Wet Sleeping Bags, Mondo Spiders, and Wwoofing

Departing Brisbane we hopped on the train and started our journey north 40 miles outside Brizzy, in Nambour. Having already decided to stay off the main highway as much as possible, we headed toward Noosa Head. Our first night out we camped in the backyard of a young Australians guys house and his 5 Irish mates. We had just met the fellows by sheer coincidence as we rode by. We found we could help them out with their two flat tired bikes by supplying them with our pump and in exchange they offered us a few beers and a spot to camp in the backyard! We had a great night with these witty guys, sharing dinner and drinks, and learning some interesting new card games.

The next day we sluggishly rode to the small town of Kin Kin, which boasting only one raucous tavern. On the way we passed through the surfing and tourist laden beaches of Noosa Heads. This day was the first where we experienced the summer seasons stifling humidity. Feeling like we were riding through a brightly lit sauna room, we stopped numerous times during the day to peel our wet clothes off of our sticky bodies. In Kin Kin we camped in a sports field next to the tavern. Every town has one of these fields that they call "The Oval" and we're pretty sure the only sporting that goes on is Cricket. Having not expected such strong rain this night we awoke to the feeling of sleeping on a water bed! The rain was pooling on top of and underneath our tent leaving us damp and our sleeping bags wet.

After a couple of nights of sloppy sleeping we headed off the Bruce Highway 1 to the Great Sandy National Park at Tin Can Bay. Deciding to take a short cut we spent much of our 120 km day on a gravel rode. We climbed and skitteringly descended what seemed like an endless line of hill tops - up and down up and down. A thick coat of dust would shroud over us as the 4WDs zoomed past. We are used to gritty sand between our teeth these days. Coming into Tin Can Bay we passed an Australian Military Training Base, their signs warned us of laser beams and fatal explosives. Hopefully they warn the kangaroos of these threats as well! We stayed at a lovely caravan park that evening and when Elise went to open her pannier out jumped the largest spider we both had ever seen. Yelling and thrashing about she threw the pannier on the ground forcing the giant spider to take cover farther inside the bag. Both Elise and the spider made it out alive. It turns out the spider is called a Huntsman and it is the only spider known to feed its young. Although Australia is home to some of the most poisonous spiders in the world the Huntsman only packs a small punch and hardly ever bites when unprovoked. The next morning we rode into the town marina where dolphins regularly come into feed out of tourists hands. Supervised by marina volunteers the dolphins will gingerly take the small fish out of each persons hand - no petting or swimming with the dolphins though. On the way out of town we passed a few large groups or "mobs" of kangaroos including little joey roos hopping about.

Said Spider:

Each day we set a riding goal based on where we plan to stay that night. On this day in particular we hoped to make it past the town of Maryborough. Following an old logging road most of the way we descended on Howard outside of Maryborough. Often we will pass through or stop shortly before bigger towns, preferring to camp in smaller places because we find it easier to free camp. This night we spent in a local park along a stream. Soon we will no longer be able to camp near a water due to the crocodiles that are known to gobble up unsuspecting tourists. Surprisingly we met two extremely friendly local track cyclists walking their cute and slightly gimpy greyhound mutt whilst we were stealtfully setting up our camp. They tipped us off to some races that would be going on in Bundaberg the following night and assured us that we were in no danger of being persecuted for camping illegally.

Like the new bright bags?

The ride to Bundaberg was beautiful and relatively quiet as we routed ourselves along a less major road. This was our first day of really loooooong straight flat stretches and both our butts were terribly sore by the time we arrived in the mid afternoon. We followed our normal routine: Stop at grocery store and get food, visit the Tourist Information center to ask about caravan parks, find said place and set up tent, shower, and eat dinner. We also threw in a trip to the local bicycle shop to peruse the stock and to inquire about the velodrome. We were pointed in the right direction and the nights races were confirmed by the shop owner. We decided to cook dinner and take it with us to the track to watch the races... I'm sure we made a great impression as we ate our mashed potato surprise out of a camping pot with our sporks while the guys and kids warmed up. Their track has almost no bank in the corners but is fairly long and it's interesting in that it's the best lit anything in all of Bundaberg at 7:30 on a Monday night. The racing was pretty good and their turnout was about 30 in all with about 10 of those folks being under the age of 14. They had an interesting handicap system where the younger kids or slower adults would start a certain distance ahead on the track. This seemed to work well, especially for the kids. The littlest of the kids couldn't have been more than 6 and was on a fixed gear bmx with special 650c wheels (which he rode standing most of the time) and he got to do 3 time trials. Each time he'd get the bell he'd keep going for an extra lap until his dad would call him off saying he was done and other people we're wanting to race too! Cute. We met two more Irish guys and an English guy at the caravan park we stayed at who warned us off of visiting the late night take away shops in town citing that their friend had been jumped the night before and was busy getting his jaw wired shut back in Brisbane. One of the Irish guys had been with him and his face said as much with a black eye, bloody lip, and butterfly bandages here and there. There's been a bit of tension between the locals and the travelers who come to Bundy to get labor jobs picking fruit. With the economy doing so poorly everyone's on edge and although we hear the kids in Bundy would never pick up the fruit picking jobs they're not keen on foreigners taking the wages and work from their community. In the morning we walked to the McDonalds and picked up breakfast sandwiches for ourselves and the guys, who were gracious and grateful. We hope they've gotten out of Bundaberg, healed up, and found some work by now!

We left Bundaberg (the Ginger Beer capital of Australia) headed for Agnes Water with a long day in store for ourselves. After the previous days flat stretches we were glad for the rise and fall of the slight rollers and kept a good 23 kilometer per hour pace almost the whole day... It helped that we had a few soda and candy breaks along the way :0 ! We got a TON of waves and honks from the drivers starting as soon as we took the turn off bound for Agnes Waters. We had headed here,and more so even to the town of Seventeen Seventy, because Hugh (of Gretta and Hugh) had told us all about Lady Muskgrave Island during our stay in Ormeau. We'd decided that we'd make the extra 40km detour off our route to visit this magical place. The town of Agnes water is not much more than a dozen store fronts with a grocer that closes at 7:30 most days. We stopped in to the Tourist Information center and got an update on the status of our intended cruise, not good... the trip had been cancelled for the past 3 days due to strong winds and would be cancelled for sure the following day with a possibility of going the day after. We decided to stay and see if Mondays sailing would go out seeing the opportunity for a rest day as a great idea after our longest day yet at 125km. The council run Workmans Beach campground we got ourselves situated at was great and cheap at $5.50pp/pd. There were nice composting toilets and free bbq's and even an outdoor shower! Our campsite was situated under a great big banyan tree and the rest of the campground was shady and sheltered by eucalyptus of all varieties. Scrub turkeys abounded and were willing to eat anything and everything we couldn't finish, I assume they also keep the frog and lizard population to a minimum but we did manage to see some great big tree frogs and even a small goanna (which really aren't that small). We slept well and welcomed the change of a cool breeze through the tent after opting to keep the rain flys open despite the warning of rain.

From Agnes Waters we made a big push to Rockhampton (Rocky), stopping one night outside Gladstone in Tannum Sands. We quietly rode through Gladstone on Sunday morning. All shops seemed closed, with few people out walking about. The sound of us loudly chatting on our bikes echoed through the streets. Heading out of Gladstone we saw our first "No Swimming Crocodiles" signs lining the river. We took a beautiful quiet side road back to Highway 1 where we abruptly got back on the road with the truckies. Many over sized vehicles passed us as we rode - often we would have to pull completely off the highway to let the trucks pass transporting giant sized pieces of farm equipment. We were both looking forward getting to Rocky because we made arrangements to work on a farm through Wwoof (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) for a week outside of Rocky near Yeppoon. We spend 2 nights in Rocky because Zach had to get is bottom bracket on his bike re-set. For weeks he had been riding with crank arms rocking back and forth causing his bike mechanic mind to shutter. Different Cycles in Rocky completed the work for a nice 20 bucks. The refreshingly surly mechanic gave us a talking to regarding our single-speed touring bikes - asking why we should be so crazy!