Friday, December 12, 2008

Leaving the 'ville.

It was with a certain level of elation that I said farewell to Townsville. The bogans, rednecks, obnoxious drivers, same old rides and outrageous humidity had all gotten to me.


The house was packed up by two redneck bogans who showed as much respect for my belongings as I would for their over-weight, smoking and unemployed spouses. Half of my stuff should make it to my new destination unscathed………

On Tuesday I packed two bikes (one more than when I travel by air) and entered my climate-controlled capsule to head south for the holidays. The plan was to fit as many mountain trails as possible into my trip. This plan lasted the first contact, Rockhampton.

Rockhampton is the worst cycling city I have ever had the displeasure of visiting. Let’s see, there’s the cycle paths that do not allow cycles, the bike shops that refuse to give out information on local trails (or just plain don’t know) and the homicidal traffic. All of this was experienced in less than two hours.


Traffic was the big one for me, within one hour I had nearly been killed twice – Once by a tradie towing a trailer who decided to speed up and enter a roundabout with me (he was kind enough to look in his re-vision mirror to check whether or not he had killed me). He was less than impressed when I stopped at the lights 50m up the road and took a nice portrait photo of him in his companies ute. The second incident involved a 4wd mounting a foot high gutter to get around traffic. The problem was that I was JRA in the bike lane (clearly divided from the road by a foot high gutter) when he decided to do so. Needless to say, I let go at him and his girlfriend, they weren’t willing to wind down their windows and have a chat to a redfaced, shaking and soon to be violent cyclist; the driver’s final reaction was predictable – stuck his finger up at me and sped off as I reached for my camera. I have my ways of finding people in highly upspec’d Defender 110 Tdi’s, a very unique car his was……I’m thinkin’ he belongs to the local club?!?!?!




No accommodation was available in Brisbane so I took the b-line for Canberra the next day, made Dubbo by bed-time and continued the next 400km the next morning. Checked out my new house in Canberra (moving in in Jan) and found accommodation to be lacking once again as a result of a sporting carnival of some sort. It was 1pm and Adelaide was 1200km away but it was an easy decision to make a run for it. I arrived at one thirty in the morning and was officially on holidays!!!!!!



It was a great three days - 3600km and an average of 5.8L/100km in the Focus (at 105-115km/h).