I am now in New South Wales with just under 350 highway kilometres to ride until Sydney. I hope to get off the road Friday or Saturday of next week before the holiday traffic hits. Christmas is not that big a deal over here but they all seem to go on holidays for it. This is the opposite of Ireland where Christmas is a massive deal and everybody travels home for it.
By all accounts I have trucked it the last 925 kilometres. Victoria is really beautiful but its weather system is far from perfect. It is practically Irish but for the fact that the sun does have the capacity to shine. The weather when I was there was particularly bad and was making records. You get what you wish for I guess as nobody wants to see the bush fires of last summer again. The showers were really heavy and of course, I had posted my rain-gear up to Sydney reckoning that even if it rained it would be too warm to wear it. I just about got away with it but a seven hour cycle through non-stop rain where temperatures touched 12 degrees did mess my legs up a bit. I don’t complain about the weather because I know that people at home are getting it far worse. The silver lining to the Irish cloud is that the weather has forced them to quarantine the hippies and langers in Cork at last. Of course I’m joking – you should know by now that there are only two things I hate in this world: i) people who are intolerant of other races and ii) the Dutch.
Thus, I trucked it a little in the hope of getting into a better weather system. It was a good decision as I have had three settled days of blue skies and temperatures in the low thirties. Being Irish you can imagine how good the sun is for my morale. The appropriately named town of Eden was the first town I arrived into in NSW. The beach where I camped was beautiful and I was amazed that there was no-one on it. I soon realised that the reason for this is that they have their pick of great beaches. Each coastal town I pass is on an incredible beach and then there are even more remote beaches in the National Parks I pass between the towns. This is the part of the world people from Canberra and Melbourne holiday in. It is the closest piece of coast to Canberra and it is the closest piece of reliable weather to Melbourne. For those who like maps or are familiar with this part of the world I am writing this in lovely Narooma. I will ride the truck-free coastal route to Bateman’s Bay. From there I may do a big day to Jervis Bay. I am thinking about spending two days in Seven Mile Beach national park. Apparently this is a great beach to learn to surf on. Ironically, I need the weather to turn bad so that the ocean is not too flat for surfing. Wollongong is the next logical stop but it gets a little built-up once I leave Seven Mile Beach and so I won’t expect much the last 130kms of the ride in. It’s an 80km hop from Wollongong to Sydney although I will stretch this out by going along the beach roads and through the Royal National Park. This should be a class week once the hills don’t beat me up too much. Still, I look forward to exploring Sydney to see which side of the great Melbourne or Sydney divide I fall on.
Some pics of Victoria are in the gallery.
Have fun
Giller
