Bathurst to Canberra

It was a very chilly and misty morning when I rolled out from Bathurst, temperature was around 4 degrees and for first time I had to use full finger gloves, they proved to be not so warm, and the chill was painful in the beginning. Later the mist changed to a more smoggy air from the bush fires around Lithgow in east. They had darkened the sky the day before too.

Traveled along the Trunkey road and it was easy and fast cycling in the beginning. Had soon made 40 km and the 6 days that I had calculated for traveled to Canberra looked like a very good margin. 

In Bathurst Julie had convinced me to weight my bags, I didn't really want to know first but changed my mind. Totally bags + cycle weighted around 65 kg (including food and 10 l of waters) and that's the same as my weight. I'm used to the weight of the bike so no problem, but it's really hard to parry if it's starts to fall over. And it's also a bit of work to access the rear bags because they are all so tied up, so usually I only take them off the bike at the end of the day.

Having no extra space for carrying more water I'm now really considering to switching to a trailer when I get to Melbourne. The alternative would be to get rid of some of my current gear and that's is not something that I'm yet prepared to do. A trailer would also mean that I can carry the gear in a more accessible way and bringing with me the extra water I need when getting to more remote areas. 

A heavy weigther - 47 kg of gear and 18 kg of bicycle

Cycling all day gives you really big apatite, and I have now found a new favorite snack. I missed butter on the bread and have now found that olive oil is a good substitute. Vegemite is an Australian specialty, made from leftover brewers' yeast extract. It has a special taste and I can't say I liked it the first time I tried it. But with butter it's not that bad, not sweet but a bit high on salt contents.

Road snack

Have had continuing problems with water leaking from the Ortlieb water sacks. I have four of their 10 L sacks and a couple of them have leaked from the caps. The issue is to get the sealer ring flat and tight in big cap. It doesn't leak much but enough to cause some trouble with wet gear and you don't want to loose any water that you been carrying. So a bit irritating, but if you are very careful when closing the cap you can minimize the leaks. 

I knew that it would be a big descent when getting to the Abercrombie river and then once you crossed the river a steep ascent to gain back all the altitude you lost on the way down. 

The day was really hot and first I planned to stay at one of the free camp sites at the Abercrombie river. But decided instead to stop just before beginning the descent and stay at the camping place at the Abercrombie caves. Was a bit of a gamble because didn't knew anything about the camping spot and prices, only that it was in the National park. 

Going down the steep 2 km to the camping spot would mean no return, it would be to late and hard to climb up again. But it turned out to be a very good idea, because it was a lovely camping area and I had it completely for myself, no other caravans or tents. Only shared it with lots of kangaroos. I've seen many already so no novelty any longer but the kangaroos here were not afraid, just lying 10 meters from the tent.

But there are a back side with all the kangaroos, their back side. Lots of poo everywhere so had to really pick your spot when you sat down etc.

Stayed there to after lunch the next day, checking equipment and trying to replace the zipper in my wind jacket. Even if I got good grades from the needlework in school I was not even halfway through replacing the zipper after 3 hours...but my thumb was sore :) 

Had a very sweaty climb up from the Caves, but it was quite Ok and not long to go before coming to Tuena which were my next destination.

In Tuena I discovered that the maintenance I had done on the stove had not only been good. Maybe just a coincidence but now it wouldn't function as normally,i.e. had big yellow flames instead of the normally blue. Which meant no more cooked meals before I could get spare parts. No problems really, because the couscous is fine to eat without boiling the water. 

The road from Tuena to Crookwell was mixed gravel and bitumen, and it's was very much up and down. Also unusually heavy traffic for being such a small road and all the vehicles created big dust clouds. Closer to Crookwell the road got all sealed.

Dusty road.

My destination for the day was Grabben Gullen and I camped next to the Hall on a perfect flat lawn. In the evening I could see lightnings in the distance and later that night it began to rain. The rainy weather continued all night and lasted until late afternoon. Not heavy rain but passing showers so was not that bad for cycling. 

Waiting for a pause in the raining

Next stop was Gundaroo and outside the local store I met a man that had worked at the Australian embassy in Stockholm, Sweden back in 1961-62! Interesting to hear his memories of Stockholm.

The park in Gundaroo.

From Gundaroo it was only 40 km left to Canberra and I tried to get there as soon possible. The road was alright and with about 13 km to go I entered Australia Capital Territory. The sign marking the border was very discrete and easy to miss. 

Cycled via Queanbeyan and the International airport and it was easy cycling into the city with very well marked bicycle paths/lanes all the way from the suburbs into the city center.