Dwellingup

October 4, 2020

Tourist steam train - they bring it out on the summer long weekends.

4/10/2020

Heading for Dwellingup

Darn - I lost an entire day's journal entry because I left my computer alone and ignored for too long. Another lesson learned...

So, I woke up pretty early the next morning. My left leg wasn't too traumatised from the previous night's experience, but it still took a bit of effort to get going. The temperature would have dropped to just above freezing during the night - that's pretty chilly for West Australia. The track huts are two sided and open to the elements at both ends, so you can't completely escape the weather. Hot muesli and strong brewed coffee for breakfast, pack up, check the bike, load it up, take a critical look at it and laugh...

I love my bike, and on this day it is probably the oldest bike on the whole Munda Biddi. It's a Kuwahara 26" mountain bike, frame stamped 1987. The frame is old school, but all of the parts are either new or near new, with the exception of the tyres. So, truthfully, I guess I should say the frame is the oldest on the Munda Biddi, if not the whole bike. Naked, without racks and panniers, it looks very elegant with beautiful triple butted and lugged chrome moly tubing and a graceful fluted front fork. But right now it more closely resembles a tinker's cart. It is encumbered with a rear rack bodged onto the front fork and a similar rack on the back. There's a big hardware store wire basket zip tied to the front rack and a cheap insulated cooler bag voile strapped to the saddle and back rack. And topping it off, there are two small yellow Ortlieb panniers also hanging off the back rack. Add to that the occasional clipped-on/bungied/stuffed-in hat, rain coat, fleece jacket or tin mug.

Poor thing. Why it doesn't buck me off in protest I do not know.

It is about 70 km to the next track hut, but only 35 km from this one to the town of Dwellingup, so that's where I headed. Dwellingup is one of only two crossover points for the Munda Biddi and Bibbulmun tracks, which otherwise run parallel to each other all the way to Albany. So, there are always a few muddy funky hikers/mtnbikers hanging around the town. It's also a popular week end getaway destination for citybound Perthites. And of course, it was a long weekend (I always seem to ride into the middle of school holidays and/or mandated public holidays. I think we get about 11 public holidays in Western Australia; all of them cleverly manoeuvred to fall on Mondays or Fridays). I rolled along on the track, oblivious of this and arrived at the caravan park after they closed at 5pm. No one wanted to answer the door, or the phone, and there was a sign up saying they were full - implying "go away." I rode around the campground a bit and clearly could see there were plenty of places to pitch my tent. So I rode back to the office complex and knocked on their back door. As so often happens when you talk to someone face to face, they did find somewhere to accommodate me, one of the small donga rooms that they held aside for walkers/mtnbikers was empty. I was lucky, fore although there were plenty of empty tent sites inside the campground, they had reached their Covid-19 maximum allowance.

Bike and campground donga

A Donga is a small coffin sized accommodation unit, common at outback mining camps and run down commercial campgrounds.

5/10/2020

Listening to Ruth

I listened to my wife's good advice and decided to slow things down a bit to give my body time to adjust to what I was asking it to do - I took the day off. Not only was my bike one of the oldest on the track, I had to remember, at 68 years, so was I. So I rested, washed my clothes and carb loaded - pub food and beer...

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