2012-11-06 -37 145

Location

Near Kallista south of the Dandenongs.

Who went

Expedition

Felix Dance

Lachie and I had decided to go on a bike ride together for the Melbourne Cup public holiday, Lachie to train for the formidable Alpine Classic, I to test out my newly recovering knee injury (as noted in previous geohash write-ups), so we met at Lachie's house in Brunswick and determined to ride our road bikes along the Eastern Freeway Bike Path to the Dandenongs.

Passing my old Maths tutor and admiring some old engineering handiwork of mine on EastLink, we soon turned off the bike path and along Canturbury Rd. Before heading up into the Dandenongs, we stopped to check Lachie's phone for geohashes. Sure enough, one was to be had near Emerald, south of the Dands.

As we ascended the northern slope of Mt Dandenong, we heard the distant subsonics of rumbling thunder below us, presaging the coming storm. Admiring the murky view at the summit we quickly pressed on to avoid the rain. Sadly, stopping for some eats at an Olinda bakery, Lachie discovered his phone to be battery-dead. This was the time for us to turn our bikes homewards away from a hash unaccomplished.

Not so, however, as there is always a way for those dedicated enough to take arbitrary goals to their logical limit and achieve them at all costs. We hurtled down the mountain towards Monbulk, the thunder warping the air pressures around us, felt mainly through our ear drums, culminating in a lightning storm ringing the town's fire siren for a blaze ignited right beside the road.

Monbulk produced a solution to our problem: the local video hire shop provided us with a $25 charger for Lachie's phone. After waiting out the charging and downpour in a second cafe we were off through the drenching rain towards the hash.

The route took us through windy rainforest roads, dripping on us dollaps of warm water even when not raining, before we turned off and took to a walking track, ridden over, before encountering some steep terrain and a few hundred metres of soggy bush-bash. At last - the hash!

However, the GPS in Lachie's phone exhibited some confusion as to which side of the fence bordering some cult-like estate grounds we should be, so we clambered over the barbs multiple times only to be told the location lay on previously trodden ground. Finally, we'd honed in satisfactorily to the point, took the required photos, and left along the creepily cultish driveway to freedom.

...Which involved another hour of windy, rainforesty, wet and foggy roads wending their way through country towns like Kallista until we'd at last reached the rail head at Belgrave. A cancelled train forced beer through our throats at a rocking country pub, but before long we were hurtling our way towards the city and our various evening activities, happy in the knowledge of a hard-fought hash deservedly conquered for the Melbourne East graticule.

Here is the Google Maps route we took.

Hash reached: 6:10pm