Leon H
Pack Dog
I had been planning this trip for ages. We had to ride to Cairns, about 340km away, to finalise our wedding arrangements. In itself that would be a fairly boring sort of a trip, so I thought why not make it a 4 day mountain riding extravaganza, and camp by the beach. I spent weeks preparing routes and camping gear. I was really looking forward to the trip.....
The week leading up to the trip was tough. Cycylone Larry had destroyed a huge amount of rainforest (and houses and stuff) in North Queensland, so I had been sent to Mission Beach to help co-ordinate what was to be done about the cassowary population, a large flightless bird (a bit like an ostrich), that lives in the rainforest, is very agressive to humans, has large spikes on it's feet that severely tear people and animals to bits, and is very endangered. Anyhow it now has no habitat thanks to the cyclone, so we had to work out what remained, and start to develop a feeding program. To cut a long story short it involved helicopters, quads, and LOTS of mud. It was fun, but very tiring, so by the time I got back on Wednesday night, I was tired, but I packed up the bikes in keen anticipation for the next 4 days. Before going to bed I checked the weather, they reckoned isolated showers but mostly fine. Should be a great few days away from work before I have to go back into the bush the following week.
Get up in the morning, the weather here in Townsville is good. Put the last of the gear on the bikes, push them out the front and get moving. There is nothing like that feeling at the start of a long ride of jumping on a loaded bike out the front of your house, starting it up, checking all your shit is together, then pulling in the clutch and engaging first. Always love that feeling of excited anticipation as the bike clunks into first, and today was no different.
So the first order of business was 2 very boring hours up the boring old Bruce Highway to the north. About 120km north of our place we see some dark clouds looming ahead. No worries, we'll just ride across the Cardwell Range, and put on our wet weather gear up on the other side of the range in the little shelter shed there. We get within about 2km of the shed, and BANG, the heavens opened. Not just a little bit of rain that starts gradually, it instantly began sheeting out of the sky, like a torrential monsoon. Within about 5 seconds we were totally soaked, out gear was wet, the road was covered in about 5cm of water, it was full on. When I finally pulled into the shelter shed about 2min later we were already drenched, there was no point in putting on the wet weather gear.
At this stage I must admit to wanting to do a Ewan McGregor in Long Way Round and pull out, go back and get the car and drive up. But Melissa said no we'll press on, it probably won't last that long. We rode on through the rain, it eased up for about 10 minutes, just enough for us to think "this ain't so bad", before starting again even heavier. The road was a total nightmare, already damaged from the cyclone, it was now covered in water so the holes could not be seen, and the rivers were rising fast. By the time we pulled into Tully (the wettest town in Australia apparently), we had decided we would not bother with the scenic routes, the adventure routes were off limits as they would all be impassable afteer the cyclone, we wouldn't camp as it was too wet, we needed to get to Cairns ASAP to get a motel and dry our stuff out for our meeting with the wedding co-ordinator in the morning. We pressed on through the rain.
Just as we pulled into Cairns it started to rain with even more vigour. To top this off, we got about 15 red lights heading through the city to the motel area. I was thoroughly soaked, and furiously angry. I was so pissed off and frustrated that my weekend I had been looking forward to for so long was going to be a washout that I was shaking, and riding hopelessly. We eventually pulled into a motel, we discovered all our clothes were soaked, and set about turning our room into a mini-laudry of sorts. Note the wet clothes hanging behind me from Melissa's luggage, and my pissed off expression :evil:
My mood changed at about 1730, when the rain eased considerably and I had some dry clothes to change into. I checked the weather using the internet on my phone, and it reckoned only a 30% chance of rain and a few isolated showers tomorrow. Great, things were looking up. Interestingly my phone told me that the highway was blocked in a number of places between Cairns and Townsville due to torrential rain and flooding. I figured surely that can't keep up for two days straight. Tomorrow we would see the wedding person, tour some mountain roads, and set up camp at Ellis Beach as planned and get the weekend back on track. To celebrate our changing fortune we went and had dinner at a local tex-mex restaurant, were we ate too much spicy food and drank far too much very strong sangria
Needless to say when we stumbled back to the motel and climbed into bed, which now smelt unpleasantly like wet riding gear, we were in high spirits and looking forward to an adventurous weekend ahead.......
To be continued..........
The week leading up to the trip was tough. Cycylone Larry had destroyed a huge amount of rainforest (and houses and stuff) in North Queensland, so I had been sent to Mission Beach to help co-ordinate what was to be done about the cassowary population, a large flightless bird (a bit like an ostrich), that lives in the rainforest, is very agressive to humans, has large spikes on it's feet that severely tear people and animals to bits, and is very endangered. Anyhow it now has no habitat thanks to the cyclone, so we had to work out what remained, and start to develop a feeding program. To cut a long story short it involved helicopters, quads, and LOTS of mud. It was fun, but very tiring, so by the time I got back on Wednesday night, I was tired, but I packed up the bikes in keen anticipation for the next 4 days. Before going to bed I checked the weather, they reckoned isolated showers but mostly fine. Should be a great few days away from work before I have to go back into the bush the following week.
Get up in the morning, the weather here in Townsville is good. Put the last of the gear on the bikes, push them out the front and get moving. There is nothing like that feeling at the start of a long ride of jumping on a loaded bike out the front of your house, starting it up, checking all your shit is together, then pulling in the clutch and engaging first. Always love that feeling of excited anticipation as the bike clunks into first, and today was no different.
So the first order of business was 2 very boring hours up the boring old Bruce Highway to the north. About 120km north of our place we see some dark clouds looming ahead. No worries, we'll just ride across the Cardwell Range, and put on our wet weather gear up on the other side of the range in the little shelter shed there. We get within about 2km of the shed, and BANG, the heavens opened. Not just a little bit of rain that starts gradually, it instantly began sheeting out of the sky, like a torrential monsoon. Within about 5 seconds we were totally soaked, out gear was wet, the road was covered in about 5cm of water, it was full on. When I finally pulled into the shelter shed about 2min later we were already drenched, there was no point in putting on the wet weather gear.
At this stage I must admit to wanting to do a Ewan McGregor in Long Way Round and pull out, go back and get the car and drive up. But Melissa said no we'll press on, it probably won't last that long. We rode on through the rain, it eased up for about 10 minutes, just enough for us to think "this ain't so bad", before starting again even heavier. The road was a total nightmare, already damaged from the cyclone, it was now covered in water so the holes could not be seen, and the rivers were rising fast. By the time we pulled into Tully (the wettest town in Australia apparently), we had decided we would not bother with the scenic routes, the adventure routes were off limits as they would all be impassable afteer the cyclone, we wouldn't camp as it was too wet, we needed to get to Cairns ASAP to get a motel and dry our stuff out for our meeting with the wedding co-ordinator in the morning. We pressed on through the rain.
Just as we pulled into Cairns it started to rain with even more vigour. To top this off, we got about 15 red lights heading through the city to the motel area. I was thoroughly soaked, and furiously angry. I was so pissed off and frustrated that my weekend I had been looking forward to for so long was going to be a washout that I was shaking, and riding hopelessly. We eventually pulled into a motel, we discovered all our clothes were soaked, and set about turning our room into a mini-laudry of sorts. Note the wet clothes hanging behind me from Melissa's luggage, and my pissed off expression :evil:
My mood changed at about 1730, when the rain eased considerably and I had some dry clothes to change into. I checked the weather using the internet on my phone, and it reckoned only a 30% chance of rain and a few isolated showers tomorrow. Great, things were looking up. Interestingly my phone told me that the highway was blocked in a number of places between Cairns and Townsville due to torrential rain and flooding. I figured surely that can't keep up for two days straight. Tomorrow we would see the wedding person, tour some mountain roads, and set up camp at Ellis Beach as planned and get the weekend back on track. To celebrate our changing fortune we went and had dinner at a local tex-mex restaurant, were we ate too much spicy food and drank far too much very strong sangria
Needless to say when we stumbled back to the motel and climbed into bed, which now smelt unpleasantly like wet riding gear, we were in high spirits and looking forward to an adventurous weekend ahead.......
To be continued..........
