Cradle Mountain is a national park which is north of (and contiguous with) Lake St Clair National Park – folks hiking the Overland Track start here.We had planned to stop and hike some of the many trails after biking around from Queenstown, and it got bumped off the itinerary with the shortcut to Burnie.
But as Flis was starting to feel more human, and the weather today looked awesome, meat, I mean Cradle Mountain, was back on the menu!
It’s about a 2-2.5h drive from Rosevears, and to get there before the shuttle starts running at 8am (after which cars are not permitted because the access road is so narrow), we had to start our day unethically early.We kept a sharp lookout for animals on the roadside as it grew light, and listened to The Spooky Men’s Chorale (a Tassie choir) sing whacky medlies like “We’ll Give it a Go” and “Don’t Stand Between a Man and His Tool”. Alarmingly, there was frost driving in!
We got there in time to avoid the shuttle, but not early enough to get parking by about 10 seconds (the car in front of us got the last parking spot, gah!). I dropped Flis and the pack off at Dove Lake and drove back to the next parking opportunity, and had a bonus warmup jog 2.5km to the trailhead.
It was a beautiful dayand the Dove Lake circuit is a well graded trailwith great views of the famous mountain.Flis’ strength is obviously coming back! We had our favourite sourdough from Bread and Butter, and my favourite cheese ‘The Hazards’ smoked cheddar. Usually, I’m the one goading Flis into tackling more ambitious hikes, but today it was Flis who egged me into the summit track while she knitted at the best beach on the circuit (7km was already pretty good for day 5 post surgery!).Although I’m sure she would rather have hiked the summit if she was physically up for it, Flis says that going to a gorgeous park and just chilling is pretty lovely. Bizarrely, knitting was a great conservation starter with other hikers.Two cohorts of kayakers with a young guide visited Felicity’s beach. They were careful with their wooden kayaks (made of local pine). The King Billy pine (now protected) grows slowly and has rot resistant timber, which was a hot commodity! Some of the trees in the park are 1500-2000 years old.The summit track added about 7km to my dayand had some steep sections and a bunch of clambering up boulders at the top.
A number of other hikers seemed out of their comfort zones, but I only heard one blood curdling scream, and one minor (unrelated) injury.
Cradle Mountain Summit 1545m with Barn Bluff behind me.After a refreshing swim in Dove Lake,we hiked the rest of the way out, happy not to have the time pressure of the last shuttle bus leaving at 6pm.We headed homewards, stopping in Sheffield (town of murals) for supper.Felicity even let me drive!
We woke to beeping and then loud noise and sewage smells.
There was a pump truck under the window working on the drains, and blocking us in. Wtf, Airbnb?
This place (and it wasn’t one of our budget accommodation choices) is advertised as a peaceful retreat, and you sent us heaps of messages, try to upsell us with “welcome platters”, and then this?
The subsequent combination of placating messages deflecting responsibility combined with a deluge of smarmy automated messages from the propety management company rather soured our attitude towards this particular Airbnb.
The main goal today was for Flis to see a doctor for post surgery follow-up. She attended a walk-in clinic, which gave her an appointment at the health center around the corner for later that same day. It was all quite painless compared to what it would have been like in Victoria.
In the interim, we roamed the shops of Launceston, which were weirdly devoid of postcards.
We went to our favourite bakery: Bread & Butter, and sampled local beer at Du Cane.On our way home, we stopped by Brady’s Lookout (looking east across the Tamar Valley); it’s probably more impressive at sunrise than at sunset, but sunrise is usually quite unrealistic for us… tomorrow for different reasons than usual.
Burnie -> Rosevears (via Stanley and Wynyard and Penguin)
We packed up and said goodbye and a huge thank you to Lee-Anne. Felicity is riding the holy low-exertion bicycle as she was directed not to strain herself for at least a week post surgery. I’m glad F didn’t realize everything could fit on my bike earlier! (Yes, it’s as heavy and unwieldy as it looks, but not as bad as the infamous Ikea load).The booked rental car looked small, but we managed to fit in both bikes, and all the gear with room to spare.With a motor, and maniac F at the wheel, we sped off to Stanley, part of Tasmania we didn’t think we’d be able to see.It has “the nut” which is a basaltic plug from an old volcano, of which the rest has eroded away.This beach is the one on the left of the above shot; it was sheltered from the wind by the town.We’d also heard Stanley was home of the best fish and chips. If it’s true, we didn’t find them. But the dessert was pretty darned delightful!
We’d booked a paper making workshop in Wynyard, so we beetled off to that. Unlike “The Pulp”, Creative Papers is still around after several decades, but they haven’t been bought up by companies with ulterior motives. They produce handmade papers. Handmade does not mean tool free – the beater machines bash fibers into a slurry, and the straight sided vats are perfect for keeping the exactly shaped A-sized screens level. Large felt mats absorb moisture, aided by a huge press, and the sheets dry on moveable vertical walls. Even the little watermark screens we used were much more professional (and effective) than any of my previous paper making attempts!
We learned that you can make paper out of pretty much any plant fiber. At Creative Papers, they use the following: Recycled cotton towels (consistency) Cotton thread (pre dyed spools, adds colour) Hemp (adds strength) Poops (added texture and fun) Eucalyptus (remarkably fast growing fiber) We learned that lignin is a cell structure component in plant fiber, but it defragmemts readily when exposed to UV. For some things (maybe a watercolour you want to last for ages), this matters, so you cook the lignin out, but lignin adds bulk to your slurry, so for things like newspaper where the news will be old and irrelevant in a few days, the lignin makes your slurry go further. The slurry in the vat today was low in lignin with real seeds in it, which was a regular order from an artist who commissions “seedy” paper for cards.
Creative Paper had also bought the paper maché people that Lee-Anne recommended to us. They were made by a duo of artists who have since retired.We drove through diverse farmland, including tulip farms right on the coast. I bet if you time it right, that would be absolutely stunning.We stopped for groceries and a snack in Penguin, which is a cute little seaside town with a beachfront esplanade and a sense of humour.It is a bummer not to be biking, especially when the weather is gorgeous and sections of our route today had glorious separate bike paths.But, we made it to Rosevears and are relieved this plan B is working out!
We spent two rest and recovery days at Lee-Anne’s.
She introduced us to her dachshund, Diver, as well as other “snags” (sausages) that go on the “Barbie” (BBQ), and showed us the local platypus virtually in her backyard! All with “no dramas”.
Such a godsend.Home of platypuses (platypi?) although they’re nocturnal, so mainly seen at dusk or dawn when the photography isn’t as great.After the initial down day when we didn’t leave the house, we tried a small outing to town and followed the ‘pulp and paper trail’.Burnie used to be a mill town: The Pulp, as it was known, used locally grown eucalyptus and pine and made paper for 60 years. It closed in 2010.This is one of the marble rollers from “The Pulp”. Over the course of its working life, it lost 5cm off its diameter.Flis was moving pretty slowly, but said biking was easier than walking. And also that my pants were more comfortable than her leggings and fit in better with the local amenities. We found a local brewery… where F tried a cranberry mocktail while I enjoyed their coffee porter. It’s weird here that a tasting flight (usually a set menu $20-25) costs double what a pint does ($9-12).…and then we found a place selling mash-in-what-you-like ice cream.
That was arduous, so we took a rest on the beachfront and watched a new-to-me water sport: a swimmer has a board with handles and a fin like a surf board and either kneels and paddles with both arms together or lies on their stomach and does something like an unsubmerged front crawl. Bizarre!
The kneeling version looks kangaroo inspired. If you have any idea what this is, please share!The sun was hot but the wind was cold. Therefore… style!For supper, we tried fish and chips again (this one actually turned out to be shark)… not our favourite, but full marks for this great view!
Then, we pushed the energy budget to stay out late because this area is home to a healthy population of little penguins, and there’s a group of volunteer guides that run an observation at dusk. They were cute, funny, and surprisingly noisy! The penguins, that is.
This buddy is midway through his 17-day “catastrophic moult”, so he’s probably thirsty, hungry, and itchy. The guides handed out bits of red cellophane to those people unequipped with red bike lights. (White light distresses the penguins at night).
Ambulance version: Flis was feeling worse rather than better despite now normal GI, so we called health direct (Aussie version of our 811) and they directed us to the nearest ED, which thanks to our efforts yesterday was only 1 minute away downhill. They figured Flis probably had appendicitis, but weren’t equipped to do surgeries there, and recommended immediate transfer to the nearest hospital with a surgical team: Burnie.
Burnie is on the north coast, so Flis had a bumpy ride with Aaron, the ambulance driver.
With some drips in, and some pain relief, she eventually swapped places with an empty stretcher and went the remainder of the 2.5 hour drive with the Burnie ambulance team to North West Regional Hospital.
Once there, she had a CT scan, which confirmed a ruptured appendix, and was able to get surgery that night.
Bus version: After retrieving Flis’ toothbrush, the battery pack, and switching out our sim cards (which miraculously resulted in both of us having service again), I left Flis with Aaron, and settled down to the project of figuring out how to get two bikes and all our gear up to Burnie. The next bus wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, so I had a day to pack and plan.
Accommodation options in Burnie were slim. (Next to nothing available within riding distance of the hospital). There was free camping near the hospital, though, which would do for me. I put out feelers to a like-minded-sounding Warmshowers host. Maybe she could store the extra gear or something.
I finished drying the laundry and tent, and converted our usual 9 bags into 5 (4 big panniers and the yellow bag). Presumably, it would be more manageable to deal with fewer bags, and likely safer to lock up an unloaded bike and ride a truly overladen bike and come back for a second trip with the other unloaded one.
I checked with TassieLink, the bus company, and confirmed there would be room for me and two bikes, but they needed me to remove the front wheels. No problem. Oh wait, F had her multitool not me, and I need the pliers as well as the hex keys to be able to remove my front rack. How tight a fit was it?
Our Airbnb host kindly agreed for me to check out late so I didn’t have to spend 4 hours languishing at the bus stop. I puttered, and I ate and drank like anything, cursing myself for getting all those groceries. Among other things, how was I going to drink down 2L of milk?
The espresso machine was a great help.
It was a pretty miserable day all round.
In the morning, I had two pieces of great news: Flis’ surgery went well and she was discharged from the hospital before I got out of bed, and Lee-Anne from Warmshowers was game to host us in Burnie and offered to pick us each up from the hospital and bus station respectively. Brilliant!
Queenstown train station
The bus was already running late even without my interference, and I hadn’t dismantled the bikes, so loading was a bit chaotic. I got them both on after turning the handlebars and removing one wheel.
I don’t think my bike has ever been so poorly packed for transit, but we all managed the sparsely populated, 3.5h coach ride to Burnie unscathed.
I had just time to pick up F’s prescription and a few dinner ingredients (there was space on the top off my front rack that wasn’t full yet, ha!) before Lee-Anne arrived.
Bike path in Burnie, enroute to Lee-Anne’s
So, we would strongly not recommend appendicitis. Getting it while on tour is especially not ideal, but we’ve both been in travel situations where this would’ve been a lot worse! At least we were beside an ED, in a place where we speak the language, and not far from appropriate medical care. And traveling with a buddy who can deal with the other logistics… even if said buddy did convince you to ride 93km with a ruptured appendix first. Oops!
Flis was feeling pretty rough, but we set off anyways.
We booked an Airbnb in Queenstown so we’d have a warm, dry place waiting.
It was a long ride, and it rained off and on all day.If Flis wasn’t hunched over in worsening pain the whole time, we might have appreciated the gorgeous rainforest landscapes more.There were multiple yards of bee boxes along the route.I made detours to Nelson Falls and to the grocery store before closing timewhile Flis plodded steadily on.Whoever was riding caboose carried the repair kit and pump as neither of us had cell reception for most of the day. The last 8km into town involved a horrendous hill up and down. Even Flis used the brakes.There was a bathtub, two big beds, a full kitchen, and covered bike storage. Rarely have I appreciated an Airbnb more.
There were many options for hiking around the Lake St Clair area. We chose an 18km hike around Shadow Lake and up Little Hugel.The park staff had recommended we stick to a shorter lake circuit as there was a wind warning (gusting up to 90km/h), and the trail approaching the summit involved scrambling.Maybe that’s why we had the trail pretty much to ourselves. This is temperature rainforestand we found some really big trees (and enough moss and ferns to make us feel quite at home).The scramble turned out to be a really fun semi-bouldering experience that was well protected from the northerly wind.These guys were also enjoying the sunny boulders on the lee side.Little Hugel summitLooking southeast: Forgotten Lake closest, then Shadow Lake, and Lake St Clair way in the back right.Looking north: Mount Olympus North (right), Mount Byron (center), and Mount Manfred (right)Looking west: Sauruman, about to bring down the mountainWe had just sat down on the summit to eat our celebratory chocolate when a couple eagle-sized birds flew over. We believe they were Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles, of which there are only 300 breeding pairs left in Tasmania!Having started late, and dawdled on our way out,
… we hiked the last 6km back in at record speed to avoid losing daylight. We were almost in time to avoid the rain.
We stopped in the cafe for passionfruit ice cream and watched the downpour, happy to have the Palace already set up and waiting for us.The smoke was palpable here this evening. It was bizarre to have both smoke and downpour, and I hope some of the rain landed where it is badly needed!Flis was dealing with some GI issues, which meant Alice the hippo ate 3/4 of our pasta dinner that would’ve reasonably served three people.
The forecast is for snow (!?) here shortly, as well as rain and wind, and there are no services between here and Queenstown, which is a solid day’s ride away, so tomorrow might be a slog.
Distance cycled: 44.8 km Ave: 19.8 km/h Max speed: 64.3 km/h
In contrast to yesterday, today felt easy.
We had a leisurely start because we had no intentions of going past the national park, Lake St Clair.It was beautiful riding.Imagine riding along, seeing a third roadside echidna proving it’s alive by wiggling its waddle-y way towards the Eucalypt scrub. You ride past a propety where a microwave is being used to support the mailbox. As you’re riding by, a logging truck with massive trunks zooms past in the opposite direction.Like this one, but the logs were so big that only 4 fit instead of each of the two bundles carried by this one!
We stopped to visit The Wall, which is a purpose-housed and carefully lit span of wood sculpture panels. Most of the panels were finished, others were left intentionally unfinished. The whole thing was probably 25 meters long and 2 meters tall, with carving on both sides. The material looked to be many vertical 2″ strips of wood, glued together and then carved.
Although it claims to be a portrayal of local history, it really is a testimony to this guy’s ability to carve pioneer men.
There was a small blurb about him asking indigenous communities to contribute their story, and leaving it out because they didn’t respond. There were multiple notes from the artist about keeping phones put away as to take photos or video would be “unaustralian”. Among the plethora of labouring male pioneers, there were only four women: one of them was nude (random gal having a shower, super narratively relevant, I’m sure), one dancing with a man, and two at the end portraying mourning the loss of a spouse who died in war. Portrayal of history ended with the wars. There was a thank you from the artist to “forestry and hydro” “for their support”.
So I walked out of there with my amazement at the carving skill soured by dislike for the artist. Why are women still only rarely portrayed, and then often (totally unnecessarily) naked, and only as they relate to men? Why, when I mentioned how few women were portrayed to some guys outside the venue afterwards, had it not even registered to them that women had been missing? A lot of funds went into setting this up. Perhaps “forestry and hydro” weren’t keen on giving the contract to someone else (like an indigenous artist) who might have portrayed a different attitude to “history”.
Although the gender distribution is just as skewed, there has been no paucity of motorcyclists. Today especially, has been swarming with them. We entertained many motorcyclists with our impressiveness, which felt pretty laughable given the easy short day. It’s fun watching people try (and most often fail) to pick up my loaded bicycle. Mostly, the motored cheating scoundrels are fun, as it’s usually interesting to chat with fellow travellers. But one motorcyclist actually told us it was possible to carry more gear on push bikes than on a motor bike. Dude. You have a motor!
Helicopter flipping lumber into the park – presumably for hut or trail maintenance. Could probably do that better with a push bike too! Ha ha
Lake St Clair is a national park (again, nobody checked our passes). There is free camping, which is great, but it’s weirdly far from bathrooms and water – like an 8-10 minute walk.
After setting up the tent, we took a swim in the lake, and F took the opportunity to look for leaks in her mattress.One of several snakes who I’ve nearly trod on – they can’t see or hear me coming, but feel the vibrations of my steps through the earth.
Over by the bathrooms, there’s a lot of great infrastructure: a lodge, restaurant/cafe, visitor center, showers (only open 10am-4pm, weirdly), and picnic tables. We cooked dinner in a sea of mosquitoes, and we all ate our fill. I suspect the great infrastructure is because this the end of the famous Overland Track (a week long hut to hut hike which is currently closed because of bushfires). Given the infrastructure, it seems even weirder that the camping is free. But hey, no complaints!
Distance cycled: 65.3 km Ave: 14.1 km/h Max speed: 73.5 km/h
Note: a lot of our max speed data is from Flis; even though my odo has more enthusiasm, it can’t compete with Flis’ enthusiasm to go downhill as fast as possible – my max speed today was only 70.7 km/h.
Despite that max speed, today felt slow. Maybe it was the climbing. Maybe it was the absence of coffee. Maybe it was the beer last night. There were no headwinds to complain about, and no mountain passes to climb. The legs (and bum) just didn’t want to work that hard.
So here are some strategies your legs may want to try should you find yourself in a similar situation:
– Do a grocery run (this does have the downside of making your bags heavier)
-Fill up the fuel bottle (also makes it heavier, oops)
– Go for a pee (always helps; don’t forget to immediately drink more water for optimal frequency)
– Stop when your cycling buddy goes to pee and drink water (helps to stagger your pee breaks with your buddy’s)
– Eat some snacks (particularly good to start this just as another reason to stop is coming to an end)
– Pick roadside fruit (ideally, a tree on an uphill section with fruit hanging slightly over the road’s shoulder; this is totally viable regardless of when you last snacked)
– Have lunch (often need to wait until at least 11:30 for this to feel legit; we had one of F’s favourite cheese of the trip so far (a tie with Bream Creek’s brie): a soft and creamy blue cheddar)
– Stop for more snacks (carrying food on the inside is much easier; Poppy seed brittle and mandarin is not a flavour of chocolate I would’ve expected to be good until we sampled it at the market)
– Pull over and read signs at local points of interest (prioritize the ones where you can see the sign board from the road, and never stop on a downhill. There’s serious hydro happening here)
– Reapply sunscreen (this one is also a good stop lengthener if it looks like your buddy might be getting ready to cycle again)
– Filter water (oops making the kit heavier again)
– Check your tire pressure (when it’s <40 psi instead of 60-70 psi, you can blame your previous speed on that if you’re prepared to make any changes afterwards)
– Map checks (this one can be hard to justify when you’re on the only main route and it doesn’t have any turn offs, but it can be important to check where the camping spots in striking distance are, and the elevation profile to get there – so long as you’re prepared to know there’s an epic and immediate uphill on the other side of the upcoming epic downhill)Tarraleah power station
We employed all these strategies today, and still made it to a delightful lakeside free campsite where we rewarded ourselves for our cunning with a swim and an SFG dinner.
Lake Binny by moonlight
Alice
PS. Dinner was slightly delayed by stove dysfunction. I highly recommend travelling with the full stove repair kit, and instructions…but in this case, the solution was Victoria’s strongest pinch grip and a pair of excellent tweezers, so I’d recommend travelling with those as well!
Distance cycled: 80.9km Ave: 20.1 km/h Max speed: 66.8 km/h
After our 3rd attempt to get breakfast was thwarted by unexpectedly closed cafes, we finally got the memo that today was a kind of unofficial holiday: regatta day of the boat festival.
This explained the rowdiness downtown last night, and the businesses closed on an otherwise ordinary Monday. The art collective I tried to patronize was closed along with most of the other shops we passed. Google’d had no idea.
Our 4th attempted (and successful!) breakfast led us back out through the rose garden and out of town on the Intercity cycleway.It was lovely, flat railgrade until it ended abruptly in Clare’s other town.
The highway wasn’t bad though once we got on it; given that Hobart is at sea level, we were expecting some climbing, but we made good time (just look at that average!)
We sped past swans with their cygnets, and paddlers on a slallom whitewater course.
Lots of the fruits were netted to keep the fliers (and Felicitys) outPicking up 2kg of gravensteins at the market was a great choice – they’re gone already, and we’ve started on the fruit leathers!
We also stopped for fruit, and were frustrated by target pricing on shoddy cherries. Only picking up some homegrown pears from an old fella with a cataract and a missing finger really redeemed roadside fruit today.
Rolling hills, and lots of hay.
Hamilton has gorgeous camping facilities (bbq, covered picnic area, flush toilets, even showers!) with few other campers. Fortunately a local came by to suggest we move our tent because we’d parked it right beside a bunch of sneaky pop up sprinklers. Would’ve been even more fortunate if I’d had pants on.
We eased ourselves out of our luxury lifestyle at the 1826 pub, which despite regatta day was amazingly open and delicious!
BC by Cycle 