August 10, 2015
Shallow Crossing: Cycling on water
After the way the sceptical man had spoken to us about what we would face at ‘Shallow Crossing’ we were both cautious and excited as we packed up in the morning. I was triple waterproofing things, eagerly anticipating having to stagger across a fifty-metre wide torrent of raging white water carrying all of my stuff above my head, Dea clinging to my shoulders. Whatever was really ahead of us I already knew that was, at least, how it would play out in the movie.
Our map did have a footnote saying that Shallow Crossing was impassable after heavy rainfall and we passed several signs telling us that the road we were cycling on was prone to flooding, but luckily enough for us there had not been very much rain at all recently. Even so we did have several small waterways to ford before even reaching our ultimate challenge at Shallow Crossing.
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After all the build-up of anticipation it was an exciting moment to come down around a bend in the forest and finally reach the fabled ‘Shallow Crossing.’ The river was still very wide but the sceptical man’s assertion that it would be impossible to cross by bicycle was very much a false one. In fact it turned out that the clue had been in the name all along – it was a very shallow crossing. The gravel road ran down into the river, but a raised smooth concrete roadway linked to the other side with not more than ten centimetres of calm water passing over it. I went in first. The water didn’t even reach the bottom of my panniers and I could easily cycle across to the other side of the river without so much as getting my feet wet. I did get my feet wet though, because it was such an awesome novelty to be cycling across a river that we both went back and forth across it three or four times and I even waded out into the river to get an awesome photo of Dea cycling on water.
Pretty much nothing else happened for the rest of the day as we once again enjoyed a peaceful cycle through the forest back roads. We were keen to make the most of it as we knew that we would have to return to busier roads soon. At one point I thought I heard a kangaroo and turned to look but it was in fact an old bearded man who was rustling about in the undergrowth in the middle of nowhere and who looked at me and said “G’day” which was pretty much the only contact with humanity we had all day. I did later go on to see my one-hundredth kangaroo, rabbit or llama of our competition, which was a moment of great excitement for me.
The next day we emerged from the forest and found ourselves in the historic town of Milton, where the only very historic thing we saw was a tree that had undoubtedly been around for much longer than any European settlers. It was a most extraordinary tree. Dea climbed inside it and I thought I might never see her again.
Unfortunately we then had to take Princes Highway for the next sixty kilometres. Most of the time it had a wide shoulder but it was very busy and when the shoulder disappeared on blind corners it was a bit terrifying. Then we stopped to take a break in a bus shelter and I was very much reminded of my time in Siberia. The road was very similar and I suppose I realised that I was a bit spoilt now. Sure, we had to do 60 kilometres on this road, but back in Siberia I’d done 3,000 kilometres on this type of highway, with the added danger of drunk Russians making dangerous overtakes. As we sat in the bus stop and I told Dea how it reminded me of sitting in a Siberian bus stop she responded by pointing out “That was a year ago wasn’t it?” And I realised that it really had been a year since Siberia, and I wondered where all the time could have gone.
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As if to remind me that I very definitely wasn’t in Siberia anymore I saw several herds of kangaroos. We’d temporarily postponed the kangaroo, rabbit and llama spotting game while we were on the highway because it was too dangerous to be doing things like that, but oddly enough it turned out to be the day when we saw the most kangaroos. I saw four or five separate herds of about twenty kangaroos in fields right next to the major road, completely indifferent to the noise of all the traffic.
We decided to press on quickly and make it through the big town of Nowra before dark. This we did, although we were certainly pressed for time as we joined the rush hour traffic flowing through the town and out the other side. The last of the daylight was almost gone by the time we escaped onto a smaller road where we hoped to find somewhere to camp. Alas we now found ourselves surrounded by fields and we were fenced in on both sides, with nowhere to put a tent. Consequently Dea finally got to fulfil her ambition of cycling under the stars.
We kept on going in the dark for a while, forced to continue until fate would bring us somewhere to sleep. And fate stepped up to the plate beautifully when one of the few cars that passed us on this back-road pulled up next to us and the female driver asked us where we were planning to spend the night. Upon hearing that we had no fixed plans at all in that regard she immediately offered to put us up for the night at her farm house a couple of kilometres further up the road.
It turned out to be rather a long two kilometres, but that didn’t matter when we finally reached our destination and found the woman, Keren, out looking for us with her torch. She showed us back to the wonderful house that she shares with her husband Phil. As cyclists and warmshowers hosts themselves, we had really landed on our feet here and we were shown the most fantastic hospitality by these lovely people. As it happened their youngest daughter had just ‘flown the nest’ so to speak, having left for university a few days earlier and it worked out very nicely for us as we made ourselves at home in her room for the night.
Keren and Phil were a very likeable couple who worked hard at their self-made carpentry business in Nowra. They made us feel very much at home, were great company, made us delicious food for dinner, let us each take a hot shower and of course we got to spend the night in a comfortable bed. It was a fantastic end to the day considering a few hours earlier we had been cycling about in the dark looking for a patch of cold ground to lay our heads. The kindness of strangers, eh?
09/08/15 – 43km
10/08/15 – 88km
Today's ride: 131 km (81 miles)
Total: 45,967 km (28,546 miles)
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