2013-02-08 -37 144

Location

Amongst trees near Gordon.

Participants

Expedition

On Friday after work I had to take the van to the mechanic in Northcote and ride my bike home. I picked up my bike from home and headed to the mechanic undecided whether I would do Melbourne east geohash or just ride home. The Melbourne east geohash was in a backyard in Epping, it was going to be a short, unpleasant ride on busy roads in peak hour and I would likely fail to get into the backyard. Before I left home I had one last look at the Melbourne west geohash which I noticed was near a town called Gordon(my last name) but it was 120k away which seemed like a ridiculous ride to do at 5pm after a day at work.

By the time I got to Northcote I had decided going home was boring and the Epping was to softcore so I started riding towards the Gordon(which Felix informed me is the coldest town in Victoria) in cycle shorts and a short sleaved cycle top with no jumper, food, cash or plan for how to get home. I knew I would be far to late for the last train back to Melbourne, didn't bring a tent and would be arriving to late to get a motel room in Ballarat. Luckily I had brought my good road bike which still had Staminade powder and the tools I would need for a long ride in my saddle bag and two water bottles on it. I hadn't put much planning into this ride but I figured things would figure them selves out.

My first stop was very early at Brunsburg Caltex where i bought a meat pie, an ice coffee and three twin pack snickers bars, I decided on snickers after reading the nutritional information on a number of snacks in the store and finding they were the best value in terms of kilojoules per dollard. I downed the ice coffee and meat pie quickly and saved the snickerseses for later in the night. My route took me along familiar roads through the suburbs passing right outside Aimee's (who was with me on my first geohash but hasn't done any since) house but I decided there wasn't time to stop to say hi. I then passed within 100m of my work in Keilor east and joined the same route that I took for last week's Melton geohash. While riding along Melton highway I stopped to take a photo of Koroit which i was right next to for the hash last week but I wanted a photo in the better light. Mount Koroit isn't a mountain it's just a hill and not even that big but it is steep and very obvious because its surrounded by flat farm land. It's right near Kororoit creek, it's always* annoyed me that Kororoit creek is next to mount Koroit, two such similar names for things right next to each other seems silly. Not long after stopping to take the photo I stopped to talk to a guy who had the bonnet on his landrover open. Most of my life my dad has driven old range rover that were frequently broken down so I felt his pain. The car was overheating which was fair enough as it was a hot day, it was 530pm but still close to 30 degrees. He told me the car had done 700,000ks which is a fair effort. He asked where I was going and i explained the geohash and that I was riding to Gordon, he was the first of many people to tell me I was mad that night.

always means about 6 months since i first heard the two words.

When I got to Melton I got onto the Western freeway which I would be on for most of my journey. After riding a few ks along the freeway a car pulled up in front of me, having already stop to check if one person was alright i figured i'd stop to say hello to these people to. A bearded redheaded man got out of the car and I thought "hmmm, that looks like Matt" a friend of mine who I know from playing in bands together and we go bike riding together quite often. As I got closer i realised it was Matt and my friend Rhonda was in the driver's seat. They saw me riding along and pulled over to say hello. Matt and Rhonda were heading up to Falls Gap for the Grampian's Jazz Festival where Matt's band Shirazz were playing and suggested I should come along. I thought Halls Gap was about the same distance from the hash as home was and i had no accommodation for the night so i decided to go, turns out it was actually 60k more. This is the point where my ride changed drastically, instead of riding 230k i was going to ride 280k. The return trip would have had bail out option on the way home with many 24 hour service stations and fast food restaurants along the way, trains starting at about 5am and all night buses if I got really desperate. The halls gap trip had far fewer places to stop, more hills and of course at the end I would be in Halls gap. I didn't know it was that much further at the time as I'd never been to this part of Victoria before and I didn't bother looking it up on my phone. Matt offered to lend me a jumper but i declined as I was quite warm and i figured it would be annoying carrying it.

My next stop was Bacchus Marsh, it's a town i'd heard of many times but never been to so i decided to drop leave the highway and ride through the town, hoping to find a grocer because I was craving an apple. The road into Bacchus Marsh is an Avenue of Honour. I'd never heard of an avenue of honour before but quickly discovered it means there is a tree planted along side the road for ever soldier from the area to have died in World War One. As I got into the township of Bacchus Marsh I saw a grocer on the side of the road, it looked closed but there were people in there so I gave it a shot. They were indeed closed but agreed to sell me an apple anyway, the Lady who served me asked where I was riding and was amazed that I was doing a 120k ride at night time and said "you must me fit to do that, give us a look at you" looked me up and down and exclaimed "you're well fit". I think the word well should be used in that context more often as i've only heard it used like that in Skins before. It may have been partly contextual as I was really in the mood for apple but I swear that was the sweetest, most delicious apple I've had in my life.

I continued along the Western Highway and took the Gordon exit. It was convenient having huge signs with my name on them telling me to exit, all intersections should be like this. On the outskirts of Gordon there was a large welcome to Gordon sign which i stopped to get a photo with, I struggled to get the photo with my phone in one hand and torch in the other trying to light my face and the sign that says Gordon. The road from Gordon onward was sealed but pretty rough and only just wider than a car, quite different to the 4 lane freeway i'd been riding on. About 10k out of gordon the road changed to rough, corrugated gravel which i road along for 5k. The road changed back to sealed at a junction a few hundred metres from the closest road point to the hash. As I stopped to look at the GPS several dogs started barking very loudly from the house on the property I was about to enter for the hash. As I was hiding my bike under a tree on the side of the road a light turned on in the house obviously to see why the dogs were going nuts. With people awake in the nearby house and the dogs barking ferociously i decided i was going to have to continue without the torch on and with minimal gps use. I climbed the electric, barbed wire fence and got snagged getting shocked in the leg several times before freeing my self. I checked the gps to get a bearing and started walking the 500m to the hash. Immediately after the fence was a line of waist height prickly buses with thistles around the edges. I made it through them and the next few hundred metres for open paddock. I then was met with another line of prickly bushes to make my way through with a ditch on the other side followed my more thistles. I was starting to wonder what kind of property I was on, there were no signs of live stock but they had the electric fence running and these prickle bushed seemed to neatly arranged to be an accident, thinking about this and the dogs which were still barking i was starting to think maybe the owners of this property don't want people in here.

After two more barbed wire fences i make it to the clump of trees that the hash is in. not surprisingly the trees were surrounded by thistles and prickle bushes but after making it through the prickles it opened up to trees planted in a neat grid that I walked through easily. I did the usual GPS dance wandering round in circles, trying to get as close to the hash as possible, getting a reading of 1.5 metres to go, stepping forward 1 metre and then it was 6 metres in the other direction. Hashpoint reached at 22:30 The barking dogs and other people deterrents had left me a little jumpy, I could hear what sounded like footsteps about 10 metres from me that seemed to be following a similar pattern. The pattern of taking a few steps, thinking you hear something and stopping to listen for the other steps then taking a few more, trying to work out if there is someone nearby with out them finding out you are. I'm sure it was just a roo but at the time I was freaking out that there was someone else very near by, trying not to be detected by me but very close - maybe following me. I thought about saying something incase it was another geohasher but i thought this was incredibly unlikely. I had decided it was the property owner or one of his hired goons out here trying to stop me from finding the weed crop or whatever they were trying to keep me away from.

I made in out of the trees and find an easy path around the prickles, the fences and the ditch and walk back to my bike. As I'm climbing the fence i hear some kind of fast moving foot steps nearby and something attacks me leaving me with a bloody knee. It was dark so I couldn't get a photo but i know what i saw. It wasn't a possum making the noise and the barbed wire fence scratching. I was under attack from raptors, the property owner had good reason to try to keep me out, it became clear to me that the dogs i heard barking sounded very different to normal dogs and that it was in fact the call of raptors. Jurrasic park was wrong, they don't screech, they bark. Having narrowly escaped the raptors i jump on my bike and ride as fast as i can without thinking about direction. after about 1km i stop to send a message to Felix letting him know i'd succeeded and to Matt letting him know i was coming to Halls gap. I checked the map and discovered i'd ridden in the wrong direction for falls gap and I was going to have to ride back past the raptor farm. When I got there the raptors had calmed down but they started barking again and the light turned on again. I was feeling quite guilty about keeping the owner up this late as it was now almost 11pm.

I rode back to the highway and headed into ballarat where I got Hungry Jacks for dinner and headed off at about midnight. Having never heard of Avenues of Honour before today i found my self riding along another one, this one with a large archway at the entrance. Halfway down the avenue of honour which was leading back to the highway i hit roadwords and have to take a detour that travels back in the wrong direction adding a couple of kms. On the bright side the detour took me past the mars (chocolate not planet) factory which smelled delicious. About 20k out of Ballarat my alarm goes off, I always set an alarm for 1:30am when I'm geohashing at night time as this is when the Dow opens. I check the coordinated to find that the geohash is 150 metres from my house, I was furious as this would have got me the second best couch-potato honourable mention. I seriously contemplated turning around and riding home but I was already closer to Halls Gap than home and in my mind i'd already committed to the ride.

I continued riding along the highway towards Ararat which is where i would turn off the highway. It was a beautiful starry but moonless night and there was very little traffic. Most of the traffic were B-Double on the adelaide to Melbourne route coming towards me and a lot less heading in the same direction as me. The great thing about riding at night time is there is so much room on the road that you can largely forget about traffic, when ever a truck came from behind it would pull right out into the next lane leaving about 4 metres between us, if I'd been doing this ride in the day time i'd be lucky to get 1 a lot of the time and there would be trucks passing me constantly instead of one every 10 minutes. In the Ballarat to Ararat leg of the ride I was starting to get pretty worn out, not sleepy at all as it's hard to fall asleep when riding but just struggling to keep the legs moving at a decent pace. I'm not sure if it was the headwind(if there even was one), or if it was my legs getting worn out but i felt like i was riding really slowly.

Sorry to anyone reading this, I'm getting really sleepy. I'll hopefully get time to finish the story and upload photos tomorrow night.

In the 30km that I was off the freeway I didn't see a single car

Photos

My foolish grin is less of a grin at a failed geohash
GPS proof of my failure


Fri 8 Feb 2013 in -37,144: -37.6591258, 144.0256374 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox