August 6, 2015
Oh God, there could be sharks!!!: Perhaps we would not return
After a brief stint on another busier road we were once again off on smaller roads as soon as we could. These took us through the ‘tourist villages’ of Tilba Tilba and Central Tilba. In the first we stopped at ‘Pam’s General Store’ where we found a surprisingly masculine Pam behind the counter. He couldn’t tell us why Tilba was a tourist village, just that it was, but he did tell us a rather scary story about seeing a cyclist getting hit by the car in front of him on Princes Highway. Confirmation, if it was needed, that we were doing the right thing by getting off the beaten track.
A few kilometres after Tilba Tilba came Central Tilba, a surreal little place that looked like a movie set. It looked very fake. But it was here that we stopped anyway and looked in a little shop that sold touristy things and we found a most adorable little fellow who begged us to take him with us. He said he was bored of the shop and wanted an adventure, and travelling around the world with us was just what he wanted. So we thought why not, and I had yet another adorable companion. To think that I did so much of this trip all alone, and now I not only had Dea, and Karen and Kennet and Mr Plopples, but now I had Kevin the koala too:
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Back in the forest it was another wonderfully amazing and awesomely lovely day. Hardly any traffic to contend with and the only road congestion we had was when a herd of escaped cows blocked our path, and then ran ahead of us in such a way that we could not get past them. So we unavoidably herded them all down the road for quite some time, until a few slowed and we got around them, and some others ran into the forest, and eventually we could get through. Then there was just the fun cycling and the kangaroo spotting and me thinking about how, after such a long and at times very difficult journey, I should be so very, very fortunate to have this amazing riding right at the end of it all.
Then, just because it seemed like wonderful things couldn’t stop happening to us, we came to an incredibly beautiful lake in the forest. It looked absolutely like a mirror and was so beautiful I could hardly believe it was real. I simply had to go for a swim and stripped to my boxers and dived in. Oh it was ice cold it really was, and I was also surprised to find it was salt water. It was like a fjord, connected to the sea somehow through the forest. I clambered out again as fast as I could, numbed by the cold and screaming “Sharks, Oh God, there could be sharks!!!”
We carried on following the gravel roads for the rest of the day even as they got progressively worse. The track we were following narrowed and grew more overgrown and unmaintained and eventually we found a white piece of tape stretched across it indicating that perhaps the way ahead was closed. This didn’t bother Dea in the least, she pressed on regardless with typical determination. A bumpy ride followed, several water crossings too, as we descended deeper and deeper into the forest, perhaps never to return…
Today's ride: 42 km (26 miles)
Total: 45,730 km (28,398 miles)
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