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.