September 3, 2015
The day I misplaced my platypus: And other tales
We had planned to get up at four in the morning and cycle under the light of the moon. I forget why. But when we woke at four there was lots of rain, and wind, and thunder, and so we thought 'nah, let's not do that.' After a bit of a snooze we woke up again at five thirty, and the weather was much improved, so we got up and cycled with the first rays of the new morning. The road was quiet until Nana Glen, then it got busier to Glenraugh, then we had breakfast, then we carried on, then we saw a big dingo.
The road wasn't really very nice. There was no shoulder and too much traffic and at one point I was run off the road by a big truck. I don't like it when that happens. But there were no other choices, we had to keep going with this road. Dea was doing just that, she was off ahead again. But I caught her up when she stopped at a little gravel lay-by. I pulled over to see what was up, and she announced that she had just reached 2000 kilometres cycled since we began together in Melbourne. No mean feat and I naturally offered her a high-five and a “Way to go Dea!” And then just as we were about to continue on our way she happened to glance at my front left pannier and then, with a concerned look, asked me “Where is Mr Plopples?”
Our merry band of cuddly toys all had their own places. Wilma the wombat sat watching the world go by on Dea's handlebars whilst Karen the kangaroo slept under some mesh on the back of her bike. I kept the other two in my front panniers where I could see them, Kevin the koala peeking out on the right and Mr Plopples the platypus safely secured under the strap of my left bag. Except Mr Plopples the platypus was now most definitely no longer safely secured under the strap of my left bag. He'd gone AWOL. Dea and I exchanged worried glances. I gulped. I'd lost Mr Plopples.
There was nothing else for it, I was going to have to go back and look for him. We were a team. We couldn't leave anyone behind. I stripped all the bags off my bike and, with Dea resting in the shade of a small tree, I set off to retrace my steps. Suddenly I was no longer concerned about the dangers of the road – all of my attention as I cycled was focused on the ground on the far side of the road. I scoured it desperately for any sign of a distressed platypus. I was frantic, I simply had to find Mr Plopples. These animals, whilst, admittedly only being cuddly toys, represented much more than that. They were like family to us. They were like our kids. In fact us having them with us was a bit like a practice run for Dea and I one day having children. And one thing was for sure, Dea was never going to have kids with me if I couldn't even look after a stuffed platypus.
A few times I thought I saw Mr P, and got a bit excited, but it turned out to be a rock, or a branch. I was starting to get really worried, and was wondering how far I could go back to look. I tried to recall when I had last seen Mr Plopples, and I couldn't remember, and decided I was going to be a really bad father. But then suddenly I saw him, lying forlornly in the dirt at the side of the road. It was at the spot where the truck had run me off earlier. I crossed over and scooped up the poor little guy. What a relief it was to see that dear platypus again! Maybe there was hope for me yet.
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Once reunited with Dea and the rest of our band , we continued on the road to Grafton. It was very windy, so windy that a branch was blown from a tree and narrowly avoided hitting me as I cycled past. It was quite an event, and I made a point of telling Dea all about this near miss the next time that we stopped to take a break and do a headcount. Then Dea made me giggle when she said “It's the first time I've had wind on this trip” and she didn't understand why I was giggling, which made it even funnier.
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35 kilometres after the above photo was taken we arrived in Grafton. Here we took a break in a park where a small aboriginal boy came over and pointed at things on our bikes and asked “What is this?' Dea made friends with him and answered all of his questions, which in fact were the same question, just with him pointing at different things. Then a white man who was with the boy and the rest of the family came over and said “This one's a little underdone” which didn't seem like a very nice thing to say about a human being, “He's five going on two” and then he explained that he was some sort of social worker and that this was a family meeting, that the mother had had her six kids taken off her because she was addicted to ice (the drug, not the frozen water). It was a sad situation, one that we'd heard was all too common in Australia, particularly amongst aboriginals. The boys name was Wayne, and before we left we gave him some kiwi fruit, which he said was very tasty.
We next went to Grafton information centre, where we gathered enough information to calculate that we were just five days from our destination of Surfers Paradise. Then we had to cross over a big bridge and almost took the road, which would have been a mistake, but luckily a car pulled over to us and told us that there was a bike path we should take, which was much better. The bridge was crazy because it was a railway bridge and a traffic bridge, with the traffic being directly over and above the railway. The bike path runs alongside the railway, which is why we nearly missed it. Don't do that! Cycling in the road so high up in the wind would have been a BIG mistake.
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We cycled out of Grafton and turned off onto a really tiny road. It was so lovely – right next to a river that reminded me of the Danube. We were looking for a place to camp but unfortunately there was only farmland and we were horribly exposed to the wind and so we had to keep going until we were back on a main road. Here a car pulled over and an older gentleman came to speak with us. He was a cycle tourist and he wanted to help, but he wasn't much help, because he kept telling us to keep going straight on the busy road even though I could see on the map that there was a much smaller road turning off that would take us into the forest which would surely be ideal for camping. The old fellow ignored that idea, however, and insisted we'd better stick to the main road. Despite the evident problems of heavy traffic and nowhere to camp he didn't know anything about the small road and thought we might run into trouble on it. Luckily we weren't obliged to follow his advice however, and once he'd left we just turned off onto the small road anyway.
It turned out to be a great decision. The road was empty and we saw a load of kangaroos (I temporarily got the score back to 50-50 before Dea pulled back ahead 59-50) and before too long we reached the forest which was absolutely ideal for camping out of the wind. We put up the tent and cooked bean burgers for supper (my comment of “maybe we will have trouble with wind after all” was wasted on Dea) and they were delicious, and we even had lemon cake for dessert. It was such a nice evening and Dea got out her ukele and played songs and sang beautifully. It was exactly one year since we had met, and it was perfect.
Today's ride: 81 km (50 miles)
Total: 47,008 km (29,192 miles)
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