5am is a unholy time to have to wake
up, and the words I shared with the alarm clock would get a layman
kicked out of any God-fearing Christian congregation. Such a spot
could offer a sunrise beyond compare, but omnipresent thunder clouds
were not as transparent as I hoped. Plus, I had been too gob-smacked
the previous day to consider the westerly facing aspect of my
position. It wasn't given any consideration at 5am either as a quick
one half-opened eye peek out the door revealed enough grey to return
to sleep without asking any more of my sluggishly rebooting brain.
When I finally rose two hours later,
the sky was ripe to rumble so I packed up with the sort of haste
usually seen only in bushfire evacuation. I didn't need to dawdle as
I had spent enough time gazing at the vista yesterday when natures
palate had more scope than the climate was affording it today.
Bemoaning the fact that my bushmans shower still left me smelling
like I was decomposing, I cut short any other gripes by focusing on
day seven of riding being the last for awhile.
Before riding the kinks out of the my
legs, I got to descend back down to the valley floor with the sort of
speed that induces small yelps of joy. What goes up, must come down
and this was my funfair style reward for yesterdays hard slog. I
not-so-secretly hoped that the road would stay at that level, but any
more good luck would scare me into thinking I was going through good
karma quicker than my cash supply.
What goes down, must go back up even
higher it seems and a ridiculously long incline had me sweating with
the sort of intensity that could make me a national champ at it.
Before long, the water in my hydrapak ran out, and the small serving
of shower water I had used the previous day no longer seemed small
enough. The road continued along a ridge well above anything that may
have been able to rehydrate me, unless it rained, but I had long
given up hoping the weather would yield to my wishes.
Soon after it had become uncomfortable,
but long before I was prepared to flag down passing planes, I came
across a general store. It's hard to describe the sense of relief one
feels when an impending ordeal is cut short before becoming a
disaster. I couldn't capture it accurately after finding my camp site
in the clouds the day before and procuring water from this particular
shop didn't warrant the same effort in literary terms.
It turned out I was saved from having
to when relief quickly changed to disappointment as I realised the
shop was closed till next year. I was recycling sweat as it dripped
off my moustache and I knew I was good for a couple more kilometers
before muscles cramped in protest, thoughts got hazy and I started
speaking Ukranian. Fortune favours the bold some Greek dude figured
out years ago and it still holds true for everyone but me most of the
time.
Thankfully, this was not one of those
times as a roadside reserve with a tap carved by the Roman goddess
Felicitas herself appeared to slaked my thirst in a way that no VB
commercial could convince me was not the best possible way. After
filling every water bottle I owned, I thought of showering, but
public nudity is still not as widely accepted as I would like.
As I entered the outer suburbs of
Sydney, the roads narrowed and the bike lanes disappeared quicker
than the patience of the drivers. Never keen on the idea of being a
statistic, I made for the nearest train station and let the rail
system do what I thought was too dangerous for my wobbly rig to
undertake. I was technically in Sydney anyway so I don't see it as a
form of cheating.
Navigating all the lifts getting
between stations turned out to be more challenging than dodging dodgy
drivers anyway. The bike kept falling over like it had done all the
work getting us this far, but Sydney-siders failed to show any of the
concern that their Tea Gardens counterparts had done when my bike
tried to become amphibious. Replacing the foot stand became just
another thing I was likely to forget to do while in Sydney.
A quick trundle down Bondi Road and I
arrived at the famous beach. The sky was giving me cause to be
under-whelmed, but that didn't stop hundreds of people flocking to
the beach like it was the best day of the year for it. Jess'
apartment was on the north side so I was required to put in a
Herculean effort keeping my eyes on the road and its oblivious
drivers instead of the Bondi beach babes who were being beautiful
just because they could.
The apartment was about the size of my
trailer, and hoping to store that in there meant I was sleeping in
the hallway. How her brother Paul was going to stay there as well was
a Tetris like conundrum made easier by the fact the siblings weren't
getting along and his visiting rights were being re-evaluated. A
squeeze was still being planned for NYE, but anything is possible on
a night like that.
Bondi time was spent doing Bondi things
like drinking coffee, being pretentious and forsaking all other
considerations for looking cool and glamorous. My wardrobe didn't
afford much glamour, but catching up with close friends from Broome
in Hamish and Jess brought a touch of reality to a city that seemed
devoid of any of it. Or at least the version of it that I am now used
to.
To avoid overstaying my welcome in
Jess' baked bean tin, I caught a train to Nowra to catch up with
Niamh, an Irish girl I had befriended in Hobart. She was always keen
for a craic and her offer to join her camping was greeted with the
sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for the condemned. I was not in
a hurry to jump straight back into a tent but having a car at her
disposal meant she was able to bring the sort of supplies
unjustifiable when your own energy is required to transport it.
We first went to Hymas beach as some
unsummer-like sun was making a swim finally seem feasible. The water
was like liquid glass but the waves were so big, I coped a pounding.
Normally a huge advocate of such surf based thrashings, having my
head bounced off the sandy floor more than a few times convinced me
that the conditions were better for spectating than experiencing.
The spectator experience took on epic
proportions when a pod of 15 dolphins came close to shore to do a bit
of surfing themselves. Driving along the crest of the wave, they
would turn as the peak went to break and speed along the wave face
like the wave was the wall of an aquarium. Being shore breaks meant
their games seemed close enough to join in. I couldn't imagine how
much pleasure a dolphin would derive from seeing a human coming into
their environment and floundering around in concussive waves like
Hunter S. Thompson huffing diethyl ether.
By the time they had grown tired of
their fun, the entire beach of a few hundred people were standing in
awe and staring. It was a natural phenomena that finding a way to
market would make any man a millionaire. I rate it up there with my
recent sighting of phosphorescence on Gantheaume Beach as an
unforgettable natural phenomena. And just as impossible to
photograph.
Camping places were proving harder to
find than jokes, but my winning streak was gathering too much
momentum. The appropriately named Hidden Caravan Park had one vacancy
left and it didn't go to the person queuing in front of us cause they
just wanted an ice-cream. There was a minimum stay of four nights and
I didn't even have to bust out the lingerie to get the old dear to
accept us for two nights. I strutted all the way to our site
backwards, just because I could.
Before long we had the camp set up
affording us a degree of luxury that no bicycle tourist would ever
dream of lugging around. Camp fires were allowed so we arced up a
rip-roarer and set to catching up and drinking lots in no particular
order. Once enough drinking had been done to cancel out any catching
up, I poked sticks at a dwindling fire and gave thanks for being
somewhere beautiful without having strained to get there.
