March 26, 2016
Caterpillar madness: I'd never seen anything like it
I camped finally on some grass behind a village hall and rose early the next morning to cycle into the fairly big town of Lismore. I liked it here, and not just because I found free hot showers at the train station. It was an interesting town too; an artsy place, with lots of graffiti and buskers and new age stores. I stayed a little while, to make use of the shower, and to resupply with food and water and allen keys. I also made use of this brief window of good mobile phone reception to call Dea. It was nice to hear her voice, and discover that she was making great progress north, cycling doggedly towards her own destination and apparently very much enjoying the freedom of her first solo cycle tour.
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Up until this point I had been following a different route than that which we had taken when we'd cycled up to Surfers Paradise. Before we had followed the coast for the final stretch, this time I had been travelling more inland, but at the little riverside village of Coraki I rejoined the old route. From there I passed through the sugar cane fields that Dea and I had pretended looked like Haiti (even though neither of us has been to Haiti) and onto a great road. Dea and I had cycled it in the opposite direction playing pine cone wars, and I remembered it as being a decent gravel surface, completely flat, traffic-free, and just generally awesome.
At first it was just as good as I remembered. The absence of Dea was a shame this time of course, but I had Kevin to keep me company (Mr Plopples was hiding in his bag and refusing to come out for some unknown reason) and the road was every bit as good as it made its way through natural forest. I was having an absolute great time cycling on this road all afternoon, until around four o'clock when it suddenly started to get dark. I thought that strange. It felt like dusk, and yet I knew the sun shouldn't set for another couple of hours. Then I felt a large plop of water on my face. Then another. I looked up, immediately understanding what was about to happen and having no time to react. I looked around desperately, but there was no place to hide. The deluge began in an instant. I hurried to lean my bike against a tree and yanked my tent from the back bag. I flung it open and hurled the flysheet over the bike, grabbed a pannier to sit on, and made myself comfortable under the flysheet.
I should point out that I have used the word comfortable in the last sentence quite incorrectly. I was not in the least bit comfortable as I huddled under the flysheet, wedged against the side of my bike in a muggy confined space as the rain lashed down upon me. To make matters worse some large ants were scurrying around on the floor and, with only sandals on, it wasn't long before one had bitten my foot. It was a painful bite, and one that would leave my foot swollen for days. Still, the worst was not over. I was made to jump by a sudden flash and a loud roar of thunder as the storm drew close. I felt vulnerable here but I had no place to go. The storm seemed to grow stronger and more violent as it drew closer to me and I was terrified that the next lightning bolt might be destined for me.
I was wet and miserable and scared as the storm raged, but eventually the worst of it passed. The rain continued, but with sunset drawing close I decided I'd better get on and find somewhere to camp regardless. I had been aiming to get to the same spot that Dea and I had camped at before, a nice clearing beside the forest, and I'd seemed well on course to make it. Now I was pushed for time. The forest was thick and there were not so many other options anyway, but our clearing was not appearing. I rode and rode, on a surface that had become much more difficult to cycle on now that it was saturated with water. It grew dark, but still I cycled determinedly on. Then finally the clearing did appear and I was able to pitch the tent properly and crawl in. All of my things were soaked and all alone this was not the romantic campsite I had remembered.
The next morning brought better weather and as the road dried out it became easier to cycle. I went on to reach the paved road again at Whiporie and followed that through Grafton to camp in what was mostly an uneventful day. But there was one very interesting (in my opinion) event that took place before I reached the end of the gravel road.
This interesting event involved caterpillars. Lots of caterpillars. At first I cycled straight through them, in a gap that had already been made by one of the very few cars that drove this road, but I caught sight of them, and stopped to investigate. Either side of the gap was a long line of caterpillars. They were crossing the road, and they were doing it by following one another head-to-tail. Three quarters of the way across the road was the lead caterpillar, and in his wake trailed twenty or thirty others. Then the gap, where a car tyre had left some unfortunate caterpillars squished. Behind that, more caterpillars queued, apparently left confused as to why the deceased in front of them had stopped moving. The queue stretched back across the road and disappeared into the grass. It was an extraordinary sight.
The caterpillars were fairly bulky and fuzzy things, with long hairs, and they were so interesting that I remained with them watching their activities for the best part of an hour. I had never seen anything quite like it. On the far side of the road stretched a long puddle of water, a consequence of the previous afternoon's storm, and this proved an insurmountable barrier to the lead group of caterpillars. The first guy, to his credit, made a bold attempt to swim for it, but turned back fairly quickly and they all began to head back across the road. The responsibility for leading the second group, held up by the death of their companions, now fell upon the first survivor. Given this chance by mere fate he turned out to be not quite up to the job. Instead of proceeding past the victims and marching onward he instead turned and looped around in a big arch, which inevitably eventually brought him back around to the line that he was leading. He then shoved his way back into the line, presumably trying to hide himself in amongst what was now, absurdly, a spinning circle of caterpillars all following each other.
This silliness was no isolated incident, however. The line of caterpillars leading into the circle responded by making a similar loop in the opposite direction.
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Eventually a more streetwise caterpillar broke free from the madness and led everyone across the road. He was following in the tracks that had been left by the first group. This seemed like a fairly sensible strategy. Except unfortunately the first group, in retreat from the puddle, had made a couple of right turns themselves, and as a consequence bumped into this second group, which they started to follow, so that now the first group was following the second group which was following the first group. And then, as if all this wasn't crazy enough, a third group had emerged from the grass a couple of metres away, and they were now marching across the road too.
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At this point a pick-up truck towing a large trailer came along the road, and pulled up to see if everything was alright. It was a friendly middle-aged couple and after I'd told them about the caterpillars they smiled and said they'd seen them around too, and they also warned me not to touch them as they were apparently pretty poisonous and would leave me covered in nasty welts. And I'd thought they looked so cute. Well obviously the truck was going to cause even more chaos to the caterpillars but there was no avoiding it and we all chuckled about that, and the couple began to drive off. But then they stopped again, just before the first line. There was a pause, and I wondered what was going to happen. The truck's reverse lights came on and it slowly backed up. I thought they were going to come back to speak with me again, but instead they suddenly sped forward, veered sharply to the left, and vaulted up the side of the embankment. It was a steep one too, a good foot high, and the trailer crashed up and down it. It was a remarkable moment, from which the caterpillars had escaped largely unscathed.
Unfortunately, however, the caterpillars were still mostly going around in circles. I realised that the main cause of this was the inability to cross the puddle, and so I decided to try and help them. At first I made a bridge out of a stick, and placed it in the path of the third group. The first and second groups had got themselves into too much of a mess, but the third group was basically moving in a straight line behind their original leader, and I still had hope for them. Alas, the leader did not feel confident about the stick, and preferred to detour over the mud barrier I'd built, and lead his gang of faithful followers into the murky puddle below.
I changed tack, and spent some considerable time constructing a causeway out of mud, and a path leading to it. Then I tried to poke (with a stick, from a safe distance) a caterpillar to break it out of the line and get it to lead the ones behind it to the causeway and the safety of the far embankment. Sadly the new guy was no leader, and this too met with failure. It seemed like all these caterpillars really wanted to do was follow each other around in circles. So I left them to it.
26/03/16 – 85km
27/03/16 – 81km
Today's ride: 166 km (103 miles)
Total: 47,800 km (29,684 miles)
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