A busy day of animal spotting: Koala!!! Horse!!! Wombat!!!

July 26, 2015

Daybreak and I climbed out of my sleeping bag at first light and whipped the flysheet off the top of the tent before climbing back in again. Now we had a scenic panorama from the comfort of our sleeping quarters as the sky all around us turned orange and the sun rose across the water. A romantic sunrise from bed, what better way to start the day?

We cycled back across Raymond Island and continued our koala spotting game with Dea taking a commanding lead thanks in part to her surprisingly good koala impersonation. I wouldn’t have thought she had the grunting skills to outmatch our friend Coop, but she certainly did, and before I knew it I was losing thirteen-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half. It seemed like the game was over, the lead appeared unassailable. But then I went on my own successful run, and began to see koalas left, right and centre. By the time we were almost back in town the score was incredibly tied at thirteen-and-a-half each.

Then in a final dramatic twist Dea eyed one last koala sitting on a low branch. It was enjoying some tasty leafy breakfast and was so very close to us, it was a really special moment as Dea and I stood there together watching it. To be so close to such a cute and adorable creature was just amazing. And the koala was great too. I didn’t even mind losing the game.

Except, of course, that I did mind losing the game. But that was what was going to happen as we cycled back towards the ferry along a boardwalk at the edge of the island. There weren’t any gum trees close to us here and there seemed little hope of rescuing the situation as the wildlife swung back toward the pelican variety. But then, in an extraordinary moment, I spotted a grey bulge high up on the branch of a far distant tree. It was a koala! It really was. An incredible spot! And the score was all level again at fourteen-and-a-half each as we rolled onto the ferry. The boat pulled away, with both of us still scouring the treetops for an unlikely victory, but in the end a draw was a fair result, and a total of 29 koala sightings made Raymond Island a magical place that neither of us would forget.

It seemed like the pelicans were stealing the show...

We took more hot showers in Paynesville, and became reacquainted with the same black swan, before returning to reality and cycling north into a fierce wind on the shoulder of a busy road. Fortunately we only had to do this for about twenty kilometres until the town of Bairnsdale where we stocked up our food supplies and were then able to join another wonderful rail-trail which we could follow for more than a hundred kilometres.

Don't worry Karen it won't break your arm, that's the white swan that does that

Following on from my unlikely comeback in the koala-spotting game I was on fire as we resumed the horse-spotting game. I’d already got a couple under my belt when I saw a flash of red from behind a fence that was a few hundred metres away at the top of a field. It looked like a horse to me. A horse with a red jacket. But I’d only seen it for a brief split-second before it disappeared from view again. “Horse! Dea, I saw a horse over there!” I declared boldly, before announcing that we both had to stop and go back and verify it. We backtracked to the point at which I had seen it but I couldn’t see it now, so I put down my bike and went and stood on a nearby tree stump to get a better view. Dea joined me. The red shape was now just visible, a tiny dot behind a fence. “It could be a horse” she said. “I’m sure it is” I said. “It’s hard to tell” “Yes, but it could be.” And so on. And then it moved, and it was clear what it was. “Wow, it is a horse!” “YESS!!!”

It was the greatest horse sighting ever, in the whole history of this game. It was incredible. And there was no stopping me after that, and a short while later I saw another, which brought the score to 100-78 to me, which meant that we had our winner as we’d decided 100 points should be the winning post. I was so happy! It was a memorable victory over such an expert horse-spotter as Dea, and not even the fact that I’d only won because I got ten times as many points per horse as she did could diminish my sense of achievement.

Although I was undoubtedly the champion of the horse-spotting game, in a way we were both winners now, because we no longer had to spend all of our time looking for horses. This meant we could really enjoy the delightful cycling of the rail-trail, which was just lovely. Our time cycling together in Australia had already been so great and filled with so many great experiences, it was hard to believe it could get any better. But Dea wanted to do a little bit of night-cycling, after hearing about my experiences of doing so across the Nullarbor. She may not have fully understood the danger involved in such an undertaking, however, as no sooner had twilight taken hold than a kangaroo ran across the trail just in front of us. But, crucially, it didn’t hit either of us, and then things really did get even better when two wombats ran across the trail too. They were no more than fifty metres ahead of us, and the second one even paused in the middle of the trail long enough for us to stop and stare and smile at each other and whisper “Wow, that is a wombat!” Then it was gone and we decided that with all these animals flying around it would probably be better to stop and make camp, which we did, and another amazing day, filled with koalas and pelicans and black swans and horses and kangaroos and wombats, drew to an end.

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 45,294 km (28,128 miles)

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