Looking out onto the Murray plain

Sedan has a small population and a few old heritage-listed houses as well as a small supermarket where I stopped for a cup of tea. The shady veranda of the pub opposite looked very inviting, but I had another 30 km to go across some open country – an almost straight road with nothing in between. Once the train had come here, but little of its past importance remains.
Well, the Murray flats looked flat from the top of the hill and for a motorist they probably seem flat, but for a cyclist on a warm day they are not. Up and down, up and down, not by a lot, but enough to have to keep pedalling most of the time. At Swan Reach there is no bridge but there is a 24-hour free ferry service -as there is on all the Murray towns without a bridge . There aren’t many bridges on the river around here and the only one I know of is in a town called…Murray Bridge ! At all the other places ferries incessantly plough backwards and forwards across the river, which down here is quite wide.

Murray at Swan Reach

The Swan Reach caravan park is small and cheap and nearly empty and it’s right down by the river, so the first thing I did was to go for a swim – beautiful after that hard ride !The town’s one hotel in a beautiful setting overlooking the river had a very nice bistro where I was able to savour a lovely meal. It was Saturday night and the bar next door was getting very noisy. I stayed a while to listen to a few oldies – Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” – then walked back to camp. This my third night “on the road” would be my first camping.

The following morning was lovely and sunny. I had just spent my first night in my new cocoon tent. Very light and very small – it

My lightweight tent

weighed only 1.1 kg which was the main reason I had bought it – once it was up I actually hunted around for a while to figure out how to get in. The poles and holes were colour-coded which I thought was a good idea, so it was straightforward to put up. After breakfast and packing up, the road heads back up to the level of the plain. The plain is about 30m above the river level and in some places there are spectacular cliffs. Today I was heading for Mannum, about 62 km down river.

Near Big Bend

Big Bend looking south

Along the way there were several lookouts where you get a magnificent view over the river valley. Along the way, particularly near the river, there are irrigated orchards.

Big Bend looking north

Elsewhere Malley scrub alternates with cleared, barren pasture. At about the halfway point, it was back across the river with a ferry at Walker’s Flat, a little oasis in this empty dry country. I had lunch down by the river near the ferry crossing under shady trees with ochre-coloured cliff-faces opposite.
I asked for the road to Mannum and was told “up the hill to the T-intersection then it’s downhill all the way”. I’d heard that sort of thing before, and coming from people used to going everywhere in cars, this had to be taken with a grain of salt. Motorists tend not to notice rolling slopes, they mostly remember big hills, either up or down. And so it was. The hill before the T-intersection was long and slow and about 10 km long – very hard going particularly with

Ferry at Walker's Flat showing 1956 flood level

a strong southerly blowing, a head wind for me. About 5 km further on there was a short steep downhill section – the hill that the motorist had remembered – then a longer flattish section into Mannum. These last 10 km or so were scenically the best, following the river at water level and going past wetlands. However the head wind had increased in intensity and pedalling, even on the flat, was becoming exhausting and very unpleasant. So I was relieved when around a bend I came into the town of Mannum, first riding opposite a bird sanctuary on the river side of the road, then along a lush green park. The Visitor’s Centre had just closed – it was Sunday – so I went to the caravan park to set up camp and go for a swim.

Busy ferry crossing at Mannum

The next morning I left the camping ground around 10 am and headed for the nearby Visitors Centre. It includes a museum covering the early years in the area, in particular the era of paddle steamers on the Murray. Near here is where the first such vessel was launched in 1846 and very soon the steamers provided all sorts of services up and down the river – passengers, postal, cargo, milk collection. One of the pioneers was William Randell, the great great grandfather of Alex in Nuriootpa ! She had told me about him a few days before. A renovated paddle steamer, the “Marion” built 1904, was on the wharf and does tours several times a month.

The "Marion" at Mannum

There is also a good 20 min documentary on the record 100-year flood of 1956. It was apparently of vast proportions mobilising the whole population for about 3 months, causing huge damage to the local economy which only recovered after a few years. During this time a lot of other things were going on elsewhere in Australia and the world – the Suez conflict, the Olympic Games in Melbourne – so the flood got little press coverage outside of South Australia and apparently not enough sympathy in Canberra. It may or may not be related, but even today in talking with people here, I think I’ve noticed a sense of identify of people with their state. The state’s livelihood depends a lot on this river and such disasters forge a sense of togetherness. They also know that the waters now causing massive flooding – again – in Queensland and NSW will all come down here within a few months and so they are preparing for high water. The Murray -Darling basin drains a huge area and the rainwater all eventually flows down to the mouth of the Murray. There are huge water management problems to deal with, look here for more discussion.
Like Nuriootpa, Mannum has a library with internet access where I spent an hour catching up on emails. Then I crossed the river and rode up the other side on the road to Murray Bridge. The weather was a bit cooler today but the wind had picked up, still a strong gusty headwind. So it was a long hard fight to get to Murray Bridge as it was all hills, constantly going up and down and the headwind forced me to pedal on the way down, so at no stage could I relax. The scenery was not much to look at either – mostly dry scrub. Signs warned of roadside broomrape invasion (a plant pest).
Murray Bridge has the only bridge over the Murray and it’s an old bridge, long and narrow, built in 1860 for all traffic, rail and road. A new bridge for the railroad was added around 1900. After lunch where I was disappointed to find that the German Bakery advertised in the brochure no longer existed, I stopped at the Visitors Centre to get some information about roads and camping grounds. For once, the advice about hills was almost

Wellington ferry crossing

completely right – no more hills once out of town. From here on it was a much more pleasant ride south towards Wellington on the Jervois rode. This is apparently another name of French origin, but here is pronounced Jervoize. The road wound lazily through pasture and dairy country with only the occasional rise at a very reasonable grade.
At Jervois there is another ferry linking it to Tailem Bend, another old town. I continued on the same side (western) for another 11 km to Wellington. The road goes almost exclusively through dairy country and as I was passing through around 5 pm, all the herds were standing around outside sheds waiting to be milked.

Wellington near where the Murray runs into Lake Alexandrina  is a very small place today although in the 19th century it was a booming town due to the river trade. The caravan park is small and simple, again very few patrons and mine the only tent, but with a communal kitchen for making tea and charging the computer. There is a ferry across the river, the last one (or the first if you’re heading north).
I got away at 9.30 am and immediately liked the road – mostly flat – and with a cool cross-wind it was good riding. In contrast to yesterday, I made good time and reached Milang at lunch time having covered 45 km.

Long-abandoned shack

Initially it was cleared land, mostly scrub, with the odd dairy property. Now and then away from the road I noticed big oval-shaped reddish shallow ponds resembling evaporation pools – maybe something to do with a rising water table ? At Langhorne Creek the vineyards began, almost all the way down to the lake. They were harvesting and there were both tractors and trucks on the road carrying either empty or full bins. In the wine-growing areas I’m familiar with in Europe it’s usually a tractor towing one or two bins on a trailer to the local cooperative. Here it’s double semi-trailers carrying dozens and dozens of bins, sometimes to places very far away ! A lot of the vines were very old with massive trunks, being certainly over 100 years old.

Old vines at Langhorne Creek

Milang is a lovely little spot on the lake with piers and a tidy shore-front and many empty cabins obviously there for vacationers that had already left. There I met the first cyclist I had seen for 5 days – the only other ones I saw were on the first day, some sporty types going up to the Barossa. He was out for a day’s ride.  A little later on I saw two more. But I never saw any touring cyclists. One of the ferry drivers told me a touring recumbent cyclist had passed through a month ago.
Written on the back on a van that passed me at a leisurely pace was “The minute you save in this world might put you 25 years ahead into the next”. It was written in big black capitals, I don’t know how they fitted all that in. A couple of probably cautious drivers seemed to be obediently following the van.
After Finnis the country became a bit hillier but nothing really worth mentioning. I arrived in Goolwa in time to book a Coorong tour for the following day. I had planned to do some kayaking with a guy recommended by Jim and Ruth, an ex-neighbour of theirs, but he wasn’t free on this Wednesday.
The Goolwa Tourist Park is at the top of town but it’s only a 10 min walk in to the centre. It has decent amenities, although the tent area is a bit neglected, and only cost $10. In all 4 caravan parks I’ve stayed at, mine has been the only tent. In Australia, caravan park is synonymous with camping ground. Most people either rent cabins or they have their van or caravan. Has camping, like people walking on footpaths, gone out of fashion ? On the other hand it could be argued that the real campers camp out in the bush or in National Parks where amenities are rudimentary or non-existent. But that means carrying food and water for several days, something I can’t do easily on the bike. In any case, the only thing I can say for sure is that there aren’t many touring cyclists. I didn’t encounter any in 8 days.

As I was going out on the Coorong adventure cruise, I packed up all my things and left them at the park office. I walked down to the wharf where the two boats “Spirit of Coorong” were waiting. There were about 25 people in each boat. We had a crew of two, Mike the skipper and main guide and Rick the purser. During the 6-hour trip we spent 4

Goolwa barrage

on the water going down past the mouth of the Murray and a further 2 on two short walks on the Younghusband Peninsula, in the Coorong National Park. One walk was to the surf beach to explain the cockle-shuffle. This is the traditional method of extracting cockles from the wet sand: you plant both feet in the sand and twist to and fro forcing the cockles to the surface. It sort of worked. On the way there and back we got some explanations of plants and food that the aborigines in this area used. Back at the boat, Rick had prepared (previously collected) cockled in white wine and cream and we were served hors d’oeuvres on the beach.

Vegetation on the Coorong

We had a tasty lunch on board and I appreciated the fact that no disposable plates or mugs were used, everything was real and got washed up at the end. The other walk was further along the peninsula, further south-east, at Cattle Point, where Mike took us to see an aboriginal midden about 5000 years old. It was very hot on the dunes, no shade anywhere, the sand seemed to have a magnifying effect.
The actual mouth of the Murray is not very large, maybe 50m wide, you could easily miss it and in fact Charles Sturt did on his famous expedition. It also moves around a lot over the years due to the huge amounts of shifting sands displaced by wind and water. It did actually close for a short time in 1971, reopening naturally after rains. During the drought in the last decade it only remained opened thanks to the continuous dredging of the channel leading up to it.

Our boat

All along the way there and back we saw many, many birds, pelicans, terns, ibis, heron, avocets, Cape Barren geese, cormorants and others whose names escape me, and I was able to put my binoculars to good use. The Goolwa barrage basically separates the freshwater flowing down the Murray from the saltwater coming in from the sea. Lake Alexandrina is primarily freshwater and is used for Adelaide’s water supply. When not enough water flows down the river, as was the case during drought years, the freshwater level sinks and the locks help keep out the sea water. This past year has seen a lot of flow partly due to flooding last year in Queensland and NSW and gates in the barrage must be opened accordingly. Our boat went through a lock here but the height difference was less than 50 cm.

Birds on the Coorong

Back at Goolwa I collected my bike and rode to nearby Port Elliot along a newly constructed bike path, although some of it followed existing roads. The Youth Hostel was booked out so I checked into the caravan park, one of the best so far and also the most expensive. The following day I rode back to Adelaide, firstly along some picturesque back roads to Willunga, then along the Shiraz/Coast to Vines railtrails.

On Coast to Vines trail looking south

End of the trip (sigh) at Noarlunga

During the trip I collected interesting or humorous bits and pieces read or seen in newspapers and books along the way. Here are some excerpts:

Concerning tax incentives to get people to live in the city, one person wrote to the paper “They can offer as many tax cuts as they like. You can’t put up a shed there.  And a bloke needs his shed”.

While waiting for my meal in South Australia’s oldest country pub, the Wellington Hotel, I discovered in the March edition of Tailem Topics, the origin of the word bible – Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth ! So now you know it too.

And here is an “adult” joke I came across that you can tell to just about anybody:
Husband – Honey, ah…what if we tried changing positions tonight ?
Wife – Sure, you go over to the ironing board and I’ll sit on the couch, drink beer and fart.

Here is the google map of the trip, if it doesn’t show up, as will sometimes happen, below is the non-interactive one.

Map of bike trip SA March 2012

Overlander train at Southern Cross Station

I do quite a bit of translating and I enjoy it, but I’m more passionate about cycling and touring and interesting topics – not just for me but for others as well – are easier to find and write about. I had planned an 8-day cycling trip in South Australia, starting and ending in Adelaide. I also wanted to see the Barossa Valley, a place so much has been written and talked about.
I had come to Adelaide with my bike by train. The Overlander goes from Melbourne to Adelaide on one day and back the next (or the other way around) and like the Ghan and Indian Pacific is run by Great Southern Rail. I had purchased a standard seat – the Red service – and it turned out to be very comfortable with plenty of leg room and free footstools. The journey lasts about 10 ½ hours and covers the 830 km at an average speed of 85 km/h, a leisurely pace which allows you to take in the countryside.

Torrens River in Adelaide

Main stops before Adelaide are Geelong, Ararat, Stawell, Horsham, Dimboola, Nhill, Bordertown, Tailem Bend and Murray Bridge. At each stop the conductor, in a few sentences, presents the town – its history, its population etc.

The first day was very hard. It started out fine – and ended very well too – but for about 3 hours it was horrible and I was wondering how it would end. I left the Youth Hostel in central Adelaide, in Waymouth St, and headed for the river, only about 1km and 2 sets of traffic lights away. I mention the traffic lights because you can wait a long time for the green light – this is the case in Melbourne as well, a noticeable difference for a European visitor more used to sub-minute traffic-light cycles – spending more time stationary than moving, so for any trip in the CBD you want to minimise their number. I noticed this the day before when I had hired a free bike in order to visit the place. Yes, at Bicycle SA, 115 Franklin St, you can hire a bike for the day at no cost – that’s bike-friendly !  The Linear Park in Adelaide is so named – I assume – because it’s very long and very narrow. It follows the Torrens river upstream, which was the way I was going, and has a bike path on either side for its whole length. This makes it a great way to get through the city – no cars, no traffic lights, no noise – and it’s picturesque as well.
I left at 8am and got to the end of the Park, where Gorge Rd comes in, at 9.30. Here I got onto the road and followed it for about 8 kms through a narrow valley cut out by the river.

Mawson trail

I then turned off the bitumen onto the start of the Mawson trail, here just a gravel track that turned about to be the worst surface on the steepest track I’ve ever been on. For the next 3 kms I struggled up a rocky and muddy road whose average inclination was 13%. I was pushing my bike nearly all the time and on occasion I could hardly push it forward due to the combination of steepness and lack of adherence on the rocky, muddy track. I finally reached the top at around 12.30 pm and things started to improve – I could actually sit on the bike and ride. I would not recommend this last section of the track – only about 5 kms in length – to anyone except exceptionally fit riders on very light and sturdy mountain bikes; definitely not fully loaded touring bikes

A magnificent old gum

even with wide tires and suspension as I had. I arrived at Lobethal at 1.30pm completely exhausted. Contrary to what I had seen in print, I did not find the town particularly pretty, but they were right about the bakery. I had come across a big mountain, starting out at under 100m and reaching about 600m at the highest point on the track. Lobethal is at 450m. The mountain is mostly bush with the odd vineyard along the way and some pine plantations above Lobethal. What I also noticed was the millipedes, all over the place, on the track, on the side, everywhere, millions of them. As I write this, sitting on Jim and Ruth’s verandah (see further on), they are crawling all over the place. I don’t remember these things whilst growing up in Boronia, perhaps it’s a more recent introduction or just 30 years of uncontrolled reproduction ?
The Mawson trail continues on to Birdwood through rolling pastures, the gravel road (with a few short bitumen sections) mostly good and the scenery up to par. A few kms out of Birdwood I left the trail, as I wanted to head further west towards Lyndoch, and more particularly to Cockatoo Valley where my hosts for the night, Jim and Ruth Roberts – contacted via warmshowers - were expecting me. So it was back on major roads from then on, though traffic was light. Except for a few crests it was mostly flat with several very pleasant downhill sections before and after Williamstown.
Jim and Ruth have a 35 acre property – mostly bush which is about to be listed for heritage – 2 kms south of the town. Jim is a school teacher at Xavier college in Gawler and Ruth is a nurse. Both are lovely, warm, generous people that love the outdoors. They are keen horse-riders, kayakers and…cyclists, which is how I came to meet them. They did a 10-week cycling tour through Italy and France 2 years ago and now offer hospitality to travelling cyclists via warmshowers.org. They immediately made me feel very welcome and I appreciated their openness and generosity. Sensible, dedicated and obviously hard-working people.
On the second morning I had trouble leaving, the view from the veranda out onto the surrounding hillside, the bird calls, the breeze, were all so pleasant. My first short stop, just for a lovely latte in the shade, was Lyndoch only 8 km away, the southern end of the famous Barossa Valley. The road had wound through some bush and over a few hills and now the scenery opened up into a wide valley dotted with vineyards.  I was heading for Tanunda and although there were secondary roads to take, I decided to take the main road, the “Barossa Valley Way”, to try and get the feel for the place, how and why the

Grape harvest near Tanunda

original European settlers chose this route. Around here there are undulating hills and although there is not much declivity in absolute terms, for a cyclist it’s still hard work.
Tanunda is apparently the most well-known of the Barossa towns, the one that attracts the most tourists, has the most shops and boutiques and tour operators. I arrived around lunchtime to try out the wares of the much-applauded Tanunda bakery. Here in Tanunda it is clear that you’re in a big wide valley, that of the Para river, and you can see hills on both sides to the east and the west and between here and Nuriootpa the terrain is relatively flat.
A lot of the first Europeans to settle in the Barossa Valley came from Germany around 1840. Most were Lutherans from Silesia (Schlesien) then belonging to Prussia and today in Poland.  Initially they came seeking religious freedom and later on also for economic reasons. By that time they were joined by Germans from Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and by a Slavic group called the Wends (now called Sorbs) from Brandenburg. The political upheavals in Europe in the years around 1848 caused another small group to emigrate. Initially these immigrants practiced all manner of primary industry, grains, tobacco and some viticulture. The expansion of the wine industry, pioneered by English, Irish and German settlers only occurred slowly after the 1850’s and sixties.

Seppeltsfield

One of the early successful wine-makers was the Seppelts family who established Seppeltsfield and have become today one of Australia’s leading exporters of wine. I went there to have a look, it’s a huge place, the roads leading to it are all lined with palm trees and the family has a mausoleum on the hill – one thinks dynasty.
I had contacted Alex, the son of a friend of mine, who is one of the chief winemakers at Chateau Yaldara, and he had agreed to show me around the premises in the afternoon. The harvest was in full swing and they were working almost around the clock, so there would be plenty to see. So I cycled back down to Lyndoch on the back roads this time, gravel and sometimes steep but with a reasonable surface which had recently been graded.
Chateau Yaldara is not that old, about 70 years I think, but it’s a lovely place down by a creek, a beautiful setting. Alex gave me a personal 1 ½ hour tour showing me all the different stages in the wine processing. This was a lot bigger and more modern than what I

Chateau Yaldara at Lyndoch

had seen in Germany 2 years ago. Alex is a very friendly, hard-working, competent operations manager and things seem to be working well, both for him and the company.
Jim and Ruth had given me the name of a good friend of theirs in Nuriootpa  who would put me up that night. Alex, not the same one, is a very soft-spoken, kind and generous woman. Like Jim and Ruth, she cooked dinner for me and we spent the evening talking. She has several aviaries in her backyard where she takes care of wounded birds. Looking at the maps, she advised me to continue to Swan Reach via Angaston, rather than taking the highway to Blanchetown.
Alex told me Tanunda is for the tourists and Nuriootpa- Newry for the locals – is for the workers, the houses are more modest, there is more small industry. Like Tanunda, it’s mainly stretched out along the highway. I spent an hour or so at the local library reading about the early history of the valley and the library’s wifi allowed me to send a few emails. Alex also told me about a recently completed rail trail from Newry to Angaston, so that’s where I headed.
The bike path is indeed new with a smooth bitumen surface. It heads very slowly uphill, as Angaston lies above the valley in the ranges to the east. It’s a small town with a good feeling and a great though rather expensive café – Blond Coffee. The road out of town heading up and east very quickly left the vineyards behind and this is where I left the Barossa behind.

There are all sorts of tools out there, specialised tools doing just one part of the process and comprehensive tools that try to do nearly everything, and they range from free to expensive. That last term is relative of course, relative to your budget, your turnover, your expectations.

As I don’t yet have a huge amount of work as a translator (read “not making a lot of money”), I decided I couldn’t yet afford one of the big players in the field, so I went for one of the free packages, also to get an idea of how everything works and fits together. Similis is a free translation software package that includes the basic functions – manages translation memory, glossaries, alignment and works with both word and open-office files – but it wasn’t always free, so I’m assuming that development has probably stopped and support is probably limited. There is however a very detailed user manual.

I’ve used it for a few weeks on small projects, word files from 2 to 20 pages with and without graphics. In order to use all the functions, you need to get a free licence. It has an internal dictionary for several languages which however I didn’t find very useful. Not all terms were available and those that were I found not particularly appropriate, at least in my field (electronics, computing). In files that include images, the translation environment doesn’t show these images, so you need to have the original document open at the same time. However they are correctly included in the final translated document. After doing the translation, it’s possible to have the program perform an automatic alignment, which can (and should) then be manually edited. In this process, phrases and their translated versions are matched up so that they can be used in future translation projects.

I don’t know if it actually helped me translate better or faster – there is always a learning curve associated with these tools – but it did allow me to become familiar with the workflow and the main mechanisms involved. And I’m hoping that the translation memory and terminology files that I was able to export in csv format will be able to be used in the future with other tools. In any case it’s an exciting field and I intend to remain abreast of developments in this area.

In the courtyard for the meal

In the gardens for the ceremony

If you want to see some more pictures, just go to their website

Our initial impression, after leaving Berlin and heading east towards the Polish border, was one of great stillness – very few villages, few people about, lots of forest, heathland and huge fields, not many cars, no billboards, no supermarket music – and it felt very good ! Except for the resorts on the Baltic coasts, this was how it was for most of the trip – a lot of nature, as we had expected and wished.

A Strange Church

Crossing the canal over into Poland

In order to limit weight, we took along no camping gear, deciding to stay in hostels where possible. Just as well, as other than along the Baltic coast, we came across very few camping grounds, and those on the coast were huge and overcrowded, miles and miles of tents and caravans parked virtually on top of each other – horrible !

At the Jabelsee

As an experiment, I took along only one pair of shoes for both cycling and walking. I had seen them recommended on some other cycling blog and they turned out to be perfect, so I can fully recommend them – the Arroyo Pedal from Keen.

Riding north along the Oder

We passed many wind farms

I also have to give a special mention to the E6 which is part of the Eurovelo program of  long-distance bike paths across Europe. This one allowed me to ride over 400 kms from Alsace down to the centre of France mostly along rivers and canals. Only a few sections are on roads where infrastructure (bridges, paths etc) have not yet been completed. A great  way to move (fairly) quickly whilst avoiding traffic and enjoying beautiful river vistas.

Doubs river

Canal near Loire

More photos here if you’re interested:

NE Germany August 2011

Viola & Gaute in Oslo botanical gardens

The evening of that day was also special as I had the chance to go and see live – and mainly hear – for the first time, one of my favourite pianists. Tord Gustavsen is a brilliant musician, emphasizing emotion and atmosphere more than virtuosity, which he has but doesn’t need to show off all the time. He played solo in a church in Oslo and his choice of pieces for the program and the setting went together perfectly. Both he and the audience were in such a state of meditation, even trance, that applause between pieces seemed inappropriate and so he played on uninterrupted to the end. It was a magical moment.

Tipica Toulouse, Ausonne

We also play well-known arrangements that are publicly available (Piazzolla, Troilo, Exposito, Salgan…). The musical themes are often quite simple, but their arrangement into a successful, danceable piece of music is a highly specialized task and in fact was often left to specialists who excelled in this art. Towards the end of the year we will share the results of our rehearsals by performing several concerts in and around Toulouse. This year the program contains about 12 pieces, of which 2 are waltzes (tango vals), 4 are milongas and the rest tangos. Yesterday we had one of our monthly practice days followed by a small concert (for dancers) in the evening.

Tipica Toulouse, Ausonne

A great pleasure and satisfaction comes from playing this often  incredibly sophisticated music and seeing that it can be successfully danced to.

Nicholson River near Bairnsdale

East Gippsland Rail Trail, past Bruthen

The trail starts just across the Mitchell river bridge, to the right of the road. The surface is very good and initially goes through flat country. The crossing of the Nicolson river is a majestic moment – relative of course to the previous comparatively rural monotony. It’s a beautiful day once again.

The trail then winds its way through mostly forest on a compact earthen surface. Bruthen is a small, pleasant town with a few cafes and a good stop for lunch. It also has its own, newly-opened micro-brewery; unfortunately the time (middle of the day) and circumstances (another 40 km to ride) meant I had to forego the pleasure of tasting their brew.

Gippsland Lakes Discovery trail

The Discovery Trail starts soon after Bruthen, it’s a narrow winding path through the forest, mostly with a good surface, but steep at times with debris often on the path. Wide, heavy-duty tyres are definitely necessary here. This path follows an old tram-line along Mississippi Creek, built early in the 20th century for transporting rocks down to the coast from an inland quarry. As it’s mostly downhill, it’s a pleasant coast – I definitely wouldn’t come up this path. Where the trail comes out to meet the road, it’s unsealed surfaces – and those horrible corrugations, the bane of cyclists – for about 7 km before meeting the bitumen. From here it was a short ride in the afternoon sun to Lake Bunga on the coast and to a few days rest in a beautiful environment.

Bunga Haven

Bunga Haven is a multi-owner community-oriented cooperative which runs a property/house for the enjoyment of its members. The house from the 1920′s is on a small block overlooking the lake and away from most other houses in the area. The deserted Ninety-mile beach is just a 10-minute walk down the hill.

A few days later, I cycled back to Bairnsdale on a wet, misty morning through green forests and rich pasture land. I then took the train back to Melbourne. I had seen and experienced much, met a lot of nice people, had exhilarating moments on the bike, shared experiences with strangers. Even though I had a destination for this trip, the point in touring is not getting from A to B, it’s all about the journey, the things you see, do and feel along the way. It’s the inner transformation which is important, you don’t come back the same person as when you set out.

Gippsland is an area rich in many aspects, vegetation, geology, industry, history and the tourist information office will tell you all about the things to see and do. It’s therefore all too easy to forget that before this area was “opened up” by Europeans, it was inhabited by a group of indigenous Australians, the Kurnai, and that all of these were, over a period of about 20 years from 1840 on, mistreated, hunted, killed and finally exterminated by the newcomers. A number of information panels along some of the trails and roads talk about this aspect of our history, but it’s certainly not common knowledge. More information here.

]]> http://swingtranslations.com/2011/03/bairnsdale-to-lake-bunga/feed/ 0 http://swingtranslations.com/2011/03/maffra-to-bairnsdale/ http://swingtranslations.com/2011/03/maffra-to-bairnsdale/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 02:10:14 +0000 wolfgang http://swingtranslations.com/?p=289 Continue reading →]]> The Cambrai Hostel at Maffra is a working hostel, full of young people working in the area, most of them from overseas on a

Cambrai Hostel

one-year working permit and staying in the area for weeks or months working on farms, milking cows, picking grapes, picking vegetables. This is a laid-back, comfortable hostel run like a backpacker’s by Ron and Marg. Its name comes from the big converted house that was owned by an English doctor who came here after WWI having seen the battlefields in the north of France near Cambrai where the British first used tanks.

The rail trail took me on to Stratford on the river Avon just 8 km away, too early for a coffee stop and too early for lunch, so upon recommendations from my hostel hosts, I pushed on to the north in order to avoid the highway to Bairnsdale and see some interesting country. In the next four hours, until I reached Lindenow, only 4 cars passed me, so it’s only logical that I found not one shop, this being very empty country, mostly native forest, but also a lot of (what looked like) Radiata plantations past Stockdale, as well as some grazing country.

Lindenow

Lindenow is on the Mitchell River flood plain, intensive, irrigated crops here and quite a lot of activity but still no shop, just a pub ! I had enough water and muesli bars to keep going, so I pushed on to Bairnsdale, my stop for the night, where I arrived just after five, so too late for the cafes and the Information Centre. For travellers, the period from 5pm to 7pm in Australia, if you’re in a town, is a bit like a void, most places and shops – especially cafes – have closed and it’s really too early for a meal in pubs or restaurants, and most people are going home, so there’s not much to do unless there’s a really nice park and the weather is good and you have a good book; otherwise it can be very depressing.

Grand Terminus Hotel

The Grand Terminus Hotel, not far from the railway station as the name suggests, and indeed quite grand, has good rooms at reasonable prices, and I was able to catch up on local and world news – the NZ earthquake, the Middle East uprisings. It also serves delicious meals, in fact I had one of the best of the trip; perhaps also because I had little to eat during the day.

Chester Hill Cottage at Won Wron

If you’re ever in this area check this out.

Yesterday was a long day and the morning ride up over the Strzelecki Ranges was indeed challenging. But I’ve done harder, the road was good, and not a lot of traffic. Weather was overcast and a bit misty so I have no good photos. The ride down the other side was fast, it’s a long steep slope and I must have been close to 90… and praying the tyres wouldn’t blow. Apart from the odd house, this is all forest. Down on the plain, the highway goes past the huge Loy Yang power station and coal pit. In Traralgon after a late lunch I decide to push on as there’s a backpackers Hostel in Maffra, and I arrive there pleasantly tired in the evening after a lovely, mainly flat, sunny ride

Glengarry, start of trail

through typical Gippsland pasture country. This afternoon ride was supposed to be on the Gippsland Plains Rail trail, however I didn’t spend much time on the trail itself. It only really starts at Glengarry, and here the trail is very uneven with coarse gravel including large sharp stones – very slow going. After a km or so I got back on the road – bicycles do prefer bitumen – as there was virtually no traffic, and in any case, the trail runs parallel to the road a lot of the time. The good surface only starts at 9 km west of Maffra and goes through to Stratford. That’s just 17 km; the other 50 km or so aren’t very useful yet, and in fact I didn’t see a single cyclist there.

View Gippsland 2011 in a larger map