation.  From the turn-off it was still another 14 kilometres to the resort itself, Undara Experience, including a last few hills, and we arrived at 3:45pm.

We checked into our small tent/cabin in the resort where there are a range of accommodation options, at a range of prices.  It's a bit of a captive market once you are here, and you must pay for a guided tour to the lava tubes, which are the main attraction, but I'm OK with that if it prevents vandalism and overuse.  After showers, we adjourned to the excellent al fresco lodge area where we later ate dinner, during which I fended off two kookaburra swoop attacks on our meals.  A few of the birds were perched in the rafters of the high shelter over the eating area spying out their opportunities. Each time, at the last second I spotted the diving attacker and held my arms up, triggering a last nanosecond change of direction by the crafty kookaburra.  You have to admire those birds.

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.