Day 20: Swanpool to Merton

May 30, 2023

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The highway was quite busy through the night and there was no avoiding it. The shoulder was intermittent to say the least, it seems that shoulders are been added gradually on these roads as roadworks are been done. Most of this stretch had no shoulder. To add to the problems their was a gravel quarry somewhere along the road with a constant stream of gravel trucks. Over the whole journey these type of trucks have been consistently by far the worst vehicles on the road. The professional drivers of road trains seem to have got the message that it's unethical to kill cyclists but this hasn't filtered down to the every day local drivers. Perhaps they get paid per load or something. It was unfortunate that this road wasn't safe because some of the scenery was fantastic. Lake Nillahcootie is quite stunning, a telephone camera could not do it justice.

Taking advantage of the BBQ for breakfast.

Too early to camp otherwise we would have been in.

We finally came to a parting of the roads and some major roadworks, fortunately for us, almost all the traffic went the other way to avoid the delay. Before long we were able to veer off onto the Victorian Rail Trail, one of the objectives of the trip, at last something to tick off. The trail starts at Mansfield, where the other road went, but we joined a little way along. When planning the trip I saw that we would be passing through Bonnie Doon, I didn't even know that Bonnie Doon was a real place, I thought it was a fictional town made up for the film. (Everyone in Australia should know what I'm talking about, for those not in Australia, "google it"). We were both excited about this, particularly me, I could do with a bit of serenity after the highway. We used to travel extensively, particularly in our fruit picking days, but I don't think I ever visited the Goulburn Valley. I was really taken by how beautiful it is, the scenery was magnificent. Talking to people later I learnt that it is not always this good and not long ago Lake Eildon was a dust bowl, the recent floods have helped. The ride into Bonnie Doon was not only scenic but very exciting, in fact I was so excited that I forgot to take a picture of the power lines. Quite a few people have asked me if I took a picture of the power lines. Not sure what I was expecting to find in the town, probably a Kerrigan version of Glenrowan. After the scenery coming in to town, the town itself is a little underwhelming, the only reference that I saw to 'The Castle' was a Serenity Burger at the roadhouse. Opportunity missed if you ask me. We had lunch at the tables opposite the roadhouse but it was freezing. We contemplated camping at Bonnie Doon for a couple of days but when it's that cold you tend to just keep moving. Someone told us where the house was but it sounded a bit too much effort at the time, I think I regret that decision now.

The famous Lake Eildon. You can feel the serenity rising off it like a mist.

Having decided against camping at Bonnie Doon we moved on. The rail trail was in quite good condition considering the recent floods. The surface was obviously much slower than the bitumen but good nevertheless. The trail basically follows the Goulbourn Valley. Being a rail trail the gradients are not too severe, except where the trail has had to veer off the embankment and rejoin, but some of the hills are long.

We exited the trail for the evening at a town called Merton. The only shop is the usual roadhouse. The roadhouses that we came across in Victoria were all almost identical, a limited supply of dried up fried food kept in a warmer, some basic groceries and other supplies. I got the feeling that most of these places had been saved from closure by new Indian owners. This one sold a very nice Indian Tea. We rode just out of town to the racecourse where there was a picnic area with BBQ, unfortunately, a caravan had parked right next to it. It wouldn't be fair for me to complain, although I did at the time, because we wanted to do the same thing. We parked the bikes to look for the best place to camp and I think we scared the old people in the van because she came out to check us out. The entrance to the actual racecourse had a sign prohibiting caravans, which technically, didn't include us. We wandered around the racecourse buildings and decided that the race day alcohol concession stall was for us. This had a roof with a bar on three sides for protection. We'd just unloaded all of our stuff when the groundsman turned up to do his stuff. Fortunately, he was very friendly and said it was fine us camping there.

We decided to walk back to the roadhouse for some chips to go with dinner and Annette another cup of coffee. The shelter made cooking easy. We decided to sleep without the tent as we were in a shelter, what could go wrong. During the night a very heavy mist descended and I could feel things getting wet, time for the tent, waking Annette up and convincing her of the necessity was harder than putting up the tent. Just as well we did because next morning everything was soaked.

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,156 km (718 miles)

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