2023-08-26 -37 144

Sat 26 Aug 2023 in -37,144: -37.4507651, 144.4390419 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Just off a track in Wombat State Forest.

Participants

• Stevage

Expedition

Towards

Two back-to-back successes, and I'm "on a hat-trick" as they say. Fired up by a Netflix documentary on the Tour de France, I'm up early (ish) for the train trip out to Macedon.

Southern Cross Station didn't get the memo and has supplied coaches, not trains. No matter, we go express and catch some novel scenery.

On landing, I quickly gather my bike and head off, before thinking better of it, and ducking back in to the station cafe for emergency snacks. Emergency "whoopie cookie", emergency banana, emergency muffin. It might seem like overkill, but as luck would have it, the first emergency happens 20 seconds later and suddenly we're down to two snacks. Good thing I planned ahead.

• 

  Surprise coach replacement.

To

A week of sunny weather has come to a screeching halt with grey, foreboding skies and a distinct nip in the air. A damp road surface has me worried about the condition of the forthcoming tracks - this area is infamous for its tracks that turn to clay mudbaths given half a chance.

I cross the freeway, and am soon alone on a gravel road. It's heavenly. In an adjacent paddock, come across a couple of kangaroos, a cluster of cows, a handful of handsome horses, and a duo of dapper dromedaries. They're munching away on the grass, looking like they're trying to blend in with the cows. I tell them their secret's safe with me, with a sly wink.

There's a moment of apprehension as the road I want to go down is signed "No Through Road", but I jump on a conference call with Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and Strava, and they all swear that it connects. The next sign says "NO ROAD", right next to what looks awfully like a road. Will it disappear the moment I set my wheels upon it? It does not. It does inflict a giant muddy puddle upon me, but I survive unscathed.

I enter the Wombat State Forest, soaking up the sounds of kookaburras and currawongs, and the sights of common heath, wattle and grevilleas in flower.

But the temperature is strangely dropping, and instead of warming up from the exertion, I'm soon layering up and gritting my teeth through each downhill. There's a fog that slowly becomes thicker.

My fears of a muddy slopfest haven't come to pass. The gravel roads look well maintained and are holding up well.

Some of the road names - Fingerpost Road, Campaspe Road - bring up distant memories of school camps here. It's been long enough that they're no longer bad memories, just fuzzy, faded, half-memories of a thing that happened somewhere.

It's not many kilometres to go, but they seem to drag on. There's a strange monotony to the bush. Kilometre after kilometre of identical stringybarks of an identical height. I wonder what it would be like to live here. Peaceful, that's for sure. I've seen a couple of trailer loads of trailbikes go past, but mercifully haven't heard their ugly roar just yet.

• 

  The Mace-dromedary (one of)

• 

  Handsome horses

• 

  Sounds like a challenge

• 

  It's still a road to me.

• 

  Bush without fog.

• 

  Bush with fog.

At

At last I arrive at the unclimactic nothingness, and stomp about. My precision hash-honing technique deserts me and I circle back and forth for a few minutes until I'm satisfied that I've really arrived.

And then I stop. And listen. To...nothing. There is absolutely no sound. It's extraordinary. No bird calls. No wind rustling through the trees. No cars. No distant dogs barking. No chainsaws. Just a very occasional drip of moisture falling from trees.

As I wait, I can just make out an occasional distant bird chirp. And then the very low rumble of some kind of very distant vehicle. But still. It is eerie.

I'd like to linger, but I'm already cold and cooling down. It's not quite an emeregncy, but suddenly, the banana is eaten. The muffin is looking nervous.

• 

  Success!

From

I agonise for a moment about the best return route. On principle, I don't like to retrace my steps, but given the sameness of the bush, it's one easy to abandon. Back the way we came.

I hadn't appreciated how much climbing I had done to get here, but it's soon apparent, as the return journey is mostly an effortless cruise downhill.

But oh my gosh I am cold. I resist for a while but don a second jacket, feeling faintly ridiculous. My fingers are so cold my phone doesn't even recognise them as fingers any more and won't unlock that way. I can't take photos because I can't push the power button twice fast enough to engage the camera.

I've had some truly cold descents in the past (Lake Mountain, Mt Macedon in a hailstorm, and a mountain whose name I've forgotten in Norway, come to mind), but it seems pathetic to feel so cold at such low elevation in what is almost spring, in dry weather. And yet my red fingers are aching, and I'm doing that pinchy face that cycle commuters do in the rain.

At last I'm back out of the forest into farmland and the temperature gains a couple of degrees. I abuse my emergency powers once and for all now, and it's goodbye muffin.

The rest of the trip home is much as you'd expect, punctuated only by the unexpected vomiting of a couple of drunk teenage girls right next to my bike at Hungry Jacks, and the entirely avoidable stepping in said vomit. Enjoy the rest of your day.

• 

  It is cold.

Achievements

Stevage earned the Bicycle geohash achievement by cycling 50km to the (-37, 144) geohash on 2023-08-26.