We woke up beside the rail-trail (which, other than the occasional wombats and kangaroos, we had had all to ourselves) and stuck reflective tape on our panniers. Today we would reach Orbost and beyond this town it would be necessary to cycle on roads for the majority of the rest of our journey. Throughout my travels I had always done everything possible to make myself visible, believing that a major part of staying safe on a bicycle is to be seen, and now I also felt responsible for making sure Dea was protected, and so I thought that the black part of our panniers could do with jazzing up a little. With strips of fluorescent yellow added to the front bags and reflective red on the back this tape certainly did the trick. Now we were ready for the roads. But we had a little bit more to go on the rail-trail first, a last few kilometres to Orbost, and we decided to set up a photo with both of us cycling side-by-side for our memories. When we saw the result we had to laugh. “Maybe I’m a bit too much influenced by you” Dea giggled. It did seem as if I’d created a clone:

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In Orbost we went to the library and used the Internet, and also went shopping to buy plenty of food, because we were going to be going on a road which went up into the mountains and we wouldn’t see another town for a few days. I also went to a second-hand charity shop whilst Dea was in the library and I found a fluorescent yellow waterproof jacket for her. She’d been after such a thing and this seemed perfect. Not only was it bright and waterproof it was also in a different colour from any of my own clothes, so we could stop looking like twins now. I brought it back to the library and presented it to her. She loved it.

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Most of the people we had spoken to about our plans had told us that we would have no choice but to cycle on Princes Highway, the main road, because there weren’t any alternatives. Almost no one had mentioned the road north from Orbost that we planned to take, and maybe nobody else knew about it, because there was an astonishing lack of traffic on it. Although it was well paved and climbed steadily up through temperate rainforest it was in many ways like still being on the rail-trail. There was maybe one vehicle every ten or fifteen minutes and other than that we were able to cycle merrily along undisturbed.

Passing a sign saying that we were 90 kilometres from a place with the initials BG my old game from the Nullarbor was resurrected, and I declared that we had to think of three famous people with the initials B.G.

“Why three?” Dea enquired.

“Because there were three Bee-Gees” I grinned.

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Dea immediately came up with Bill Gates, which was very impressive. But after that great start we struggled for a while to think of any more. I thought of Betty Gable and Bobby Gillespie, but I wasn’t confident enough that either of them were real people to count them, especially with Dea screwing up her face and saying “Who???”

We went on like this all afternoon, winding our way through the forest on our lovely little road, until in a moment of inspiration I came up with Bamber Gascoigne.

“Who???” She’d screwed up her face again.

“Erm… I think he was a DJ in the 1980s. Or possibly Paul Gascoigne’s daughter. You know Paul Gascoigne. Gazza.”

“Who???”

I decided to count Bamber Gascoigne, because even though I didn't know who he or she was, I knew enough to know that he or she was definitely a real famous celebrity. But then we were back to struggling again, and the day was drawing to a close without our third and final BeeGee. I thought of Bryan Gunn, who definitely was a real person, but being the Norwich City goalkeeper in the early nineties probably wasn’t enough fame to qualify him as a famous person, and I don’t need to tell you what Dea responded when I mentioned him. On her part she had come up with Bryan Giggs, which was unfortunately disqualified on a technicality. And then, in another moment of inspiration, my 1980’s musical trivia knowledge came to the rescue once more and I shouted out “Boy George!” which was brilliant, because not only had Dea heard of Boy George she had even seen him in concert. Then I took my 1980s musical trivia knowledge too far and said “Oh, and Bob Geldof!”

“Who???”