Location: Canberra Rides: here
I have not been writing because I got discouraged. I have logged about 2,700 miles in the car searching for good rides downunder. I don’t forget that; that riding is primarily why I am here. I am not here to visit war memorials or buy a didgeridoo to prop against my wall once home. I am a treasure seeker; digging after that perfect riding spot. And my emotional lawn was beginning to look like I'd misplaced my bone.
I would not have admitted it before yesterday because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but the riding in Australia has not really been my bag. When I say this, I am subtracting the exotic factor from my judgment, and basing it solely on a few check list items.
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| A 400lb Mako shark caught off Narooma. |
I won't list all of them, but remember the moment in Forrest Gump when he is running somewhere in the mid-west, at dawn, and the mountains are reflected perfectly on the crystal clear lake, "like there was two skies on top of eachother?" That is what I am looking for.
So to say that Adelaide was good riding is to say that it was good if you take out the first and last 15K of it through crowded city streets, and then, once in the middle of that ride, take out about 80% of the traffic. It was good, but it wasn’t great.
Tasmania was, again, just good, and that was only Hobart. Even with that majestic climb up Mount Wellington, it was still short of great. Maybe later I can list my ten commandments that makes a climb “epic,” but not now, I have too much else.
After leaving Melbourne on the 10th, and after much deliberation, I decided to go south and east along the coast back to Sydney, for my plane to En Zed (New Zealand) on the 22nd. I choose Bairnsdale because Bairnsdale had a nice looking climb up into a national park.
A national park on fire. Road was closed. And this set me off. I got pretty toasty, ate some fast food and I went to bed at 9PM. I have these bad days, we all do, and I was pretty motivated when I woke up the next day, because I felt like I purged myself a bit.
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| Narooma. |
I choose Narooma because Narooma was on the coast and looked very pretty and there were no hotels available in the very, very, very tiny towns in the 250 miles between Bairnsdale and Narooma.
I had a very nice BNB and a balcony overlooking the water and wifi! Ah, wifi! I could map a ride! Except there were, um, there were no roads. There was only that highway I came in on and even in a car it's suicidal. But I was itching, so I went for a slow sight-see on the bike path that ran along the ocean. And it was good.
But then it stopped at 12K. So I went back. Now what? What the fuck am I going to do now?
I chose Canberra. And cue the fucking hallelujahs and can-I-get-a-witness because Canberra was holding the treasure all along. It is “touch me where I pee” riding, as my friend likes to say when he thinks something is really great and sound like a molester all at the same time.
Once reason it is great, besides the miles and miles of undulating roads with bike lanes everywhere, fantastic scenery, an abundance of wildlife, and virtually non-existent traffic (once out of the city) is that Canberra is like being in a real life version of SIM City.
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| Somewhere in the mountains of Canberra. |
(If you don’t know what “SIM City” is, look it up, then come back.)
Canberra is only 100 years old. No shit. It’s celebrating it’s centenary this very year. Which means the same year Woodrow Wilson became the 28th president of the USA, and the Mona Lisa turned 410 years old, Lady Denman stood upon these rocks and proclaimed “I name you Canberra!” and Australia had a capital. A sheep looked up from its grazing, farted, and that was that.
So, it’s still in it’s infancy, and it’s literally still being built. I was here 20 years ago, and it was not like this, not even close. Remember that Australia (latin for “of the south”) was established as a British penal colony in the late eighteenth century. And they didn’t build prisons first, it was a penal colony, which means Australia was the prison.
In Canberra, there aren’t any shit parts, not that I have seen, although there is some beautiful graffiti on the walls by the waterways, and one in particular made me laugh “From Berra to the Bronx!” I laughed because Australians are about as ghetto as a clambake. At a KKK meeting.
So, as you come into (or out of) the town, there are these massive road projects going on, with huge roundabouts and two lane highways, but not houses. Not yet. First, you build roads, then houses come, then businesses, and you can literally see this city taking shape. Hence, the SIM City tune in my head all day long.
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| Outside Canberra. |
On these outskirts, you see houses, brand new, some of them occupied, most of them built on spec. Then, further, frames of houses, then further, empty lots, then further, farmland with “for sale” signs on them, and then further, these huge roads just…stop. Four lanes literally just become…grass. And the original road veers off.
That’s when the fun begins for me. Because no one is going past that because there is nowhere to go past that. But someone realized that someday in the future, there will be, so there is new pavement, and it’s all up in the mountains, and the foliage is very sparse or low, so you can see everything and literally, see it. I was able to ride, for the very first time, while looking around.
In the 40K or so middle part of my ride yesterday, I counted 6 passing cars. It reminded me of riding outside of Girona. It was so peaceful and I rarely had to look at the pavement, it was just so clean.
At one moment this afternoon, I passed through a spot that was so remarkably beautiful that I was forced to stop. There were countless sheep on my left, a herd of cattle on my right, grazing and sipping from a billabong, two wild white cockatoos in the trees cackling away, and then four rainbow lorikeets swooped past me, looking like Joseph in his technicolor dreamcoat. And that was when the Garden of Eden reference hit me. A believer just might make a believer out of you if he took you to that very spot where I stopped.
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| The birds I saw. Rainbow Lorikeets. |
Minus the very rigid and dead wombat about a kilometer up the road (which is a very impressive looking beast by the way), things were that euphorically rosy.
Sadly, as a I plan only day to day, every hotel that isn’t astronomically priced is booked tomorrow night, and there isn’t anything on airbnb either. So I have to move. But I had a couple of rippahs in Canberra.
I followed my own advice and I waited for it, and I kept digging, and once again, the reward is so much sweeter.
I do love every part of it, don’t get me wrong, I love it all. I love and cherish everything I go through, the shits and the giggles, because I know that when I love what I have, then I have everything.
Recruit officer: "Have you given any thought to your future, son?"
Forrest Gump: "Thought?"
