Meeting Ez and Ev

Today's map.

The long weekend was over, the maniacs were off the roads and I had to get out of Wauchope. I'd spent three blissful nights there, relaxing and recovering. Now I had to get to Lennox Head, nearly 400km away, for a rendezvous with one of my bestest mates from Brisbane, Ez.

In the three years I worked as an engineer in Brisbane, Ez became one of my most trusted and revered friends. She, like me, was churning away in the private sector as a consultant, wielding her degrees in sociology and economics to very profitable (for her company, at least) effect. We both felt that we were working at jobs where our creative sides were somehow irrelevant to our roles; that procedures, politics and profit margins existing to crush our intellects instead of developing them. We marvelled at how complete, honest-to-goodness d**kheads landed managerial roles; how wide the gulf between marketing and reality could really be. (Do I sound like a petulant Gen Y'er? Sorry.)

Anyway, we shared our problems over cups of tea at our flats, via frustrated and hilarious emails, or by wandering through the discount shop in the Queen St Mall and laughing at all the mis-translated packaging from China. We hung out, talking all the time, buzzing and fizzing with stupid creativity until the pent-up frustration of the week had been eased. Ez, if you're listening, I don't think I can ever thank you enough for those days (and for still talking to me after I ditched my life in Queensland to see if the one I sought was in Tasmania).

With our history in mind, I was excited to get a chance to catch up on the last couple of months in our lives, so I pointed the Rev up the highway and rode like crazy. Starting at 7:30, I made Lennox in time for a late lunch at the pub. As promised, Ez's partner Evan came along to demolish pub grub and I was finally introduced to the bloke I'd heard so much about. His laidback humour seemed like the perfect foil to Ez's razor wit and, before our meals even arrived, we were all talking smack and laughing on the verandah together. It was brilliant.

With the pressure to arrive long gone and a steak sandwich mellowing in my stomach, exhaustion hit me like a sack of Chuck Norrises. Ez kindly took me to the shops to buy provisions, then gave me a guided tour while Ev had a surf. In the afternoon light, the rocky headland was beautiful. We watched the surfers and chatted animatedly as the sun sank. Lauren called me, freshly returned from her first CanTeen camp, and I caught up with her while we waited for Ev to finish surfing.

"It's one of the best things I've done in my life. Ever!" LT enthused.

Finally, she'd had the chance to meet people who'd been through what she had and just 'got it' when she told her story. I beamed and told Ez. It was a very happy piece of news from a girl who was initially pretty nervous about going to camp.

Ez had to travel back to Brisbane, ready for another week of work, so we said our goodbyes. Tired and happy, I set up my tent at the caravan park down the road in the last of the light. It had been an enormous and very beautiful day.

Lauren's Cancer Journey pt 2

Waiting to find out what (and where) Lauren's treatment would be was a frustrating time. Between us, we drank quite a bit of wine and watched too much TV while we waited. Maybe we were afraid of going outside in case of somebody running up and diagnosing LT with another illness. Maybe we just weren't really ready to deal with what our future could be. Either way, detaching the brain via TV and alcohol was a popular pastime.


In the end, the surgeon referred us to a local oncologist who was confident he could design a radiation-only (that is, no chemo) treatment plan for Lauren's cancer site. It was a great relief not to be sent to a far-flung capital city to be treated, but the relief faded quickly as we braced for another medical professional to enter the scene and demand consultations.


Something about his job as oncologist must have upset him, because he was morbidly obese. His face was an almost-perfect square, like it had been extruded upwards from between his shoulders, and he possessed no visible neck. His chins undulated gently as he spoke.


"What we're going to do is called hyper-fractionation, darling," he explained to Lauren. It meant having lots of small, high doses of radiation, rather than ones spaced a couple of weeks apart. In fact, he told us, LT would be getting blasted daily, starting January. The plan would run for seven weeks and, yes, there would be side effects. Thyroid damage, a sore throat, skin damage, hair loss, loss of taste sensation and nausea were likely, he said. These, it would later turn out, would be the tip of the iceberg (if icebergs were made of debilitating pain instead of water molecules).


It was still December and, having at last been given a timeframe for treatment, we planned a small holiday to Queensland in the intervening time. LT and I figured that if things were going to suck, we should build up some happy times to draw on. Plus, it beat the idea of sitting in front of the idiot box sucking cheap wine for five weeks.

2017, Sat 5 Dec 2009

Lauren had Christmas morning early today :-) She's drinking wine and playing with her shiny new iPod nano right now. Looks like a hit (thank goodness, as I keep getting technology sort of gifts instead of romantic type rubbish and I fear my luck will soon run out). She's singing like a retard, oh god.

Schedule for tomorrow: up at 0400; leave at 0445; away on the plane at 0600. Lose an hour switching to non-daylight saving and arrive, grumpy and tired on the Sunshine Coast at 1105. Whee! Can't wait to see the family :-D

Hanging in Wauchope

Today's map.


Talking to the manager, Eric, the next morning, I began to realise what I lucky find this motel had been. I asked about doing my laundry and, rather than offering me the usual same-day dry cleaning that costs a couple of internal organs, he let me wash my gear on site. He even watched over my clothes as they dried, in case it rained. I was feeling so content that I decided to stay there a little longer.

I gave the Rev a bath using the fire hose near my room. The entire insect population of Victoria and NSW was plastered over my headlight and had been baked on by the heat of the beam. Seeing their barbecued bodies smashed onto the glass, I suddenly twigged why the bike faintly smelt of roasting meat after a long day's ride.

Before and after a good hosing.

Next day, in need of more adventure than the motel room could offer, I rode down to Port Macquarie for a look around. The bike, minus all the baggage for this day trip, felt like a superbike compared to its laden state. I had a lot of fun exploiting the lighter handling on the quick jaunt down to the coast.

It was a grey day, threatening rain. The Rev and I pottered along the coastline to the south of Port Macquarie, stopping at a lighthouse on the headland to take some photos.

The wind from the south wailed over the headland and adjusted my normally untidy mop into some kind of hair helmet. I laughed a Tasmanian laugh at locals who complained about how 'freakin cold' it was, until I remembered that I whined about the weather for a full two years when I moved south to Hobart.

I stopped at the only open coffee shop for a flat white and a muffin and copped an ad in the local tourist paper for an interesting concept in caffeination: a Christian internet cafe. The name was pure gold!

I wisely slipped into my full wets before leaving and got completely pounded by a rainstorm all the way home. There is only so much a raincoat can do when you're complicating its job by whizzing along in a storm. By the time I was back at my room, I looked like I'd been fired out of a torpedo tube across the breadth of the Atlantic. It was a great day though. After pushing a little too hard for the last couple of weeks, it was a joy to stay in one place and be a lazy tourist.

Dirtier than ever

Today's map.



Tim S had to rush off to work in the morning, so there was no sleep-in for either of us. A tribe of apes (or, possibly, very drunk teenage males) ruined the night for just about everyone in the apartments, until the police were called. One poor resident was so upset with their incredibly antisocial noise that she screamed at them for a full ten minutes from her bedroom window.


Breakfast was pide leftovers. As I scoffed, I said a silent prayer for anyone who might stray within range of my garlic-enhanced breath during the day. Tim skipped breakfast - his stomach was still giving him grief - and cleaned up the place before dashing off to the office in a taxi. I stood in the grey morning light and considered my options.


The drunks from the night before reminded me that it was a long weekend. With a barely-rational feeling of dread for what that might mean in terms of traffic, I pushed north, staying off the highway by following the coastal tourist drive towards Forster-Tuncurry. I don't remember too much of that ride, apart from feeling that QLD was finally getting closer. I couldn't wait to see my family and sit on the deck, looking over the river and talking.


The brain wasn't firing on all cylinders, so I decided to get some exercise at Cape Hawke. There was a crazily steep walking track up the little bluff, cutting through dense subtropical forest that reminded me strongly of Noosa Hill in QLD. Pairs of butterflies were chasing each other through the undergrowth, doing crazy kamikaze mating dances. At the top, there was an observation tower with the most incredible, panoramic view of the coast. It was worth the climb just to listen to an American man having a noisy heart attack on the way up.

Cape Hawke viewing platform.

Looking south.

Looking north to Forster-Tuncurry.

Looking unkempt.

Forster and Tuncurry themselves did nothing to float my boat and/or rustle my jimmies, so I rode on. Think Gold Coast if you want the general idea: faded, plastic and past its prime, despite the beautiful location.

Beach at Forster.

Next stop was Wingham, where history was abundant but lunch choices were few. Luckily, there was one decent place amongst the boarded-over shopfronts and dusty hardware stores. I treated myself to a 'gourmet hotdog' and a flat white, while I worked on the blog. A gorgeous girl sat nearby with her family, talking about her band and their upcoming recording contract. I didn't catch their name, sadly, so my fantasy of being their first motorcyle-riding groupie evaporated. Ah well, it never would have worked out - she was half a foot taller than me (and Lauren will probably cut half a foot off my gentleman's vegetables after she reads this).

Fancy hotdog at Wingham.

After such a cracking lunch, I felt the Rev and I could make it to Wauchope without any dramas. The road between them was about 150km of mostly deserted farmland, which looked easily achievable. There was about 35km of dirt road, said the sign, but I wasn't too phased after the Rev had handled the last bit of gravel so well.

When the dirt arrived, it was quite a bit trickier than I'd hoped. The nice, graded surface quickly gave way to a liberal scattering of deep potholes, separated by stretches of ball-bearing gravel wherever the road lay in full sun. I spent an awful lot of time in first and second gear, but at least that gave me the chance to drink in the forest sections at a slower pace. I love how riding puts you in touch with the elements and this was a great piece of country for that. I felt the sting of the sun give way to cool, fresh air whenever we ducked under the canopy of trees. Road kill and cow crap added to the sensorama at regular intervals.

Rev waits patiently for me to pee.

Another break after a very rough section.

Feed silo near Comboyne.

It was getting late by the time the bitumen returned and, once again, I was starting to feel tense and tired from biting off more kilometres than I could chew. The sun was almost gone by the time I reached Wauchope (pronounced 'war hope', not 'walk up' like the one in NT). A frantic drive around town revealed no caravan parks or camping spots, so I reluctantly stopped at the quietest-looking motel I could find.

I was dishevelled and supremely grumpy when Eric, the manager of the Timber Town Motel, greeted me. When I baulked at the price (which was brilliant value, but still a lot more than camping) he calmly ran me through the other options in town: the pub, which was noisy and nearly as expensive and a competing motel, which was run down and expensive. Desperately tired and lured by the call of a proper bed, I signed myself in for the night.

On finding my room, I had no regrets at all. The room was huge, the bed was comfy and there were little bottles of shampoo waiting for me in the bathroom.

Luxury!

The bed passed the flop test.

After the most magical shower ever invented, which felt like being bathed in warm milk by forest nymphs (well, ok, maybe not THAT good), I walked up to the tavern for a meal and a beer. You know how, in the movies, a stranger walks into a pub and the band stops playing and everyone freezes mid-swallow to stare at them? That happened to me. It sucks.

After straightening my shoulders and ordering a pint and some squid 'n' chips, normal chatter resumed and I went and swigged my lager in the beer garden. The food was top notch - I had really spoiled myself today!

Back at room 3 and much more relaxed, I ignored the pay TV and flaked out for the most delicious, delirious slumber.

Wiseman's Folly

Today's map.

Wow...like, wow.

If ever you want to feel like you've been thrown in a hessian bag full of pineapples and towed behind a combine harvester for a thousand kilometres, try this ride on for size. Make sure you're poorly rested, after a freezing night listening to a nearby gravel sieving machine, for the best (and most melodramatic) effect.

Home sweet home.

The mission I had chosen to accept was to ride to Newcastle to meet up with Tim, a workmate and active member of our southern tribe of power kiting addicts. Tim normally works in Tassie, but spends a few weeks in Newie now and then, supporting his employer's design drafting crew on some huge projects. He was due to fly home the next day, so the race was on if I was to have a chance of seeing him for a beer.

I left Oberon a little late, having lost the usual chunk of time trying to get the tent dry before packing up. I want to go back to Oberon sometime. It's a pretty place, with a real mix of people on display. Grabbing groceries at the IGA the night before, I came across preppy-looking teenagers, feral mothers and genuine cow cockies (complete with hats and utes) all in the same aisle.

Rush hour, Oberon.

Perhaps dumbly, I refused to compromise my rule of avoiding major highways and struck out towards Lithgow, where I picked up the famous Bells Line of Road towards Sydney. The sun was spanking down, the traffic was moderate and the speed limits were, as usual, stupidly low given the conditions. I'm glad I stuck to them, though, as the highway patrol picked me to follow for  a good 15 kilometres. Nothing like copper sitting too close behind you to focus your technique and grate your nerves...

Keeping time was a constant challenge, especially with the approaching nightmare of bypassing Sydney. I really don't like Sydney. It's a McCain's Frozen Pizza of a city - deliciously alluring; a luscious-looking, transcendent consumption experience, according to the advertising. Up close, it's a pale and flaccid imitation, dripping snake-oil and peppered with unidentifiable detritus. It's a large Meatlovers with too much meat and no love.

Most of my (possibly unjustified) disdain for the place comes from trying to navigate the bastard. On previous trips, I've always managed to get snared in angry traffic, or diverted via the ring road to Neptune. This trip stayed true to form, with aggravation arriving in gigantic waves as I approached the outer suburb of Windsor. Hungry and tired, I stopped for a pie, fuel and directions at a roadside servo.

Now that's gourMET.

Resting Reverend.

To avoid the sanity-crushing maze of city thoroughfares, I'd picked a squiggly line of secondary road to the northwest as my bypass. This turned out to be a mistake on par with ogling Miranda Kerr on national television. After getting lost almost immediately, adding thirty unnecessary kilometres to the trip, the road then subjected me to the most brutal endurance test I had yet faced. The entire width of the carriageway was composed of patches; not a single piece of unbroken bitumen graced its sadistic surface. Up and down, up and down, round this hairpin, through these potholes, dodge the truck and so on. The heat was unrelenting now, blasting under my helmet and cracking my lips. I stopped at a lookout to lie, exhausted, under a tree for a while.

Oh look, it's a river.

Tired and fed up.

The next town was Wiseman's Ferry. It was here that the road abruptly ended and turned into the Hawkesbury River. Nobody told me I would have to catch a bleeding ferry because, apparently, bridges outside a 100km radius of Sydney had not yet been invented. I suppose I didn't ask.

Mercifully, it was only a ten minute wait before the punt showed up. About five cars and I rolled on for our unexpected river cruise.

I remained inside my motorcycle at all times.

Helmet may contain traces of grumpy engineer.

C'mon c'mon c'mon!

I almost wheelied over the guardrail in my enthusiasm to disembark. I had many miles to cover and the window for beers with Tim was closing fast. The chase from Wiseman's Ferry to the motorway was harrowing, but fascinating. Within spitting distance of Shiteney, this area feels like the deepest, darkest reaches of the Mississippi delta. Broken caravans and decaying sheds served as houses, with one standout example being a perfect cube, with a single central window, perched on four towers of Besser bricks. The collection of humans congregating at the lonely pub looked, through their cloying shroud of cigarette smoke, just like the kind to stab their own mothers in the eyeball as a birthday present. I kept my visor down and rode for my life.

By the time I hit the motorway, peak hour was in its death throes and so was I. I rang Tim from a roadhouse to let him know I'd be a little late.

Beyond tired.

In Newcastle, a second navigational crisis ensued as I tried to find a pub I'd never heard of, in a city I'd never visited, in the bloody dark. Eventually, with Tim's patient directions over the phone, I staggered into the bar for a happy reunion with him. There were a bunch of people there, so we stayed and chatted until we were ravenously hungry.

Tim grabbed a curry and I opted for a turkish pide from one of the amazing array of eateries that lined the streets. At 9pm, after a testing day, that pide was a thing of beauty. Olives, feta, eggplant and mountains of garlic - it was stupid good! Tim and I slumped in the living room of his apartment and ate.

Heaven does exist, right inside this box.

Tim's gut was playing up after a busy week and I was so cactus I was inarticulate. We agreed to turn in, rather than party on, as we both felt things would get ugly if we overdid it. I rolled out my mat in the lounge and passed out, smiling.

Introducing 'Insane ripping woman' aka LT

So, now it is my turn. It's Lauren, Tim normally refers to me as LT.

I'm not all that good at doing journal entries but decided to bash at the keys during my cancer journey every so often. Tim and I have decided to include some of my entries to add my perspective and further entertain you all. Contrary to what most people think, my closest friends know I am not as mental as the following entry will portray!! This journal entry was written the night before my first radiation treatment.

3 January 2010:
So, perfect, the night I promised myself that I’d start writing this journal (the night before my first radiation treatment), my head and body decided to give me some material for the journal – and the need to calm the f**k down. (Please excuse the language, we found that blasphemy is a symptom of treatment; prior, during and post). I was feeling angry, and anxious. I ran a bath after dinner and put a face mask on after undressing quickly. I felt like my clothes were bugging me or something. I just knew they had to come off, and fast. After laying in the bath for 3 minutes or so, I started feeling worse. I was angry, scared, anxious, and well, emotional.
That’s when I started to think ‘here’s the mental breakdown’. After trying to relax, my emotions just got more and more raw. The tears started to flow, along with a great sense of helplessness and loneliness. I didn’t know what to do, or think, but I kept saying ‘it’s going to be OK’. After crying into the face washer for awhile I was thinking of places to go, people who I could see, to help calm me down. That was when I heard the cat in the hallway, chewing on and ripping off and spitting out chunks of cardboard from the box out there. GENIUS!

(Example of Cous Cous ripping something up)

I decided then and there, that I would try the cat’s technique of de-stressing. I quickly unplugged, dried, dressed and found myself some scissors. It felt good.

I quite angrily (but positively) cut along where Cous Cous had started, and ditched the scissors to rip off with my own hands. I know that I’m not totally insane because I was keeping a mindful ear out for the pending arrival home of our house mate Sarah. I didn’t want her to walk in on INSANE RIPPING WOMAN!

(I am happy to say that I calmed down after that night's efforts. Stay tuned for further entries from me about our rollercoaster journey of 2010, thank you for reading and much love - Lauren).

Map me!

Some of you have asked why I haven't included a map for each day's ride. It's mostly because the blog template I use constrains the size of images, which tends to throw a nicely-composed Google Map into total disarray.

To get around this, I've put a 'today's map' link at the top of every post where I've covered some ground. You should now be able to open the map in a new tab or window and zoom around it to your heart's content. Let me know if you run into any problems or I've stuffed something up!

Lauren's Cancer Journey (pt 1, or What the hell are you doing, Tim? pt 3)

I've realised that getting my teeth into the subject of why I'm riding is going to take quite a few posts, over a fair bit of time. Much of this deals with LT's journey through cancer treatment, so I'm dropping the "What the hell are you doing?" title for a while and focusing on her story.

Lauren's diagnosis immediately quashed my plans to pack everything up and go back to QLD. Even though we'd decided against moving in with each other not long before, I knew in my heart that I had to be with her during treatment. It was an easy decision to make. We also shelved our plans to travel in Thailand together after Christmas (which reminds me hon, we still haven't made our insurance claims...). My stomach mourned the loss of its ticket to cheap, delicious street food and cocktails that come in buckets (handy if purging previous cocktails is required).

A cancer diagnosis means one thing in the short term: a bucketload of medical appointments for scans, tests, checkups and any other excuses to be poked and prodded by doctors. This all happens while you swill around in medical limbo, wondering, "How bad is it?", "What are LT's chances?" and "Will she ever have a normal life again?"

It's a scary place. While we were going through it, I wrote this in my journal:

2259, Sun 29 Nov 2009

Sitting up in bed while Lauren enjoys a late night snack of biscuits and cheese, a copy of Twilight and a pick at her neck wound. She seems a bit edgy at the moment, which could be down to the fact she'll be radioactive for at least 6 hours tomorrow. That's right kids: I'm going to have a girlfriend with a Geiger reading (fingers crossed for supernatural powers, preferably in the fields of engine tuning or intercourse).

It's called a PET (Positron Emission Tomography, I think, without the assistance of Wikipedia) and it means they get to inject her with extremely expensive radioactive sugar, before putting her in a machine that will spew fundamental particles at her in an effort to take delightful snapshots of her interior. Given the freakish and amazing array of bits of muscle, fluid and bone that were photographed during her MRI, I can hardly imagine what new perspectives this procedure might offer. Then again, my medical qualifications extend to buying throat lozenges and knowing when I have piles.

I've got a date with a bloke selling a 1983 GSX250 tomorrow. I'm considering the tactic of carrying a large amount of cash on me a seeing how low I can get his price on the promise of taking it away then and there. I'll let you know how that goes, but first I need to see whether or not it's a complete piece of shite. It is, after all, only a year younger than me, and I haven't aged well.

1930, Mon 30 Nov 2009

Well, Lauren is currently reading a Coles magazine, scanning recipes and subtle marketing mechanisms, quietly irradiating the loungeroom. Apparently the scan went pretty well compared to the MRI; no loud noises this time, though they had the usual trouble finding a vein to pump the plutonium into her.

I checked out the GSX 250 today and was half impressed and half disappointed. I think it fits its price point pretty well, but I'm not sure if I can be bothered doing the work to fix the broken stuff, like most of the instrument cluster. I sounded fantastic and was just the right size, but I'm not going to jump on it unless I'm more disappointed by the next couple I look at. I have a date with a black 2008 CBR125R tomorrow and I'm quite excited about that :-). It's a little jigger I've looked at a lot over the last couple of years and if I have the chance to get a nearly new one without taking the first depreciation hit, I'll be well pleased. Of course, I'll be subscribing to another couple of years of riding a 'poofter bike', but I frankly couldn't give a damn.

LT has another appointment tomorrow. It's with the plastic surgeon, who will hopefully give us some kind of roadmap for treatment. If he doesn't, I hope the next appointment, the following day, will. It's a bit of a roundabout of treatment and sleeping in at the moment, mixed with wide awake moments at 4am and lustful interludes dreaming of riding again.

LT's in good spirits today, which is good to see. I'm grumpy and sore, still fighting a cold, but hey, at least I'm not working.

An Intents Night

Something I didn't mention in the last post are the sleeping conditions I was privileged to experience at the Jenolan caravan park in Oberon. Don't get me wrong, the place was beautifully set up, but certain facts of tent life didn't really occur to me when I booked in that afternoon.

You see, Oberon is about 1100m above sea level, just shy of the height our beloved Mt Wellington back in Hobart. The daily weather rules are very different from those on the coast.  Inland, deprived of the moderating blanket of moist sea air, it gets breathtakingly cold the minute the sun wanders off to irradiate India and the Middle East. Cooking dinner and writing in the open-air camp kitchen, my hands gradually slowed until I was creaking with every stiff-fingered keystroke. By about eight, after calling my workmate Tim in Newcastle, I had lost all sensation in my nose, ears and genitals, so I thawed myself with a shower and crawled into the tent.

Kept awake by the noise of the quarry nearby (thanks, council zoning laws!), I lay there uncomfortably as the mercury dropped like a stone. By midnight, I was wearing two pairs of long johns, jeans, a singlet, t-shirt, long sleeved shirt, two woolen jumpers, two pairs of woolen socks and a fleece beanie. The only thing sticking out of my sleeping bag cocoon was my nose.  Eventually I slept, but somehow stayed aware of the cold even in my dreams.

Note to self for the next inland journey: get down to the Salvos to buy a blanket and a teaspoon of cement. I need to harden up before I tackle my next freezing night in Chateau Canvas.

Through the Valley of the Kangaroos

Today's map.

I was gently roused from my tent-bound slumber by a pack of jogging Sydneysiders complaining about the price of daycare. For a terrifying minute, I thought the trip must all be a dream; that I'd simply fallen asleep near a coffee shop in Sandy Bay, but I soon came to my senses. Nobody in Sandy Bay puts their offspring in childcare. It's far more cost effective to enrol them in sailing lessons, then leave them stranded in the river Derwent for about 18 years. If the child manages to survive, they're dragged up the beach, given a haircut, a Porsche and welcomed back into civilised society as a functioning adult.

As my morning brain-fog cleared, I remembered the advice of the family I met the night before. The road northwest through Kangaroo Valley was excellent, they said, so I broke out the map and plotted a route through it, aiming to finish somewhere west of the Blue Mountains. I went through my ritual of forcing down 3 Vita Brits with warm UHT milk, drying out the tent and solving the daily jigsaw of loading the bike. Then I hightailed it out of there via Nowra, hoping not to run into a holidaying Sydneysider and be scalded by soya latte froth.

The smooth, narrow road ricocheted up a densely forested ridge, then sharply down into the long, green valley itself. The NSW police appear to have made this road one of their favourite bitumen casinos, stacking the odds against the motorist with stupidly low speed limits and lurking patrol cars. For all my indignation, I obeyed the nanny signs. I simpy couldn't afford to risk my license when I had so much country left to cover.

Puttering along the floor of the valley, past the Kangaroo township, hunger pangs started to set in. To my delight, the signpost to Fitzroy Falls had one of those knife and fork symbols on it, so I turned off and went in search of cutlery. The carpark told stories of busloads of international visitors and the visitor centre was enormous. The whole operation also had the most elaborate complex of composting toilets I'd ever seen, complete with a warning not to dispose of children in the waste tanks. I suppose it must be a right bugger to fish them out, let alone put them in the car afterwards.

It was only 11am, so I decided to go for a walk to see the Falls and further sharpen my appetite. I'd hardly gone a hundred metres before I spotted a pair of lyrebirds fossicking in the undergrowth. I knelt down by the side of the walkway to watch, which immediately drew a crowd of tourists - not to see if I'd had a mild stroke, but to feverishly capture a thousand photos of the little beasties. I'm all for using the camera as a means to capture the moment, but the horde was clicking and flashing so enthusiastically that they may have given Fitzroy Falls its first mated pair of epileptic lyrebirds. What are the rangers going to do when they see one having a seizure? Put them in the recovery position? They don't get taught that stuff at ranger school.

Anyway, the Falls were actually really impressive. With the odd, forested escarpments of the area, it's easy to imagine a hapless early explorer simply falling off the edge of one of these outcrops. There's dense bush all around you, then suddenly the ground is 400ft lower than it used to be.

After a solid walk around the edge of the cliffs - and impressing a Chinese gentlemen with my 'cooee' skills to the point where he slapped me on the back of the head in excitement - I hit up the visitor centre for an early lunch. It was a refreshing change from other heavily-touristed places. The staff were friendly and chatty, made a good coffee and what is possibly the world's best lentil burger.

After eating so well, I felt like sitting in the sun and not moving for a while, so I did. I grabbed my laptop from the bike and blogged away, gloriously relaxed, for an hour or so.

On the road again, I tacked north, then west along the railway line to Goulburn, passing through Bundanoon and Wingello. At Goulburn, I had a tricky decision to make. The route to Oberon, my initial goal for the day, was 150km with some dirt sections on my outdated map. Dirt isn't much of a problem, but it slows you down and I'd burnt a lot of time chilling out at Fitzroy Falls. With the sun already dipping at 3pm, I struck out for Taralga, 50km away, to ask if the rest of the road would be suitable for my roadbike rig.

As it turned out, I didn't need to worry. Although it was bumpy and twisty, the whole route had been sealed recently, the bloke at the Taralga petrol station (one pump) told me. With a full tank and renewed confidence, I pushed on through the increasingly elevated and cold patchwork of national parks and farmland. Stopping at Abercrombie River for a wee, it felt like the middle of nowhere.

Another hour later, stiff and grumpy, I arrived in the pretty town of Oberon. The local caravan park was neat and cheap, so I happily pitched the tent on a deserted area of grass and settled into my evening routine.

The Rev's first taste of dirt

Today's map.

Back to the trip diary for a moment, because I'm still woefully behind.

Thick fog rolled in overnight, which was a double-edged sword. On one hand, fog tends to keep you nice and warm in the tent, but the downside is waking up in a cocoon that is one part canvas and nine parts water. The slightest touch on the inside of the tent rewards you with a refreshing trickle down your arm and waiting for the sun to dry everything out sends me insane with impatience.

Fog. Tim Prideaux dislikes this.

On my way back from the shower, I got talking with an old bloke who was a semi-permanent resident in one of the caravans near my site. I mentioned the fog and he said it'd been getting worse all week.

"The fogs seem to be getting Bega and Bega." he joked, looking at me to see if I'd registered his wisecrack.

I laughed at his cheesy comment and tried to stay out of his whey after that, in case he drove me crackers.

We started the day by heading southeast to the little surfie village of Tathra, before following the coast through national parks towards Bermagui. It was a pretty area, with lots of little beaches and bluffs, populated by a few keen fishermen and some surfers.

Cuttagee Beach, near Bermagui.

Not long after re-joining the Pacific Highway and hating it, I saw the sign for a tourist drive inland, so I swung the Rev in the direction of the brown signposts. Quite suddenly, I was on single-track dirt roads, coaxing the top-heavy bike through tight corners made of slippery gravel. It was good fun to try something very different to bitumen riding, but the pace had to be kept very slow. Any time I ventured over about 50km/h, a pothole or corrugated section would do its best to throw me into the bush, where I would be eaten alive by carnivorous wallabies.

Getting dirty in the bush.

After some more highway drudgery, dodging idiots in Commodores and aggressive tarts with hibiscus stickers on their Barinas, I pulled up in Batemans Bay for food. The inlet on which the town is built is beautiful, but the town itself had a very boganic feel to it. Everyone in the supermarket seemed to be called Sharon. None of the Sharons had ever located the contraceptives in aisle 9, judging by the pram warfare unfolding over the frozen chips cabinet.

Nice waterway. Shame about the locals.

I bought a chocolate milk to go with my grapes and apple. Feeling rebellious, I deliberately ignored the opening instructions. Sitting out by the water, I swigged my milk, enjoying the view and the knowledge that I was a total badass.

Nobody tells me which side to open!

Afternoon approached and I felt the need to make progress, so I punched on up the road, through Ulladulla and on towards Nowra. On a bit of a whim, I turned right just before Nowra and headed for Jervis Bay, which my eight-year-old set of maps told me was a beautiful place to camp. It was surprisingly difficult to find somewhere to pitch the tent, because most of the campsites are on federally-controlled land. Because it was after 3:59pm, the booking office, staffed by our federal government friends, was deadlocked and deserted. I expressed my disgust by taking a wee in their garden (the toilets were also locked) and went hunting elsewhere.

Some time later, I found a caravan park in Huskisson, which was brutally expensive, but right on the beach. I went for a jog at dusk, shared my lentil dinner with a couple of bold possums and met a wonderful young family who were on holiday from Canberra. After a couple of days with nobody but the dead bugs on my helmet to talk to, it was great to sit and chat with them until bedtime.

Would you like some awkward with your sunset?

The waves hissed gently up the beach and I settled down in my yellow cocoon - still wet from the morning fog - to sleep.