I woke up from a great night of sleep on the banks of the Lake Hume in the Murray River Valley, and it was a glorious day. After the headwinds across the Nullarbor I was now really getting lucky with the weather – it was cold and crisp but the sun was shining through the mist and the sky above was blue. It promised good things.
I got up and got packed, shaking the dew off my bivy bag. I knew I had a way to go up the valley so I put on some warm clothes and loaded up my bike. The day was glorious, but the mist was quite thick, and the sun was just coming up which meant I would be riding into the rising sun, and more importantly, the people coming from behind me would be driving into the rising sun. I certainly didn’t want anything stupid to happen at this late stage.
I’m a strong believer in the rights of cyclists on the road – they are a public asset for use by the public. That is true for all cyclists, but if people want to argue my rights specifically there is simply no basis for them to argue from – I pay more in terms of funding for roads than most of the people driving cars, I carry more insurance than most of the people driving cars, I do less damage than most of the people driving cars, and I present a much lower risk to others than most of the people driving cars. So I’m absolutely entitled to use the roads. At the same time though, I understand that everyone needs to act to keep themselves and others safe. I looked at the mist and the sun and I decided to put on all of my tail-lights. That means four of them. I was lit up like a Christmas tree.
I got on my bike and started riding. Pretty soon most of the mist had cleared up, and I was riding up a beautiful valley. Half an hour later as it warmed up I decided it was time to stop and remove some layers, and appreciate some of the cultural heritage of the place!
By this time the skies were clear, the sun was a lot higher, and there was just the faintest hint of mist around. I considered turning of my lights, but I figured I might hit some more mist later on, and the fact is that they are selected to have a good long life so an extra hour wouldn’t make a difference, and I left them on. I was glad of that, about ten minutes later.
I heard a car coming up behind me. Actually, a couple of cars. One was a big diesel engine, and the other was a lot quieter. I took a look in my mirror and saw a landcruiser coming around the corner behind me, and saw his indicator going on as he prepared to change lanes and overtake. I looked back at the road to make sure I wasn’t going to hit anything, and watched as he went by, safely in the next lane. Then I swore, as the car following him went by with less than 20cm space from my bars. He was so close that the wind blast from him alone would have pushed a lot of riders off the road. My response was not the most constructive, positive, or wise, but it was instinctive. I gave him the finger.
It’s a hollow action that will rarely improve the situation, and when I think rationally about it I realise that in most cases the driver won’t even notice. But following a near-death experience caused by someone else, it sometimes just happens. And in this case, the driver noticed.
He braked hard and swerved off the road, right across my path. I hit the brakes and swerved right to avoid him. I was going pretty slow and feeling pretty angry, but even at that point I could see that it wasn’t a fight I wanted to have, so I kept rolling past. Slow enough though that I could clearly hear him asking if I had a problem, and that I had time to reply “Of course I do, you nearly killed me!”
It was obvious to me that the encounter should end then, but as I heard his engine rev and the gravel fly from behind me it was also obvious that it wasn’t entirely my choice. A glance in my mirror showed him heading straight for me, but looking ahead I could see a huge old river gum just off the side of the road, with a trunk that must have been four feet wide. I figured that if he was going to run me over then I’d at least make sure he wrote off his car in doing so, and I dived for the gum. I stopped with my shoulder against it, and he stopped with his front bumper about a meter away from me, in another little shower of gravel. He jumped out of the car and immediately demanded to know what my f*cking problem was.
“You went by much too close – if there’d been any little pothole or bump in the road you could have killed me!” I was trying to stay calm, but I had a lot of adrenalin in my body and there was still a bit of anger in my voice.
“Well I couldn’t see you – you should have lights on!” There was a lot of anger in his voice too.
“I’ve got FOUR taillights running, and besides, it’s broad f*cking daylight!” My anger was starting to show a bit more than it should.
“Well I couldn’t see you!”
“Well the bloke in front of you could, why did you think he was changing lanes?” I was still shouting at this point.
“He was blocking my view of you, and by the time he moved over there wasn’t time for me to react!” He was still shouting too.
“So you were so close behind him that you couldn’t see the thing he moved over to avoid – do you think you were too close then?” I really did try to stop shouting for that line, but I was unsuccessful.
“Yeah, I guess I was.” At least I wasn’t the only one still shouting.
“So it was your fault then.” I’d given up on the idea of not shouting.
“I guess so. I’m sorry!” He really didn’t sound sorry when he shouted it like that, but I wasn’t going to push the point.
“Good, then have a good day and drive safe!” If you were going to be generous, you could have described that line as barely shouted.
“You too, and ride safe!” He was clearly still angry as he got into his car, and from the gravel that flew as he drove away I wasn’t sure how seriously he was taking my suggestion that he should drive safe, but I hoped that later on he would replay the events and conversation and realise that everyone really would be better off if he kept a safe braking distance between him and the car in front, and paid attention to the road.
I shook my head and got back on my bike, and as I did so my eye stopped on the farmer who had pulled up on his quad-bike just over the road.
“They all drive like f*cking idiots along this stretch. You take care and have a good day.” He was clearly the most calm person in the area, but it was reassuring to know that he’d been there and had my back had the situation escalated any more. It was also a great reminder that yes, there are some idiots on the road and far too much anger (part of it had been mine, on this occasion) and that is what grabs your attention, but the vast majority of people are happy enough to share the roads and make sure others can do so in peace.
All-up I was stopped for just over two minutes, but the amount of adrenalin that goes through your body when you see someone aiming two tonnes of fast-moving steel at you is quite high, so after a few minutes of riding I decided that actually it wasn’t a bad idea to stop for a little longer, so I pulled over for another ten minutes until I was feeling a bit calmer and could get back to enjoying the beautiful ride.
From there it was about 45km up the road to Walwa. The Walwa shop is very well positioned to stock up before climbing to Cabramurra, and seems to be run and staffed by a huge number of ladies with good senses of humour who make great sandwiches (although I really need to remember to specify no margarine when I order sandwiches). I stopped for a lengthy chat, and to eat a muffin, and for a bit more of a chat, and by the time I headed out of town, well stocked with delicious sandwiches, it was nearly an hour later.
From Walwa the route continues up the Murray River Valley, and it’s about 45km until you cross the river. That is a significant moment, because the river is also the border, so suddenly you’re in the state that the race finishes in (with the technicality being that it passes through the ACT before returning to NSW).
I stopped to take a photo of this momentous occasion, only in part because of the huge yabbie sculpture. While I was there, a bloke came paddling down the river and pulled in. We started talking and pretty soon were joined by his mate in a second kayak. They both rode a bit and were pretty interested in my set-up so we spent a bit of time talking about it, and soon enough they asked about my boat. I’ve mentioned my boat before, and I’m pretty happy with it – it makes a really handy place to put snacks as I ride and have them right in front of my face and immediately accessible, and it’s also a convenient mounting point for my headlight. It isn’t perfect though, and I keep meaning to make a V.2, with a few tweaks to the shape from a more complex mould, and maybe a bit of optimisation of the carbon/Kevlar layup. I mentioned this to the guys I was talking to, including my thoughts that maybe four layers was more than I needed, and I could probably drop it down to three without a problem and maybe even two in some places. The two guys just started laughing, so I asked what was funny. It turned out that one of them had just paddled half the length of the Murray River in a boat made of a single layer of carbon/Kevlar. So yeah, I’m pretty sure I could get away with less layers!
After a nice chat I headed on up the road. Pretty soon I turned onto Swampy Plains Road. Despite the name, this is where the climbing to Cabramurra starts. It was also nice to see the paint on the road from previous years, even if they had spelt my name wrong!
It started coming over a little overcast as I hit the bottom of the climb, but I was pretty sure the weather would hold, and the cloud cover actually made for a much more pleasant climb. There were some devastating fires across a lot of the country in 2020, and this area was hit very hard. It was very sad to see the amount of damage that had been done. The Australian bush has evolved over thousands of years to survive fire and many species will come back quite quickly after being burnt, shooting with new leaves over their entire blackened trunk, which is really quite special to see. Some species even need fire to propagate, so it obviously isn’t the worst thing for the bush. Everything has a limit to how much heat it can tolerate though, and the hotter a fire is the fewer species will survive it. The 2020 fires were extremely hot and extremely widespread, to the point where they will basically have a permanent effect on the vegetation in many areas. Already there was a lot of regrowth coming through on the climb, but it was still tragic to see all the skeletons and realise that some of the species will basically never get back to that area.
As I reached about the halfway point of the climb I noticed a bloke coming screaming down the other way, with some bags on his bike and a huge grin on his face, obviously loving the descent. We waved and both continued in our respective directions, me at maybe 6km/h and him at probably 80km/h.
Continuing on up the hill I saw a car coming down, pulling over as the driver noticed me, and then she flagged me down. I stopped to see if she needed help, but it turned out she wanted to know if I was (someone or other), because his mate was looking for him up the top of the hill. I told her that I wasn’t, but that I had seen another bloke about a minute or two earlier. She smiled and said great, then she would see him soon, and seemed surprised when I said she wouldn’t catch him until the bottom of the hill. She said “But he was on a bike, wasn’t he?” and again seemed surprised when I said yes, but probably descending faster than she could.
Anyway, I kept riding, and on reaching the top of that section of climb I saw another rider, clearly looking for someone. I told him I wasn’t sure who he was looking for but gave him a description of the guy I had seen, and he seemed happy enough and pushed off down the hill.
I headed on by Cabramurra, with just a brief pause to check progress of a job I had been working on, and then carried on by. Cabramurra used to be a great place for a meal on your way through, but during the fires half of the township had been burnt down, and now Snowy Hydro, who own the whole town, are working on some major projects in the area, so they have closed the town to the public. Happily I had done my preparation and knew the town would be closed, so I had enough food and drink and could just carry on.
It feels like it should be a good long descent from Cabramurra, but actually the road goes up and down for quite a while before settling into the descent, so I was still working hard. As it started getting later the wildlife started coming out too, and I swear I’ve never seen so many wombats as on that stretch of road that evening. Wombats are small but extremely solid, and don’t have the best traffic sense, so it meant taking a bit of care going down the hill, but I still rolled into Adaminaby at around 8pm.
At that point I was still undecided about my route for the next stretch. I had announced before the race that I would be taking Bobeyan Road instead of the Monaro Highway, because I felt the Monaro highway was too dangerous. Now I looked at it though I realised that it was late at night and traffic on the Monaro would be much lower if I did it now. Bobeyan is a significantly shorter route, but much steeper with a lot more climbing, and a lot of it is on gravel. I had got confirmation that the crossing had been reopened, but even so I expected Bobeyan to take at least as long as the Monaro, and with an ever growing number of idiots in 4WDs it still wasn’t entirely safe. I pondered the question as I ate a couple of pizzas from the Adaminaby Pub (they usually do pretty good food, but all they had available when I arrived was the frozen pizzas) and then headed out, with the plan being to see where the bike took me.
The turn for Bobeyan Road is only a few km out of Adaminaby, and sure enough, the bike took it. As it turned out, it was a good decision. The road was very quiet, and I only saw one other car that night, being driven at a sensible speed and even on the correct side of the road. I pushed on until about 2am, which was a bit later than I would have liked but it got me through the dirt section. Happily, I got through it without a problem – my 32mm GP5000 tyres performed perfectly and I could lie down to sleep knowing that the next day would get me into Canberra. I’d ridden that road enough that it basically counted as a home road, and I knew that from there it was sealed roads (excluding Jessie’s little curve-ball in Sydney) with no huge climbs from there until the Opera House. Things were going well.
