Albany to Esperance on a pushie

"Yous riding pushies are yer? Where yer headin? How many k's do yer do a day? That's not much. Jeez, lotta hills ahead of yers. Wouldn't catch me ridin' a pushie. Watch out for those road trains. They don't stop for no-one."

These are the standard words of encouragement we've received every day since Albany. So far the road trains are not as bad as expected. When they are heading towards you at 110kms per hour the wind hits your face like a whip. But when they are behind you, you can point your front wheel slightly left and surf the wind like a wave.

We're getting very accustomed to fluorescent orange and yellow vests, t'shirts and rain pants. Every second person from the Stirling Ranges to Esperance has gone fluoro. Today I actually caught myself, speculating over whether or not to buy a giant glow-in-the-dark PVC and fleece jacket. Talk about peer pressure!

This is not, as I first thought, some bizarre throw back to eighties fashions. There is a new nickel mine opening 150kms away and the whole region seems to be involved from tank builders and OH&S nurses to road builders and rangers. This is also a ute lovers paradise. There are utes and dust covered 4WDs everywhere. All day, every day, we were passed by white utes heading to or from the mine site. The campgrounds are full too. Many workers are from inter and intrastate and they've brought their vans to live in.

"I had to bring me camper," said Ralph, a Quality Assurance Assessor. "I can't stand workin with people all day long then drinkin with em and then havin to live with em in a donger as well. It's just too much."

We met Ralph in Ravensthorpe, about 200kms from Esperance. Without him, we would have remained totally oblivious to the bitter campground rivalry between the mine site workers and the road workers. It seems the latter, who live together in dongers, only pay $50 per week, use the campers' kitchens for illegal BBQs and make so much racket they have to be shushed on a regular basis by the caravan park owners. The mine site workers, on the other hand, are in bed with a tinnie by 9pm and get up quietly at 4.30am without making a fuss. Well, that was Ralph's side of the story. All we knew was that one of the mine site workers fell asleep with a DVD on so that it played the opening credits over 500 times and kept us awake for most of the night. We heard nothing from the dongers and the roadworkers even offered us the scraps of their fried chicken. yum.

Speaking of food. Guido and I speak about it all of the time. You know you've got a bit of a problem when you convince the Manager of Brumbys to open up 2 hours early just so you can get a couple of pasties, hot bread, Brownes Coffee Chills and apple scrolls before your next cycling day. He's opening at 6am for us. "Not a problem at all! Just knock on the back door and tell us what you feel like and we'll make sure you get it." That will get me out of bed tomorrow.

You also know you've got a problem when the check out chick at Woolies turns to a mate and says "Uh oh, those freaks are back for more muesli bars." Yesterday we bought 84, but we didn't eat them all at once. Oh no, we're organised little bunnies, we sent them ahead.

We would like to have seen more of Esperance than the inside of Woolies and the inside of the Post Office, but it was not to be. We rang all the road houses on the Nullarbor yesterday to ask them what kind of groceries they had. If you ever have to ring road houses on the Nullarbor don't, whatever you do, use the word "groceries"! They hate that word. "Nope, nobody out this way sells groceries. Nope, never heard of groceries. Nope, we only sell chikko rolls and only if we've eaten our fill first." After the first couple, I changed my tack and started asking if they sold "basic food stuffs such as bread, milk, noodles and baked beans". This got me a lot further and I was also able to make arrangements with most for them to hold packages for us until we got there. As long as I didn't mention the "g" word, they were all really nice.

We then went to the post office and asked when the next mail delivery on the Nullarbor would happen. I got one of those fat, white-bearded types who look jolly but are actually as cold and bad a## as two-day old turds on a glacier. "I don't know when the next delivery to the Nullarbor is and even if I ask my MANAGER she won't know either because it doesn't even go from here. The entire network of Pioneer and Greyhound buses has shut down and doesn't run anywhere in Australia so we can't guarantee mail to those remote areas anymore!" He seemed almost pleased to tell me this.

I rang the Norseman Post Office instead and they informed me that the mail would go on Friday and be delivered on Wednesday (one delivery per week) but that I had Buckley's chance of getting the parcels to Norseman in time unless I hot tailed it over to Woolies and got those parcels in the post pronto. So that was where we were yesterday. We hooned around the supermarket throwing cous cous and noodles and snickers bars into the trolley like the bomb was due any day. I got so stressed I even caught myself frantically trying to decide whether I could cook pappadams on a camp stove. We ran back to the post office and proceeded to pack seven post bags full of muesli bars, nuts and noodles and to address them to each roadhouse. "So, what's in these bags anyway?" said the postal lady who served us the second time. "Oh," she said when we told her, "more crazies cycling across the Nullarbor."

Claire xxx

Scaredy Cows

Guido has a profound effect on cows.

He usually cycles about 500 metres to a kilometre ahead of me. (Fine by me as our cycling rhythms are a very different and I hate being right behind him as he struggles to find the right gears up steep hills.) Sometimes I'll lose sight of him but the cows never do. They ignore cars, they ignore motorbikes, they ignore farmers and walkers and kangaroos but treat Guido like eeevil incarnate. After one glance, the "look-out cow" sounds the alarm and they go off!

I've seen paddocks-full of fat, normally docile, cows stampeding away from the road en masse. I've seen them buck like broncos in their haste to put as much trampled grass between them and my man as possible. We figured at first that they must see the bicycle, with its grand orange flag and fluoro yellow backpack cover, as some sort of beast on the prowl. But I'm on exactly the same bike with the same flag and same cover and yet the cows are completely unfazed by me. In fact, I'm getting a bit paranoid about it. I've tried staring them down, I've tried shouting shoo and scat and waving my arms about - nothing. They just keep chewing grass and flicking at flies with their tales. What am I? Invisible?

We met a dairy farmer on the from Northcliffe to Shannon National Park the other day. He and his mother had just moved their herd of cows to better pasture. They were parked either side of a blind curve; he in his big red tractor and she in the family Commodore. The farmer's dog decided Guido was a rather garish cow himself and attempted to herd him into the paddock with the rest. After that we had to stop and chat. It was one of those conversations that is very hard to get going and very hard to end. We seem to have a lot of chats like that with farmers. It's a bit like pushing a loaded touring bike up a hill.

The farmer was a big burly guy with a bushy red beard and staring blue eyes. He told us he was considering giving up the farm and heading to Tom Price to wash dishes. He reckoned he could make more money on the mines and he's probably right. "But at least as a farmer you're your own boss," said Guido. "Nah mate, the bank manager's my boss mate," he said. Then there was one of those very long pauses where he simply stared at us. After a minute or two we shuffled our feet and politely coughed and got ready to say; "well, bye then," but of course he'd just been thinking and as we raised feet to pedals he said; "So where are yous guys headin? Yous guys better be careful on them roads over Easter. Those cityfolk think they have to get where they're headin in two seconds flat or else." And so the conversation went on for another twenty minutes.

It was very similar to one we had with another farmer on the Grimwade Road between Collie and Balingup. He stopped us to ask if we were "having fun" on the deep, steep rutted gravel roads. "Yep!" we said, then nothing. Just stares. So we got ready to leave and then out he rumbled with another question. It turned out he was from Mumballup. (More staring.) Then, being facetious, I asked him WHERE he lived in Mumballup.

Mumballup consists of two houses, a tavern and the four horseshoes the one horse of the one horse town left behind when he moved to the city. We'd just come from there where we'd purchased a lemon squash from the bar man. He was one of those blokes with a head full of teeth that didn't quite fit in his mouth. More like a row of piano keys than teeth or like Dr Frankenstein was having a bad day and put the teeth in his jaw in the wrong order. He was laughing and abusing the crap out of a baby pet galah making a racket on the edge of the bar. He kept cracking himself up with his jokes. "Sorry mate, I've been here on my own for two weeks and I've got to go fishing. I've got cabin fever. No no no, I've got TAVERN fever!" He cracked himself up again. Anyway, he was a very nice man who came out later to sneak us free Red Bulls. "Sssh!" he said when he handed them to us and looked carefully from side to side down the empty street of Mumbullup. Not sure who he thought would see him. Maybe the galah is a dobber?

Anyway, better stop rambling on and go. I've put some more pics in the online album if anyone is interested. so long from Albany. Claire xxx

Highway 1: Easter time at Denmark

Hi Punks
Apologies for the lack of posts but a rabid pack of internet crazy german tourists have taken over the services between Fremantle and here so I haven't had a chance to get online. They're all hooning around the state in rented Kaui and Maui vans driving a little too fast and a little too close for our liking. We cycled into Walpole the day before yesterday, wet, cold, tired and without accommodation at Easter. Good one. I was just in time to stand in line at the information centre while the aforementioned tourists asked questions like; "Where do they farm Kangaroos in Australia?" and "Is it the season for Kangaroos in Australia? Do they bite?"

Denmark is crazy busy. There are over a thousand people staying at our campsite. We have come here for a few days to get off the roads over Easter and to hibernate till the food stores open again. We're in the anti family section of the Ocean Beach Caravan site. That means right up the back with the heavy metal heads, surfer dudes and potheads. Luckily for us they imbibe so much alcohol so early in the day that they are all tucked up and sleeping like little babes by 10.30pm. Needless to say after a couple of weeks of quiet bush camping it feels like downtown Sydney.

We can't believe we're almost at Albany. We headed out of town exactly two weeks ago and have enjoyed a leisurely tour of the South West. We've zig zagged up into the hills then down to the coastal plain then back up to the hills again. The day we left we passed around 2500 cyclists on their last day of the Great WA bike ride. That meant about 1000 high fives, 500 hellos and another 500 "You're going the wrong way!" comments. They'd ridden much the same route we're doing in reverse. The ride is still the talk of the towns between Perth and here. The locals and Calm Rangers are telling us about a sea of tents and seven semi trailers housing toilets, showers and food. The Publicans are particularly happy because they claim the cyclists were the biggest beer and wine drinkers they've ever had the privilege of hosting. Good work Eventscorp!

Apart from that one day on the way to Walpole the weather has been perfect for cycling. Nice overcast days and a few showers to give the giant Karri trees that perfect rose gold glow. Up until the day before yesterday we were able to avoid the main highways choosing instead to slog it out over deep gravel and ruts rather than spend time with the trucks. We had some amazing days heading through the state forests around Dwellingup and Collie and ended up riding right into the Lewana Rally on Grimwade road near Balingup. We camped a stone's throw from the Service Park and met some very enthusiastic volunteers who claimed to be looking forward to a day hanging out at the road closure barriers.

The first few days of cycling and tenting were a bit much. The latter more so than the former. I got shocking cramps after camping at first but eventually realised that as long as I slept on my left side and not my right side I was fine. We're now in a very set routine morning and night and each have our bits and pieces we're in charge of. As for the bum boils, the nice lady at Eagle Wool Products in Freo sent me a grey sheepskin seat cover poste restante to Collie and I am much more comfortable.

The picture above is what I see of Guido each day. It is on a nice road near Nanga Mill in Dwellingup when we were on the way to camp out on the Munda Biddi.

Ok, so we're off to Albany on Monday and then we'll be out of range for a while when travelling one of the more remote segments of our journey between Albany and Esperence. We think we're heading via the Stirling Ranges but not sure yet so will try to post again soon.

Claire xxx