July 5, 2015
Another day, another state: Welcome to Victoria
Mike woke me at 6:30 in the morning. Having heard my reasons for wanting to get to Melbourne on time he was keen not to delay me further and he himself was full of beans even at such an hour of the morning. Over breakfast he told me that he held his own private pilot licence, but that, and I quote “thought it better to stop at the age of 80.” But, even though he no longer flew alone, another pilot took him up recently and let him take the controls for a bit, at which point this extraordinary octogenarian had done a loop-the-loop. I think you get the idea that Mike is no ordinary 83 year old.
As I prepared to leave I went to fill up my water bottles at the kitchen sink, and asked Gillian, who happened to be next to me in the kitchen, whether the water was okay to drink.
“Yes, of course,” she said, “it’s rain-water, we collect it in a tank.”
“Oh, is it filtered or anything?”
“No, no. We drink it straight from the tank. We’ve always done that. You’ll find most people in rural Australia drink rain-water. Nothing wrong with it.”
“Okay, thanks,” I smiled, and took a big gulp.
“Of course we had a dead possum in the tank once. But don’t worry, we took it out.”
Making a mental note to replace my water as soon as possible I packed up the bike, but there was still one more piece of business to attend to before bidding my farewell. Winky had a pet goat named Strawberry, and I wanted to conduct a photo-shoot with this animal, because of a new project that I’m working on, involving both bikes and goats (don’t look at me like that, all will be revealed eventually.) Strawberry obliged, and reared up at the sight of the bicycle, before head-butting it for the camera. Fortunately she did this well away from the precariously welded chainstay, which, although it was still just about holding, may not have stood up to another animal impact.
Then there could be no more delaying, and it was goodbye to this family that I had so enjoyed meeting. The positive attitude of Mike and the comical interactions he had with his wife and daughter had made my brief stay one of the highlights of my journey across Australia thus far. But there were more highlights ahead, if only Melbourne could be reached on time, and so it was onwards once more to the lonely road. But it was a beautiful crisp day, cold but sunny, and the Sunday morning traffic was considerately light. After an hour or two I reached the next little settlement of Apsley, surprisingly not Australia’s Tidiest Town 1995, where I stopped to eat some snacks on a park bench. As I did so a bus full of laughing women pulled up nearby and they piled off to make use of the public toilets, cackling loudly as they did so. I wondered what they were up to - it certainly seemed like they were having a lot of fun. One woman had an equal interest in what I was doing, and came over to ask about the bike. After I’d told her my story, she told me that they were off on a girlie wine-tasting day, which certainly explained the fun and the noise. One could only speculate as to how things would turn out for them by afternoon.
For me the afternoon brought more cycling, of course, but it also brought me a new state, as I crossed from South Australia into Victoria. There was no great discernable difference, but it was really lovely cycling as I took small roads through rolling countryside, and passed through more small towns with quaint and slightly familiar names – Edenhope, Harrow, Balmoral. I felt good about things now, my goal firmly in sight and my bike still holding together. For several days after Graham’s emergency backstreet weld I’d been constantly looking at my chainstay expecting to see it falling apart, but here I was, still going strong and now getting so close to Melbourne. Even so, when it grew dark I decided to stop and camp, rather than continue as I’d originally hoped. Clouds were once again obscuring the moonlight, and upon leaving Balmoral I heard the panicked jumping of four kangaroos in the brush at the side of the road within one kilometre. Or it might have been the same kangaroo that I heard four times. Either way I thought it better not to blow it all now by getting taken out by another wayward marsupial, and so I called it a night.
Distance completed: 3445km
Distance to go: 365km
Days to go: 3.5
Average distance required: 104.2km/day
Today's ride: 121 km (75 miles)
Total: 44,326 km (27,526 miles)
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