July 29, 2015
Into the forest: He must not have noticed my shirt
Unfortunately the red tape that I had stuck to the back of my panniers the day before was already peeling off and so first thing in the morning I got out the superglue and tried to reattach it more firmly. Doing this in the slightly cramped confines of our tent was perhaps a mistake, however, and I soon got superglue everywhere. “Where’s my hat?” Dea asked, rummaging through her stuff. “Here it is,” I replied cheerfully, “It is superglued to my pannier. Sorry.”
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It was such a lovely morning. The road remained almost empty and continued to wind up and down and round and round like a rollercoaster through the temperate rainforests. It was already one of the best roads I’d cycled on in the whole trip, but it got even more extraordinary when we reached an area where there had obviously been a forest fire in recent years. Australian forests are quite incredible in the sense that they are designed to burn every so often, with some trees and plants even having seeds that can only germinate with the help of fire. Consequently, far from being destroyed by the fire, the forest had come back stronger, a literal phoenix from the flames. At first glance it appeared that the blackened trunks of the trees had been overcome by an opportunistic bright green vine that smothered everything, but on closer inspection it became apparent that this was no parasite - it was in fact the trees themselves that were re-growing. New shoots bursting with leaves sprung from the trunks by their thousands, resulting in a fantastic effect unlike anything I had ever seen before. Cycling through this amphitheatre of majestic trees was an experience to be savoured.
We came to a rest area beside a stream, and chose to take a rest. But we were not alone. A van was parked up and a young couple were sitting on the picnic bench near to the embers of a campfire. They were Joe and Zoe, from South Africa and Tasmania and they were driving up the coast from Melbourne, although they were going a bit faster than us, having only left a couple of days previously. We introduced ourselves, although Dea need not really have bothered as she was wearing her Drug Enforcement Administraion vest, and consequently had her name emblazoned across her chest. They were very nice, and let us use their stove to cook some food, ours being broken, whilst we chatted and exchanged stories. Hearing that we were planning to work pedicabbing up in Gold Coast, Joe suggested that we would probably be able to make a profit if we also sold weed on the side. Then we talked about tree planting in Canada, because Zoe was planning to go and do that, and I did it back in 2011, so I told her about it. Then Joe chipped in that you could probably also make money trimming weed out there. They were a lovely pair, were Joe and Zoe, and we spent a couple of hours chatting with them, Joe mentioning weed whenever he could, before bidding them farewell and continuing our ride. As we cycled off Dea whispered “He talked about weed a lot didn’t he. He must not have noticed my shirt.”
We cycled for a few more hours that afternoon, thoroughly pleasant it was too. With no more BeeGees to think of we had ourselves a new game too. After the success of the horse spotting and the koala spotting we decided to now get points for spotting kangaroos, rabbits and llamas. Other than the joy of spotting a kangaroo and the general loveliness of the cycling I have not much else to report of the ride up to Goongerah, where we stopped for the night at a free campground. Joe and Zoe said that they might also stop here but there was no sign of them, and so we had the place to ourselves. Well, almost. Whilst Dea was busy scouring the nearby stream for platypuses I bumped into a man who was out walking his dog. It seemed he lived in a large tent next door to the campground and he had long white hair and wild eyes and a Cornish accent and was a bit, well, strange. I asked him if he had seen Joe and Zoe and he said that he had not, in a way which suggested that he might possibly have just killed them. I thought it best not to mention this to Dea.
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Today's ride: 44 km (27 miles)
Total: 45,438 km (28,217 miles)
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