Adelaide to Bendigo
After a great visit to Darwin teaching Excel followed by a great session in Sydney working with Word and websites, I flew back to Adelaide and spent great time with my brother's awesome family, visiting Belair National Park with them and my parents (who are always completely positive about my crazy ideas) and an awesome catch-up with a great all-round bloke and bass player from a great band I was in many years ago, a great visit with my auntie and a terrific visit with my grandmother, as well as an amazing catch-up with a great school-mate, I taught an InDesign session and then hit the road. Felt great to be moving again after being off the country roads for so long.
Riding out from Adelaide, I skipped some of the lovely roads I'd intended to ride in order to get good distance so I wouldn't be time-pressed on the ride back and chose the Dukes Highway, and the long straight roads were a pleasure - adorned with interesting treelines, generous curves, easy-overtaking design and a tidy surface to deliver me as far as I felt to ride.
Recognised a lot of the road from the days performing in Crushed In Space and Twista, we would travel these roads to country gigs often.
Crushed in Space early days with Pen and Pascal
Crushed in Space later days with Kate and Mark
Spent a decade in bands of various forms with absolutely terrific people, plenty of country gigs so it was great to reminisce with the memories the SA country roads brought back.
Anyway, I'm rambling already. Stayed in Bordertown overnight which was much smaller than I'd assumed, then tracked across into Victoria looking for interesting routes. I was looking for beautiful scenery, but I found a different beautiful when I tracked up to Nhill then rode along the Dimboola-Minyip Road, a long road off a C-road which started off as dirt for a kilometer from roadworks then alternated between upgraded one-each-way roads and single-car-width tar, where each vehicle would slow and pull to one side (two wheels on dirt if you're in a car) with a wave of acknowledgement and thanks to the other as you pass. The road was empty, the straights rich with the feel of Australiana and the curves unposted and gently pleasurable. What a beautiful road, it's almost a pity it is slowly being upgraded to one-each-way, it is a real taste of Australia.
On the way to St Arnaud
I passed flames as farmers burnt off scrub at the side of the road, smelled the smoke from kilometers away, was acknowledged by road workers and acknowledged back each time, and surprisingly passed a couple of semi-trailers coming the other way. It was sparse, but never boring. I loved it.
I pulled over at one point to let an oncoming semi-trailer pass and decided to take the opportunity to take a break. Only then did the full beauty soak in past the noise and speed I was creating, to rest gently on my senses - nobody around for miles, a beautiful spot.
Corner of Hunter Road (the dirt road) and Banyena Road
I rode into St Arnaud, a beautiful township and parked the bike outside a nice looking cafe to plan my next step - but the cafe which had looked open, was closed for the afternoon. So rather than moving the bike, I went to a humble-looking chicken-and-chips fry-up shop called JPX Takeaway.. (https://goo.gl/maps/9NWiyuX9z6m) took a serving of the wedges and sat outside looking over my map books.. difficult to concentrate after the first wedge.. these wedges were seriously delicious, practically like KFC chicken... except wedges...! Amazing, good enough to go back and compliment the guy! Then I filled up the petrol at the service station where I mentioned the wedges to the attendant who relayed to me that those wedges are town-famous and he'll sometimes pick up a serve to share along with the family dinner. The things you find! Highly recommended.
So, I rode on to Bendigo and found a comfortable well-priced spot there to rest after a day that was beautiful in all the unexpected ways, and I'm glad I rested well as there were more beautiful sights ahead in the next few days - but I've ranted on enough here, so I'll leave that for the next post.