In The Pipeline...

This post is mostly to remind me to / oblige me to get out and do stuff, even though I don’t yet have adventurous friends here in Brisvegas!

Since arriving a few days ago, I have:

1. Signed up to Warm Showers, if you haven't heard of it, it's like couchsurfing but for cycle tourists. A few of my Townsville friends are involved, and it seems a great way to meet interesting cycle tourists and be a part of their adventure, as well as helping you out with your own cycle tours!

http://www.warmshowers.org/

2. Visited Bunyaville Conservation Park, an area not too far away that has mountain biking trails (as well as walking and horse riding) that I can check out. I got chatting to a few mtbers while I was there, and they all seemed friendly, so hopefully I can go alone to start with but still get help if I get into trouble!

3. Written to Wild Runners; they are a trail running club, and I decided that I fancy having a go at trail running. I have never done trail running before as I have always been worried about my injury-prone ankles, but I decided that I should give it a go as it has always appealed to me – plus it has to be more exciting than running along the road! They wrote back really quickly and seemed positive and friendly, so I’m looking forward to joining in with them very soon.

www.wildrunners.com.au

4. Got myself on Gumtree and picked up my own first kayak! I am pretty excited about this one, partly as I have never had my own kayak before, and partly because this one seems like it was a bit of a good buy. There were plenty of kayaks for sale on Gumtree down here, but I went for a sea/touring kayak. I like kayaking rivers and white water, but I would never do that alone, plus I don’t know where around here I would be able to do that. This kayak, a Ysak RTM Touring Kayak, will be great for continuing with the sort of thing I was doing up in Townsville, and I plan to graduate up to doing overnight (or perhaps even longer) trips along the coast or to nearby-ish islands. 

My Ysak RTM Touring Kayak :)

5. I would also like to get back into rock climbing, so I have been looking up the many climbing walls/gyms and rock climbing clubs in the area - more work still to do on that front.

I think that should be enough to keep me busy for a while! :)

Moving On...

After waiting to my car to be fixed, then catching up on a few car-reliant errands leftover from the previous day, while also taking time to drive around a bit and check that all was well with the engine, I didn’t manage to leave Townsville until almost 4pm.

Driving from Townsville to Brisbane can be done using just the one road until to get to Brisbane, so I simply headed south on the A1 Bruce Highway until I needed to stop. 

The first night, after 5 hours on the road, I stopped at Sarina in a basic but fine motel. The next day I was on the road for about 8 hours, including stops for tea and leg stretches, before stopping for the night at Childers. This is a small town but with a bit of character so an alright place to stop if you’re passing through. Here I stayed at another motel I picked at random, but it really was excellent. I thoroughly recommend the Oasis Motel if you need to stop at Childers, and totally agree with all the excellent reviews it has online. The place was clean and fresh, with a style and ambience that went well beyond the purely functional. They served good breakfasts and coffee, and it wasn’t attached to a raucous sports bar so a good night’s sleep was easily had. They were even kind enough to give me a discount as a single traveller.

I decided to go out for a beer in Childers, I kind of count this as an adventure too, as I’ve never been out for beers by myself before! I ended up chatting to another traveller who was stopping the night, so we passed the evening together over a few beers in the quiet bars.

The next day was just a few more hours of driving to get to Brisbane’s northern suburbs, where I will be living next…

Leaving Townsville :(

I wasn’t sure I would be able to leave Townsville.

Not just emotionally speaking, but also because a couple of days before I was due to leave we had an epic wet season rain storm, complete with local flooding, and lots of us were convinced that some of the roads wouldn’t be open! (they were…)

Trying to photograph the flooding, but the rain was too heavy and it confused my camera!

In knee-deep water outside our house

The high water mark on our driveway the next day

Then, on the day I was leaving – after having had it serviced – my car broke down. I had been to one friend’s house to drop something back to him, and was on my way to another friend’s house to give something back to her, when the car got super hot. Parking up in the shade and waiting an hour, things seemed to go back to normal. That was, until I got round the corner from The Bicycle Pedlar bike shop, where I was headed for one last coffee. In the middle of the junction, the car completely gave up. I had to get out and tell everyone lined up behind me that I was stuck (they were very good about it) and then wait in the heat until I could get the car restarted and out of the way.

I managed to roll it around the corner and gently and slowly cruise to the car park by the bike shop, and from there I phoned the garage again. After a coffee and a wait, the car still didn’t cool down enough for me to risk driving it anywhere, so I had to get a tow back to the garage. 

For a while it looked like all would be ok that evening, the radiator had cracked and it was easy to replace. That done, the mechanic then discovered that the reason for the radiator’s failure was a broken thermostat. It was now too late to get a new part until the morning. Hmm…

Part of me was secretly glad that I didn’t have to leave yet – it had been an emotional morning, a frustrating afternoon, and I really wasn’t feeling enthusiasm for the move to Brisbane. Another part of me was simply frustrated that I had a big problem to deal with.

It was easily fixed though – I loaded up my bike with everything I would need for an overnight stay!

In the end, my friend Owen collected me and let me sleep on his sofa, but having the bike was still useful the next day. I had time to kill, and didn’t want to put Owen to more trouble after he had helped me out yesterday and then worked a night shift while I got to sleep. Therefore, I packed up my panniers and headed back to the bike shop.

On the way, I bumped into Jen; she was off to do a recycling run with their empty cardboard boxes, using a Surly Bill trailer for the first time. Jen invited me to join her for the trip, so we rode off together, chatting about the trailer, my car, and how great it is to have bicycles!

It was fun to be riding together with panniers and a trailer, and when we got back to the shop we got a coffee fix too – perfect :)

All too soon (although, also a day-and-a-half late) my car was ready to drive. It was with a heavy heart that I said my latest goodbyes, got back on my bike, and headed off to the workshop. I guess the journey south really does have to begin now… 

Ross River Paddling

My good friend Owen and I made plans for one last trip out together before my move down south. He let me pick what to do, and as he had recently seen freshwater crocodiles on the river I wanted to do this too! I knew there wasn’t much chance of seeing them, so I was a bit torn between the idea of a flat river paddle or heading out to sea for more exciting paddling, but in the end I opted for the chance of croc spotting.

Meeting at his place, we loaded the kayaks up onto his trolley wheels and walked them down to the river. We had very heavy rain the night before, and there was fresh erosion and the river level was raised considerably. It is normally a bad idea to paddle in a flooded river, but the river here is managed by weirs that control the flow, so apart from being deeper and wider, it wasn’t really any different to normal.

The paddle itself was very simple, just up and down a section of the flat, swollen river. What we were really there for was the wildlife, and Owen tried really hard to spot a croc for me. The freshwater crocodiles (‘freshies’) are much smaller than their dangerous-to-humans salt water cousins. They live off a diet of mainly fish, which they catch with their smaller, narrower jaws, and they do not pose a threat to humans if you respect their personal space. Apparently it is even safe to swim with them.

We saw lots of jacanas on this trip, normally they are quick to fly off when they see you, but this time they seemed bolder than usual and we were able to watch them for longer. We even saw a few families of male jacanas with their chicks, scampering over the lily pads. Very cute!

I came across this jacana nest complete with two eggs, which we admired for a short time, neither of us having ever seen one before. They have a very distinctive design on the eggs, almost like paint has been drizzled all over them.

We paddled upriver as far as the next weir, below which it is a bit rocky. It was here that I had a possible croc sighting – an animal definitely moved into the water near my kayak. The sound of the water caught my attention, and I looked around just in time to see an animal’s back curving into the water. It was a flexible back, so definitely not a river turtle, but I just saw it curve into the water as the creature dived down, so I have no idea what it was. It could have been a little croc, or a large lizard, or possibly even a really big eel, though I don't know why an eel would have been out of the water basking in the sun.

Disappointed not to have been quick enough to get a good view, we headed back down the opposite riverbank. Here we had the huge good fortune to spot a nest of Australian darters, or snakebirds, with two large chicks. 

As we watched the chicks, the father returned to the nest and we got to watch him feeding them. It was a privilege to watch; you could not have seen them from the land, but we had a prime view from down on the water. The chicks pestered their father and rammed pretty much their whole heads down his beak to get to the food, it really did look uncomfortable! 

A sad thing about the river at the moment, possibly because of the heavy rain, was the amount of rubbish floating around in it. Mainly plastic and glass bottles, but also cans, polystyrene cups, rubber and plastic balls, chocolate wrappers, broken buckets etc.

Along the way we collected a lot to dispose of in the appropriate rubbish or recycling bins, but there was far more left out there. I hope there are more river users out there like Owen, who try to have a positive impact on this litter problem.