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.