Ron's Cycle Queensland 2007 trip

28/8/2007
Preamble

Preamble wasn't intended to be a pun, but I like it and now you're stuck with it. I promise to wheel a few more past you, too, if you read my blog to the end.

This blog is my first attempt at blogging and I'm using it to track my first attempt at Bicycle Queensland's Cycle Queensland tour, a ride from Miles in western Queensland to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast. It's about 550 km, mostly flat (I hope) with some hill work around Kingaroy and Maleny. There's supposed to be some serious downhill off the Blackall Range to the coast. As I understand it, CQ7 is not the seventh tour, but the sixth, the first being in 2002 from Bundaberg to Brisbane, CQ2. CQ4 was Miriam Vale to Goomeri; CQ5 Goondoowindi to the Gold Coast; CQ6 Port Douglas to Mission Beach. Not sure where CQ3 went. At the end of this one, we'll find out where CQ8 is going.

To introduce myself, I am 58 years old and took up cycling again in the late 70s after my wife gave me a Malvern Star 6 speed tourer. I needed to do something about being reasonably fit because I have a sedentary job and incipient health issues which I knew were going to get worse. I still have the bike, but it's the only new one I've ever owned. I must've done thousands of klicks on it before moving on to mountain bikes, one heap after another.

I like doing up clunkers, which is a legacy from my car ownership. I've never owned a new car either. Don't get me going on cars; I love them and I can get very boring. I've owned far more cars than I've ever owned bikes. Back to bikes: I've got two Malvern Stars (tourers), three Diamond Back Topangas (mountain bikes), a GT Outlook(mountain bike), a Shogun Metro AT (hybrid) and five Alenaxes (strange bikes indeed that you can look up on the Internet: a man's tourer, two women's tourers, a kid's bike, and a mountain bike). Two of the Diamond Backs are hanging, stripped down, awaiting my healing spanner, from my garage roof. They are keeping a Kojima mountain bike company. I'll probably do the Kojima up and sell it. Suspension is wasted on me, because I'm pretty much a bike track/road rider.

Two days out from departing, I'm not sure which bike I'll use; the GT or the Shogun. The GT is my favourite bike and already a bit battered, so few new scratches wont make it look any worse. I found it at the local Tender Centre a year or two ago, looking like someone had found the challenge of assembling it a bit much. A new lower bracket cassette, a new seat and fat tyres have made it pretty good.

The Shogun whispered siren calls to me from in front of the Cash Converters in Ashgrove for about three months before I bought it a couple of years ago. It looked barely used, but I had to get a decent back wheel for it eventually. The original kept busting spokes and finally pretzelized itself. It cruises better than the GT, but the GT is better on hills. I don't want to scratch the Shogun's nice red paint, so the GT will probably get the gig.

I'm using BQ's Campese Lite tent option. This means that the tent will be up and waiting for me when I wend my weary way in each day. "Lite" means that it isn't the spiffiest tent BQ has. I have purchased a folding camp stretcher and sleeping mat to furnish it. I'm not fussed with pup tents and sleeping on the ground. I will be carrying my stuff (clothes, tools, book, toilet gear and medication) in a large soft bag. The camp stretcher is in another bag.

I'm travelling to Miles by the Westlander train from Brisbane on Thursday night (30th). I'd go on the 31st, but there's no rail service to Miles that day. A few friends are travelling the same way as me. Others are travelling by bus and private vehicles. The bike tour proper starts on September 1. BQ has organized a couple of buses and trucks to get people and bikes to Miles, but that involves dis-assembling the bike twice. I don't want to do that, and I do want a train trip. For the good of the planet, more people should travel by train (and bike).

Over 1000 cyclists will participate. When we hit some of the little towns, we'll double the population of the town. Bicycle Queensland trucks in everything: food, bathing facilities, toilets and water.

One thing BQ can't truck in is a computer facility, so this blog might cheat a little: I keep a diary and might retrospectively blog from there.

29/8/2007
Pre-penultimate day

Tomorrow's the day I start my leave to go on the ride. Jan's always got good ideas and has suggested that I post the urls for Bicycle Queensland and for BQ's Cycle Queensland ride, so here they are http://www.bq.org.au/ and http://www.bq.org.au/cq/.

Here's where we're going
http://www.bq.org.au/cq/where.php.

Here are information sites concerning the towns along the way (suggestion from the same source)

Miles
http://www.murilla.qld.gov.au/

Chinchilla
http://www.chinchilla.org.au/

Jandowae
http://www.wambo.qld.gov.au/profile/jandowae.php

Bell
http://www.wambo.qld.gov.au/profile/bell.php

Kingaroy
http://tourism.southburnett.com.au/townkingaroy.htm
http://www.kingaroy.qld.gov.au/

Blackbutt
http://tourism.southburnett.com.au/townblackbutt.htm http://www.nanango.qld.gov.au/

Kilcoy
http://www.kilcoy.qld.gov.au/

Maleny
http://www.malenyguide.com.au/
http://www.queenslandholidays.com.au/destinations/sunshine-coast/places-to-visit/maleny/

Mooloolaba
http://www.maroochy.qld.gov.au/
http://www.maroochytourism.com/
http://www.discovermaroochy.com.au/mooloolaba.html
http://www.mooloolababeach.com/

I've been to a lot of these places before, but it will be good to see them from the seat of the GT (yes, I'll take it, not the Shogun) instead of from the driver's seat of a 1950 Ford Custom, a 1962 Holden EK ute or a 1978 Ford Cortina as I did on previous occasions since 1970. In those days I used to barrel through the countryside at 100 kph plus. This time it'll be 20 kph or so and while not denying I'm a lot older, I think that's progress of a positive kind. Our world deserves being treated more kindly. I hope I still think that way when the road seems to stretch on forever and I really want to spend my last silver dollar at next pub. (I bet you non-musical/non- Baby Boomers missed that one!)

30/8/2007
Penultimate Day: Brisbane-Miles

(You'll notice from now on, a tense change. I'm writing in the past, not present tense. This is for various reasons: not having a laptop; no Internet cafes; needing to get to sleep to be able to cope with the next day; having better, more fun things to do. So I scribbled in my diary instead of blogging. What follows is from a simpler, more reliable technology)

The first good thing that happened today, after sleeping in, was not going to work. Even though I was not due to leave Brisbane until 7.30 that night, I wanted to give myself plenty of time. I'm not real good at not forgetting things even when I make lists, so I spread everything that I wanted to take out on a bed and added and subtracted things

Here's how it looked when packed

The only other bag I took was the camp stretcher, which was folded up in a narrow bag a bit longer than the large blue Wolf bag you see here. (Tour participants are allowed two bags with weight and dimensional restrictions). The mattress for the camp stretcher, folded into a nice compact cylinder, went inside the blue bag. My sleeping bag was in a stuff bag to squash it small and was inside the blue bag too. The backpack contained a digital camera, wallet, pullover, food, a couple of spanners and other junk I didn't think I could do without. I don't own a mobile or an iPod.

Because of Brisbane's increasingly-nightmarish traffic (one of the reasons I ride to work), I loaded my stuff into my ute about 3.00 and headed over to rendezvous at Jan's house, picking up Mark Taylor and his bike on the way. This will be Jan's third tour. (She did the Miriam Vale to Goomeri and Goondiwindi to the Gold Coast tours). Mark and I have never been on a tour before. I then returned the ute home and took a train back to West End. At 6.00 we re-ordered the maxi-taxi we had booked for 5.30 (never book in advance; taxi companies don't trust anyone). It arrived at 6.15 and by 6.50 had disgorged us and our bikes at Roma Street Transit Centre, Brisbane's inter/intra-state and metro railway station.

The Queensland Rail staff were genial and obliging, even telling us not to bother removing pedals and turning handlebars side-on, which is the usual way to transport bikes. There were probably 30 cyclists there; all kinds of people and all kinds of bikes. Some had their bikes swathed in bubble wrap, some partly dismantled, some like those of me and my fellow taxi-travellers, just ready to roll. At 7.15 the Westlander grumbled out of Brisbane, heading West, first real stop, Toowoomba, 135 km away. By 8.00 a few of us had hit the Club car for a few social beers before tea. Cyclists like drinking as much as they like eating. The meal was good too, always a big plus with a vego, which I have been for 12 years or so.

After traversing the Lockyer Valley, the train zig-zagged doggedly up the escarpment to Toowoomba. From inside the darkened train, I could see the engine twisting this way and that, its headlight like some serpentine Cyclops hauling us over the range. It arrived at 10.30, with most of the passengers attempting sleep, especially the bike mob which was anticipating arriving at Miles at the ETA of 3.30.

The scheduled 5 minute stop turned into 20, with a noisy family coming and going, shushing a baby, soothing a child with a bad cough and returning to the platform for 1, 2 or 3 last smokes. I wandered off to look at the painted brick facade of the handsome Federation era station. It told a lot of vanished stories about Toowoomba's past decades as a major Queensland town.

31/8/2007
Miles

After leaving Toowoomba, the train got serious and dieselled the 220 km across the Darling Downs in a flat growl. Since the carriages were far from full, it was easy enough to sprawl, almost comfortably, across a couple of seats and almost sleep. I don't recall Dalby, which is one of the biggest towns about 90 km North-west of Toowoomba. Outside was a darkened landscape of cleared land, trees, occasional houses, sheds, roads, and evidence of recent rain. At 3.15, we halted, but the halt transpired to be Chinchilla, not Miles. In the streetlights were a few railway buildings and one of the myriad Australian country hotels with Tattersalls bannered on their facades. It was also the first inland Art Deco example I spotted. We'd be back in a day or two, anyway, but for now it was off to Miles, 45 km away.

At 4.05 we disembarked at Miles. After unloading the bikes from the nearly empty boxcar in which they had travelled, we descended on the railway buildings and the nearby park like, as Jan put it, a flock of well-equipped drunks who had camp stretchers and sleeping bags. Mark commandeered a picnic table. The park toilet ensured we weren't too disgraceful.

At 6.00 a bunch of railway workers arrived and did a good job of being fairly indifferent to the people sprawled on the small wooden railway station's verandah and scattered around the park. Apparently they were involved in building a branch line to the oil and gas fields near Tara, about 60 km South. Gradually, we arose and schlepped our stuff down to the only place open, the Caltex Road House on the Warrego Highway, where the unhappy looking proprietor was overheard kevetching about all the bikes cluttering up his joint. I hope his takings, when he later rattled the abacus, made him feel somewhat mollified.

More schlepping. Cycle Queensland's first campsite was a couple of blocks away on the town's sports ground. On one of the ovals were several corellas trundling over the grass picking over the bounty yielded by recent rain. We were fortunate to be here after the drought had broken.


Miles campground. Here's what the campground looked like at about 8.00. In the foreground is the an idea of what it probably looked like before the rain.


Miles campground, same day. Here's what it looked like at about 4.00. Cyclists had been trickling in all day. Some left their vehicles in Miles and came back after the tour to collect them.


These babies can be just seen parked in the back of the previous picture. Driven and maintained by a phlegmatic crew who seemed as indifferent to strange cycling phenomena as had been the railway gang in Miles, didn't their large dirty whitenesses become welcome sights at the end of a day! Apart from a huge feed there is nothing better than a beaut hot shower after a day on a bike. The shower trucks had water saving devices and access to water brought in by Bicycle Queensland. During the day, at lunch and morning or afternoon teas stops a dunny semi was an equally welcoming sight.


Volvo prime mover bringing Sam's Showers from Dubbo to CQ7


International prime mover bringing Sam's Loos from Dubbo to CQ7 (or should that be Dunnies from Dubbo? "Loos" was spelled "Loo's" on the other toilet truck: you've got to hedge your bets with that pesky possessive case)

We stowed our stuff in another tent until ours was erected, and had a look around the town. It was a balmy day and a free day to look around. As the tour went on, there was less time for local exploration on this level, and the weather became less obliging. The camera stayed snug and dry in my back pack, so my picture-taking tapered off.

A bike track ran along the banks of Dogwood Creek, so that seemed like a good place to start looking around. Dogwood Creek was named by Ludwig Leichhardt on his trip from Jimbour to Port Essington in 1844. More about Jimbour later.

Miles used to be called Dogwood Crossing and was established in 1878 when the creek forestalled the railway from Brisbane. While that was getting sorted out, railway workers settled in the area, followed by shops and pubs, but probably not in that order. The town became the railhead for supplies further West. It was renamed Miles in honour of William Miles, a local Member of Parliament and the Queensland Colonial Secretary.


Road and railway bridges over Dogwood Creek

The track led to Chinaman's Lagoon (named for a 19th century market gardener who probably grew the settlement's food and endured racial slurs at the same time) which was supposed to sport a decent display of water plants. It didn't this time, but was a pleasant enough spot with some fine old eucalypts. I don't think the sawmill on the other side of the lagoon would have done much for the water quality. Wildflowers, for which the area is noted, weren't much in evidence either, but these were under a fence at the town caravan park. Jan identified them as native wildflowers.


Wahlenbergia aka Bluebells. Photograph by Jan McNicol.

When I later thought about it, this little patch of bluebells sheltering under a caravan park fence epitomized the situation of native flora and fauna. So much land clearing has taken place, that significant stands and habitats only exist along roadways, or at least that was our observation from our bikes pedalling along secondary roads. The only areas of land that have escaped the bulldozer are either along watercourses; are pugnaciously rocky; are defiantly vertical. Of course, because of other environmental pressures, the watercourses, their banks often degraded by hoofed animals, aren't coursing water any more, and not just for reasons of the drought. When you look at this part of the world on Google Earth, most of the the greenery we rode past was so insignificant that it doesn't even register. What you see are ugly expanses of grey and brown. If you investigate the bright dots on GoogleEarth, you often find feedlots. More about one of them later.

My problem, as a self-confessed shallow hedonist, is that I hang around too many greenies, Jan in particular, and they make me think too much. Once upon a time in the West, you would see bumper stickers on country utes and 4WDs, juxtaposing Eat More BEEF with Support the Environment: Compost a Greenie. Very witty, but with salination, climate change and rural suicide on the rise, and with inland rivers all falling as fast as the rural economic outlook, it is obvious that the comedy has become too black for anyone.

Anyway, back in town, we checked out the Miles Historical Village, a recreation of 19th century Miles, including an evocative reconstructed street and a musuem bulging with artifacts. The curatorial standards applied to these artifacts would, in Jan's words, make a real curator weep. Lots of stuff, poorly labelled, under glass in an un-airconditioned shed. Ambitious and worthy, but, without proper care, most of these items will be ruined by heat, dust, insects, foxing and other forms of decay in a few years. While we were there, carpenters were constructing another "authentic" building with modern fasteners and tools. Enough nitpicking. I liked the machinery. I'm anyone's for a nice tractor and there were a few of them. It'll be a long time before they decay. Jan had to drag me away.


Pioneer St., Miles Historical Village

Also noteworthy was the absence of reference to the Aboriginal inhabitants of the area. There was nothing we noticed in the museum and only a half-hearted acknowledgement, like an afterthought, in part of another building housing the Artesian Basin Centre. It was a depressing association: a vanished people and a vanishing resource, away at the other end of the village.

Dogwood Crossing @Miles was a very impressive library, cultural (including Aboriginal) display and I.T. centre. The very "architectural" building features seven metre steel bottle trees supporting the centre of the building. I forgot to photograph it, probably because I was needing to stoke up on some pretty good tucker at That Koffee Shop which approximated the sort of haunt beloved of urban cyclists and which was swarming with cyclists. The staff looked a bit overwhelmed, but weren't kevetching. In fact, they thanked us for being patient and managed some very passable vego fare as well. We were going to wish they were still open later in the evening.


RetraVision, Miles. Mark was taken by this building with its fifties and Art Deco features. We better not tell any member of the Coalition of the Willing about it, because that ICBM centre-piece has pronounced Islamic overtones and you can't be too careful. I wonder if it was formerly the town picture theatre?

After a snooze (it had been a long night) and a shower we joined the other participants at the BQ registration centre in the Town Hall and collected our lanyards and tags (this was our tour ID and admission to the food tent), free tour tee-shirts, tour jerseys ($100 and pretty snazzy), my tucker tray ($20 and worth every penny - no need to carry loose cutlery or plates), and ride numbers (443 & 444).


Lanyard and ID tag . Had to be worn at all times, especially when invading the tucker tent.


Bike tag. Attached to the front of the bike by cable ties.


Tucker tray. Great bit of gear. Folds in half down the middle for compact storage. Very strong. Could be loaded up way beyond design limits with bountiful CQ7 tucker.



Chain Mail. The daily paper. I like a classy pun. Jan thinks it's an obscure illness.


Cycle Queensland Guide and Handbook. Well written and informative.

Miles was having its Murilla Shire: Crossroads to Culture event that night and and tomorrow night

http://www.murilla.qld.gov.au/events/2007/CrossroadsToCulture.shtml/

I regret to say the cultural crossroads did not extend to vegetarianism, and once again, not much Aboriginal culture. It was mostly about chomping burgers and snags, drinking beer and country music.

However, after we stocked up on some forlorn vegetarian sushi thing, chips and beer, we pulled up to listen to a gent in his sixties playing a nice Washburn acoustic 6-string and singing/yodelling Gordon Parsons and Tex Moreton songs. I remembered this repertoire as being some of the favourites of my country woman mother. He wasn't bad and listening to him put me in mind of the Library of Congress recording Delta bluesmen before the Second World War and wondering if someone shouldn't record singers like him before it is too late, especially if he had any originals. Too many modern C&W singers sound and look like Americans (more references to Lee Kernaghan as we go on). This man's music was probably fighting a losing battle in attempting to perpetuate the music of fifties rural Australia, and whether like me you think of it as Dying Dog Howl music and give it a miss if you get the choice, it's a cultural reference point that is disappearing as surely as the values that created it.

They lady with him wasn't as good, murdering songs in a histrionic manner, but they were both having a go, which was the main thing. It was also amusing listening to them compete, with complete disregard, with the festival MC. The MC often gave up in mid-announcement and wandered off to do something else.

Not quite as deliciously amateurish was the production by the local theatre group of a play called Farmer will swap combine harvester for wife.


Farmer will swap combine harvester for wife by Hugh
O'Brien. Dunno why my photos of this programme keep being blurry.

This comedic melodrama wasn't too bad at all, rising as it did from being just another stereotype to exposing contemporary social issues. Here's the gist:

A fifty-ish farmer who has never romantically recovered from being an inept callow youth and losing the love of his life, is staring miserably at an unfulfilled dotage. To prevent this, he has decided to get a wife to provide him with an heir to the farm his dad "cleared with an axe and a Clydesdale with a limp". Simultaneously, his mate and next-door neighbour offers a good price because he wants to increase his acreage and establish his unmarried son on the land.

Nevertheless, the farmer advertises and a worthy appicant is selected from a field of opportunists. Not only is she a good sort, but she's also a competent combine harvester mechanic/operator. However, since there is always a glitch, it transpires that she is an orphan from childhood, vulnerable because of that, and has consequently become involved in an abusive relationship with an older man.

However, the villian is no match for the outrage the others feel. Fully endorsing the power of TV advertising, specifically the national campaign Violence against women; Australia says NO, they combine to rescue the victim and send the perpetrator to rehabilitation. In the meantime, the farmer's real love has reappeared, her husband now conveniently departed and her kids grown up. She's free. Their love is spontanously re-combusted and marriage and the adoption of the orphan combine harvester mechanic/operator rapidly follows. My favourite character (and probably the best actor), the next-door neighbour, gleefully delivers the punchline after announcing he's going to set his son up with the orphan combine harvester mechanic/operator: "I'll get this joint yet!"

After that, and more beer, it was time for bed. I was to regret those beers. The temperature dropped to about 6 degrees, the dew was moderately heavy and the dunny truck seemed a long cold way away. Going to it twice was far better and less gross than the alternatives, but getting out of the sleeping bag was hard.

1/9/2007
Miles-Chinchilla (63.5 km)

As they say in horse racing, race day (though it wasn't supposed to be a race) dawned with the weather fine and the track good. In fact, it was one one of those days when you wouldn't be dead for quids. It was a superb day, notwithstanding the dodgey meat-biassed breakfast offered by the local school P&C. This was the first of the fund-raising groups that we were to encounter on the tour. The prices were usually more than fair, but I found that by stuffing myself at the Bicycle Queensland tucker tent, I not only got better food (that I'd already paid for as part of my entry fee) but also didn't have to queue for for long, either.



Miles about 6.30 am. Note water tower.



Miles about 8.30 am. Lots more tents than yesterday. Note Budget truck, which is one of the 3 or 4 support trucks carrying luggage and tents.



Me in my new threads with the GT ready for action. The only day I wore this jersey. Didn't mean to look this serious, but I've got an awful goofy smile. That's Jan's Shogun Metro AT hybrid behind me.



Tour colleagues: Jan, Mark, Janelle. Jan wore brightly-coloured tights the whole trip, to many favourable comments, whistles, etc.

This was to be short day, about 60 km. Henceforth, our days would start as soon as breakfasts, packing and ablutions were done with. Today the start would be at 10 am because of cyclists who arrived on overnight buses with boxed bikes in bits which needed to be re-assembled in short order. Not much fun on top of a broken night's sleep, but no-one was complaining. I always avoid this as much as possible, because I don't like extra work. Curbside jobs are never as smooth as when working in your shed and the shed has more equipment. I noticed that most of these newly-arrived bikes looked pretty fancy, as well as being a struggle to re-assemble and fit up with all the doo-dads fancy bikes have. Comparing these bikes with mine, I was sure I'd be a shoo-in for the Tour Clunker award: no carbon-fibre, no skinny tyres, no accessories. As the tour unrolled, I found some bigger bombs, but mine remained in a minority of mountain bikes, overwhelmed by lots of road bikes and hybrids. We lazed in the sun watching other people wrestle with complications.

The event's major sponsor was Queensland Transport (as well it should) and we were the guests of the town of Miles, so political niceties and photo shoots had to be observed. The Queensland Government's SmartTravel team of cyclists had to be chivvied into pole position under the Start gate so they could lead the tour off, and speechifying had to be done.

First up was the unprepossessing Member for Indooroopilly who was said to have wasted a lot of juice driving to Miles to give what transpired to be a crappy speech and not even take his bike off the back of his 4WD before going back to Brisbane. Next up was the Mayor of Miles who was the first of a series of inarticulate mayors to remind us that the council amalgamation agenda being pursued by the State government meant that he would be the XXXXX (Murilla in this case) Shire's last mayor. Some sympathetic noises from Queenslanders, but probably of little consequence to the interstate and overseas riders. He seemed genuinely surprised by the number of crazy bastards who were going to ride pushbikes 550 km., and of the celeb status of some the participants known to him. These included a prominent environmental consultant, the CEO of the Brisbane City Council and a few sports and other notables that I didn't catch. Fortunately, a Bicycle Queensland potentate, probably Ben Wilson, gave a witty contribution, introduced the motorbike cop who was to accompany us, and after the cop had said a few do's and don't's we were away.

I also didn't catch too many of the alpha types who were probably the ones who scampered off over the horizon as soon as they were unleashed. Mark stuck it to them, as he was to do for the whole tour, on a Merida hybrid, but we dawdled along in the low to mid 20s, eventually passing inverted fancy bikes on the side of the road with one problem or another, usually flat tyres.

We left the Leichardt Highway onto Fairymeadow Road on which vehicular traffic was light. This was as well, because it was under standard width. We had been advised of protocols for dealing with cars and each other. If a car approached, the warning "Car up" would be passed backward down the line. A car behind would cause a "Car back" warning to be passed forward. If you were overtaking, you'd call "Passing". Riding two abreast was OK if conditions permitted, and road rules had to be observed.

Riding was pleasant in the mild breeze and sun, so there was time to be observant. Because of land clearing, trees were confined to the road verges and were mostly eucalypts and cypresses interspersed with a surprising number of large prickly pears. Birdlife was reasonably abundant due to recent rains. The usual corellas, cockatoos and galahs were augmented by wrens and apostle birds.

An area of viable wildlife habitat seemed to bring its own dangers. There were several dead kangaroos within a kilometre of each other, more than we saw subsequently, and confined to an area where there was some native vegetation. I suppose the population expands in these areas and this leads to more animals crossing roads. Wildlife seems to get it coming and going.

As we passed the only feedlot I (fortunately) saw on this trip, I could see that domestic animals might have it worse. This one was off to the right. Forget those images of contented ruminants happily munching grass in large paddocks. This abomination was spread over a low rise stripped of all vegetation and broken up into, not paddocks, but crowded pens resonant with bovine suffering. A kind of disparing lowing. I doubt they had enough room to flick their tails to keep insects away. "Disgusting" was a comment I heard a few cyclists making. I've since been told of a New Scientist article which claimed that it requires 500 litres of water to produce a kilogram of potatoes but 100,000 litres to produce a kilogram of feedlot beef. The sooner this practice is outlawed the better.

On either side of the road were large clearances, some of which were broad acre paddocks of what I surmised were canola, barley and oats. Signage in one paddocks bore a sign indicating that it was over a gas field. Another sign in another paddock proudly proclaimed that these cereal crops were mostly for animal fodder. Land clearing therefore becomes a double-edged sword: the more animals being raised for human consumption, the more land was required. This land is subsequently ruined.

More cheerily, we were passing through the habitat of the Queensland bottle tree (Brachychiton rupestris)

http://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/interns-2005/brachychiton-rupestris.html/

These were in a field of grain of some sort. There was some discussion about whether they were baobabs or not, but Jan said they aren't. They just look a bit alike. "Convergent evolution", she said. Two different species that just evolved to look alike.




Even the cockies are a bit sentimental about these, it seems. However, not too sentimental, of course. They are kept in reserve for fodder and water in case a drought gets really bad. The one on the left was being choked by a vine of some sort, probably introduced from South America by the Dept. of Primary Industries in the 60s to "improve" pasture.

We arrived in Chinchilla in the early afternoon. Established in 1878, Chinchilla is supposed to be named after a modification of the aboriginal word "jingilla" which means cypress. Chinchilla does seem to have a lot of trees. Leichhardt passed close by in 1844. It grew up much the same way as did Miles. With the large Kogan Park power station soon to be commissioned and nearby coal mines to feed it, Chinchilla gave the immediate impression of being a town on the move. It is over four times the size of Miles (6400 vs 1400).

By the time we had a shower and attended to a need for real coffee and a pot of tea at another place overwhelmed by all the cyclists that had descended on it, there wasn't much to do except wander down the camphor laurel-lined main drag, look in shop windows, marvel at how many cyclists were infesting the Club Hotel then walk over the railway overpass to surmise how the town had probably evolved.

There, on the highway, was the Tattersall's Hotel I'd seen from the train nearly two days ago. In the same precinct, a couple of doors down, was the also iconically named Commercial Hotel. The run-down demeanour of these two pubs suggested the past grandeur of the railway, the vanished wool boom, shearers boozing away their cheques, and the passing of several eras. It looked like Chinchilla's expandion could not be contained by the boundaries of the highway and the railway and it had moved away from both, creating a new main street in the process. The main street (Heeney) with its tired-looking shops, now looks as though it is being usurped in its turn by a small shopping mall running off it at right angles near its top end. The mall contained the coffee shop, a supermarket and a number of newer shops, evidence of a continuing process.

After dinner (at which I ate too much good tucker), there was a ride briefing, which included a mild pep talk from the genial policeman (who looked like one of the Village People); live music from local country music star Gina Horswood, who has performed at Tamworth and who sang for about three hours; a photographic roundup of the day's events by All Action Photography and Wallace and Grommit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit . I was disappointed not to see my dashing self in the photographic roundup, so I consoled myself with a bit of Wallace and Grommit before going to bed. All Action was following the tour, selling photos daily. The photos were to be burnt to a CD at the end of the tour, so I lived in hope. Since it wasn't as cold and I hadn't drunk as much beer, I slept well.

2/9/2007
Chinchilla-Jandowae (63.8 km.)

It wasn't as cold this morning, and the day was mild and fairly clear. After a healthy breakfast of rolled oats, eggs, bread & butter and orange juice, we packed up, hoicked our gear onto the baggage truck and had a look at Chinchilla Lagoon.



Chinchilla Lagoon. It needed a few squadrons of ducks and more bird calls.

There wasn't a lot of birdlife, but the picture would be a lot less pleasant had not there been a lot of recent rain. Anyway, couldn't linger. Even though this was an easy run across fairly flat country on the Chinchilla-Wondai Road, and only 63 km, same as yesterday, Ben Wilson, Manager of Bicycle Queensland, had had a bit to say about cyclists dawlding in coffee shops in the morning (as some had apparently done in Miles) instead of getting on with it. Dawdling cyclists hold up the tour and necessitate the tour's accompanying entourage of guardian angels - Queensland Ambulance (resplendent in a spiffy Ford F350 with a big motor), the St. John's bloke, the motorbike patrol (a Mr. Fixit on a motorbike), the Avanti Cycles repair van, another repair bloke driving an 80s Mercedes, the police escort and the Sag Wagon (a minibus towing a trailer to scoop up riders and bikes) - staying out on the road later than they have to. I think the aim was to have everyone off the road by about 4.30. At nights the Epic Cycles tent filled up with road bikes and their owners. These thoroughbred grids seemed to need lots of tune-ups.

The country looked refreshed after recent rain and was flatter than yesterday. Usual vegetation deal with most of the bush along the side of the road. Jan, whose motto is "You can't have enough plant and animal ID books", spotted an interesting phenomen. In several places the road was burst by fungi which somehow muscle their way upward, cast the macadam aside then wait for the spores to be liberated onto the wind. These fungi are known as dog turd fungus or horse dung fungus. If you Google Pisolithus and check out some of the illustrations, you'll soon see why.



Road busting turd fungus (Pisolithus Sp). You wouldn't think it possible, would you? Photograph by Jan McNicol.

Another excuse for a photo was this pennyfarthing fashioned out of reinforcing rod. There was a lot of work in this and it made me wonder, as appropriate as it was to a cycling tour, what processes had caused it to be made in the first place. It didn't appear to be new and was on the roof of a little roadside shed that a dairy farmer would leave milk cans in, awaiting collection, outside a tired small house surrounded by junk.



Pennyfarthing sculpture made from reinforcing rod. What's the story behind this?

Morning tea was at an oat/wheat/barley farm probably selected for its generous front yard and obliging owner. The house was about 50 metres back from the road and had a fine collection of trees. The whole precinct was about 2-3 hectares and included several sheds, one of which contained a combine harvester.



Bifurcated bottle tree (Brachychiton rupestris) . These bifrcated variations were not uncommon.

The farmer seemed a bit surprised that so many riders could be so frisky after some hefty drinking in Chinchilla (perhaps the bush telegraph had been busy?), but I suggested to him that city folks weren't all that soft. He didn't know he was indulging my machinery fetish and we had some discussion about the interesting machinery he had around the place. He was kind to allow me to wander his property for a while.



1960s Fordson Super Major tractor converted to a forklift by a firm in Gatton in the 60s



Steering wheel has been reversed; weights bolted to front and sides to keep the front wheels from rising when lifting heavy weights



1942 Ford 3 ton truck



1937 Maple Leaf 15 cwt truck

There have been recent studies by the University of Queensland that liken farm junk piles to archaeological digs inasmuch as they reflect the evolution of the farm. The Ford and the Maple Leaf had both been supplanted by late model Japanese Fuji trucks (the idea of using anything Japanese was beyond comprehension following World War Two until the late 1960s). There weren't any vehicles from intermediate eras, so they were probably replaced while they were still marketable. The domestic vehicles were Japanese as well. Littered around the peripheries of the house precinct were other items of supplanted machinery that I could not identify in the time I had at my disposal. I left the property with a sense of having had a glimpse of living history. I also reckon the Maple Leaf would make a great hot rod. I doubt there'd be another.

From there on, from an aesthetic point of view, the country got poorer and poorer with the countryside was scaped into vast paddocks. Lunch was beside one of them under few roadside trees. The two-bulldozers-in-parallel-pulling-a-heavy-chain-attached-to-steel-ball-between-them had been really busy out here. Fortunately, it was fine and clear with a light breeze, so even such a bleak outlook the mood was good. At the junction of the Jandowae Connection Road a farmer was giving away oranges. Riding was easy and we got into Jandowae about 3. After a shower and settle in to the tent erected by the tent-erecting elves, it was time for a turn around this somnolent little town on foot. Cycle Queensland was already livening up Sunday in Jandowae.

It would be hard to find a more evocative little Australian town than Jandowae, principal town in Wambo Shire. Its name is said to have arrived by the Anglicization of the aboriginal word "jindowie" (waterhole) and by the influence of a bloke named John Dowaie (a coincidence I find somewhat implausible) who set up some sort of way station way back then. The town dates from about 1860. By 2000, probably under the yet-another confluence of rural downturn and drought, things were so desperate in Jandowae that the Wambo Shire Council flogged off house blocks for a buck each, earning Jandowae the moniker of The Dollar Block Town. The only stipulation was that you had to prove you were willing to get a house on the block and move in within 6 months or so. It was a gamble like selling things for 99 cents on eBay and it paid off. In September 2007, there wasn't much evidence that surrounding cattle and grain properties were doing much for Jandowae, except ruin the environment, but the town wasn't lying down. The population had grown to about 1200.

For some reason, I didn't take any photos of Jandowae, so here are a few used with the kind permission of Australian Explorer

http://www.australianexplorer.com/

The photographer could have been there the same day as us, but maybe in late morning.



Jandowae Memorial Clock.

This was in a precinct that Jan found quite strange. I just thought it was an example of small town kitsch.



Detail from clock precinct. Mural and diorama.



Sign from the clock precinct, which explains it all.



Jandowae street bifurcated bottle tree (Brachychiton rupestris)



Jandowae Visitor Centre



A sleepy Jandowae street and a big sky



Most places are a fair way away. We'd just arrived from Chinchilla.

For more pictures of Jandowae:

http://home.exetel.com.au/wambo/album/Towns/Jandowae/index.html

Streets were laid out in easy rectangles, punctuated by galvanized iron-roofed weatherboard buildings and a fair few bottle trees. Three of these weatherboard buildings were pubs that the tour participants drank dry that Sunday. One of the other buildings was a newsagency and store that sold me a sure-fire $20 million dollar Lotto ticket after I promised to spend lots in the town after I won (I didn't, so I haven't). The waterhole (previously mentioned) was now part of a little pioneer park that featured a few reproduction pioneer buildings. Under a small tent, a local community group plied us with very reasonably-priced coffee, cakes and biscuits. I dozed off with my head on Jan's thigh on the grassy bank of the waterhole looking at swallows or martins (I forget which) nesting under the bridge over the little creek. Mark and some others rode around on a model train in a park across the road. The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour came to mind. Bordering on the surreal, it was almost one of those out-of-body days of gentle tiredness, mild sun, cool breeze, interesting location and magic company. I don't think I recall a similar occurrence since standing in a ring of stones on an amazingly sunny green day in Co. Kerry, Eire, in 1985, but then I'm probably just losing my short term whattayacallit.

After fooding up big and being amused by the daily briefing, I slept the sleep of the very content that night.

3/9/2007
Jandowae-Bell (50.8 km.)

I don't know about you, but my bowels go strange when moved out of their usual daily rhythm and I had been wondering when they were going to swing back into action again. This morning my question was answered and I found myself queued up with the other slightly anxious-looking blokes at the foot of the stairs into the dunny truck, when out bounded Mark Taylor who announced "You better have your bus tickets fellas, coz there isn't any paper!" Fortunately, one of the dunny truck good guys chose that theatric momement to arrive with a boxful, so the wonderful augeries of the day before just kept on coming.

Breakfast was proof that I'd got this tucker business sussed. As a survivor of 6 years in boarding school (Townsville Grammar, 1962-1967), I've learned to grab all passing food before it can get away. I've also taken Oliver Twist to heart, and the kind BQ cooks had no compunction about ladelling on some more. It must have been the mute appeal in my big round eyes, or maybe it was just another expression of the generosity of the volunteers. As well, being a vegetarian, I didn't have to queue with the carnivores whose food line went almost back to Chinchilla. Since I can resist anything but temptation, I also got a superb flat white from the mobile Cafe2U van that batted its windscreen wipers and wiggled its back hatch at me at the front gate. Damn, life was good!

The ride to Jimbour along the Jandowae-Dalby road was flat and uneventful, steady riding on a fine day in light breeze, but vaguely disturbing in that the surrounding landscape got steadily more desolate. The roadside trees dwindled to lone specimens, the paddocks got larger and dryer, and they and the houses and sheds standing in the middle of them were the only testaments to pastoral greed until we started passing RING TANKS.

Hitherto, the water conservation measures were limited to contour farming and some terracing about a metre high, but these buggers had earth walls 4-5 metres high and surrounded entire huge paddocks. They seemed to disappear in the distance. The Great Wall of China came to mind. It was a real "WTF?" moment. I didn't think I had never seen anything so environmentally challenging. As well, it was astonishingly ugly.



Ring tank wall as seen from road. This tank is known locally as Wunch's Dam, the Big Ringer, or Lord of the Ring Tanks. There's another whopper on "Deloraine", a nearby property. All are situated near little creeks. How many of these things can the land support? Photo used by permission of the photographer.



Different ring tank near Jandowae. This tank is much smaller than Wunch's which is off in the distance to the north. We rode past the silos you can just make out top left. Note dried out creek beside the ring tank. For scale, note the shed beside it. Photo used by permission of the photographer.



Another view of the same tank. Note how dry and treeless the land is. The Bunya Mountains are in the top left. Photo used by permission of the photographer.

You might recall that in the Murilla Shire mayor's (yes, the last Murilla mayor, before those fools in Brisbane change things forever!) address to the crowd back in Miles, he acknowledged the presence of a prominent environmental scientist in the crowd of bloody fools who were going to ride push bikes to the coast. She was/is Sarah Moles and Sarah later told me the some of the miserable consequences of these symbols of the economic imperative.

The area around Bell is in the catchment of the Condamine River, which joins Dogwood Creek and becomes the Balonne River near Chinchilla. The Balonne continues as the Culgoa River and after the Culgoa joins the Barwon, there commences the official start of the Darling River. However, the ring tanks I had just seen were only part of a network of various water harvesting schemes along the way. Not much water survives all this literal chicanery, so our most iconic river system, the Murray-Darling, is being strangled to death. If you know a bit about Australian history and recall a thriving 19th century river boat trade that went up the Murray-Darling system, full of aquatic and avian life all the way to Bourke, then contrast that to the 21st century scenario of the upper Darling reduced to a gutter of toxic algae or a series of fouled waterholes, and the lower Murray so saline people in Adelaide can barely drink it, you have to wonder if this is progress and can we do without it?

A Google search on the subject leaves you very depressed, with various tourist and agribusiness intests telling you everything's just ducky; some government agencies telling you how to make more water scavenging devices; and other government, environmental and catchment agencies saying things ain't great. No-one seems to be heeding the latter and maybe the only hope is for the Queensland Government to not renew or to restrict water licences when the present ones expire. The picture is one of confusion, greed, misguided policy and obfuscation. The notorious Cubbie Station, near Dirranbandi, and near the confluence of the Balonne and Culgoa Rivers, is Australia's largest cotton farm and is probably the most extreme example of water harvesting, but the ring tanks and their owners, who probably think of themselves as great Australians, are in there doing their share for our mighty country. No doubt Soviet authorities had the same motives for ruining the Aral Sea.

After the ridiculous came an approximation of the sublime, Jimbour House, where we paused for morning tea. Jimbour has its own nifty website

http://www.jimbour.com/

that you can look at for more details, but suffice to say it has made its mark on Australian history in many ways.

In 1842 it was established as a sheep and cattle station by a Scot named Richard Todd Scougall and registered at this time as "Gimba" or "Jimba". Both words are said to be the local Aboriginal word for "good pastures", an idea I find a bit fanciful. Aborigines were nomadic people, and hunters, not herders. A few years later the spelling was changed to "Jimbour". Jimbour passed to Thomas Bell in 1844 just in time to host Ludwig Leichhardt expedition into the westward unknown.

The Bell family remained until 1912.During that period a couple of familiy members became Queensland government ministers and, in 1874 they commenced construction of the handsome Jimbour House. Built mostly of local timbers (particularly cedar), locally quarried stone and with an Irish slate roof, it cost over 30,000 pounds, a fortune at the time. Between 1912 and 1923 the property was in various hands until the Russell family took over. By then, the house was 50 years old and decrepit, surrounded by dishevelled grounds and required the total restoration it was given. Still there as the Russell Pastoral Company, the Russells seem to have adopted a very progressive approach to agriculture (probably including ring tanks) and continued Jimbour's tradition of contributing MPs to serve in both the Queensland and Federal parliaments. Music festivals have been held in its grounds.

There's lot about the house on the website, but that doesn't really prepare you for the incongruity of its presence. It not only looks Scottish-French, but its aspect is very feudal. Like a castle, it commands a hill, and in its early days supported a small village which was later moved a couple of kilometres away.



Southern aspect



Eastern aspect, with cottage garden and wandering cyclists

For more pictures of Jimbour:
http://home.exetel.com.au/wambo/album/Towns/Jimbour/index.html>

We were apparently asked not to go into the house, but were free to wander the grounds at will. A vintage swimming pool fronted the house across about 70 metres of lawn and gardens and looked out over the lowlands towards Dalby 27 km away. Most of the trees were natives and included a hapless oddity, the shot-up trunk of a dead bottle tree. Apparently, it was a common practice in the past to use this tree for target practice, giving a whole new twist to the aphorism "if it moves, shoot it; if it grows, cut it down". This tree got it coming and going.

There was a an interesting photographic collection in a restored stable featuring various people, events, animals, machinery, and jobs, but which didn't include too many Aborigines (but were a spectral presence like Jimbour's original name). One of the photos was of a 1930s Beechcraft. In the hangar - Jimbour has its own airstrip - was a modern Beechcraft (brand loyalty over 70 years. Beechcrafts must be good!) and a couple of other smaller planes. Other outbuildings were just that: Australian vernacular stables and sheds. It was a pretty marvellous place, but the temptation to linger had to be overcome.The ride into Bell along the Bell-MacAlister Road was hillier, and we got into Bell, situated in the foothills of the Bunya Mountains, about 1 o'clock.

I don't have any photos of Bell either:
http://home.extel.com.au/wambo/album/Towns/Bell/index.html>

That lowering sky over the visitor information centre was what it was starting to look like while we were there. Jimbour Station was once much bigger than it is now, and Bell is located on what was part of Jimbour. The town dates from 1906 and was named after the Bell family of Jimbour. Joshua Thomas Bell, MLA, promoted the building of railways in the Dalby area and Bell became the site for the railway terminus. Nowadays, however, Bell's tracks lead no-where. Competition with road transport has overwhelmed it; a fate echoed in lots of rural rail towns.

I'm not sure Bell, a hamlet of about 300 people, was quite ready for the plague of 1100 two-wheeled locusts and their support facilities which descended on it to set up camp on the side of the town racetrack. The tour trucked in its own water so as not drain the town, but there was plenty of other draining done. The coffee shop had people spilling onto its lawn out to the street; the CWA tea room/cafe set up in the information centre/gift shop gave up after about 2 hours; the little golf club near the gate did more business that afternoon that it had done all year in the process of being drunk dry; the Bellview pub put up a valiant struggle, but all its beer got guzzled too. We visited its rail museum (just a few engines and memoribilia in a big shed), checked out its knick-knack shops and ogled the very decent art in the little gallery. The gallery did all right from the bike tour. "Sold" stickers went up very quickly on several items. I bought a couple of paintings by Mary Tierney after I got back to Brisbane and thought about them a bit.



After the Storm by Mary Tierney. Looks good on Jan's wall.

Some of us decided to do some washing, but it didn't get dry. The water truck owner/drivers told us that the weather forecast was for rain and it did come up overcast that night. All thoughts of an 85km ride to Kingaroy in the rain didn't dispel us from the night's fun. Gina, a local school teacher, had a good voice and was backed by Warwick (from Dalby) on vocals, guitar and laptop. Confronted by a crowd of tired, mostly 40+ cyclists who had just eaten mightily (as you do), they were looking puzzled that no-one was dancing. They won us over. Their renditions of Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, America and Linda Ronstadt songs were so good that I was not the only one who re-discovered, without the aid of much alcohol, some of my great dance moves from the 70s. Their perplexity turned to smiles, they started taking requests and eventually the tour organizers had to ask them, after happily going 30 minutes overtime, to wrap it up. I think we had to have a tour briefing and hear another mayor tell us he was going to be the last...etc. Maybe it would rain tomorrow, but that was tomorrow. Now was very good.

4/9/2007
Bell-Kingaroy (85.8 km.)

As this was going to be a long day with a lot more klicks, it was more important than in previous days to get moving as soon as possible by 7 o'clock. After successfully practicing my "give me more food" routine, cleaning eating irons and teeth, I nearly made it out the gate but that Cafe2U van batted its windscreen wipers and wiggled its back hatch at me again. Later on, I was glad that it did. As the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers used to say, "drugs will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no drugs". I was in pretty good form all day despite the worsening weather, increased traffic and frequency of hills.

People ride all sorts of bikes in these tours, and over the days you have plenty of time to observe them. On the Goondiwindi to Gold Coast ride in 2005, a woman was riding a penny farthing which eventually crashed on one of big downhill runs from Canungra to the coast. I think I've mentioned before that I was probably riding one of the tour's clunkers. Some of the bikes were some very obviously expensive road bikes, featherlight in carbon fibre ($4000 and up), the usual collection of Specialized, Cannondale, Giant and Trek roadbikes (around $2-3000), Apollos, Shoguns and Giants in the up to grand price range and some far less spiffy road bikes including Malvern Stars and Repcos from the 80s which were barely worth $150. There were less mountain bikes than I expected, 2 or 3 tandems and a trio of recumbents, one of which was a tandem.

On one of the tandems was the irrepressible proprietor of a bike shop who claimed that he planned his grog budget in (you could say) tandem with the cost of the tour, but the prices of tours kept going up and he couldn't drink that much! I saw him trying pretty hard, nevertheless. One of the tandems was part of a family group and was pulling a trailer with a little kid on it. It seemed to be always having flat tyres. I last saw it two days later, dead at last in the rain between Blackbutt and Kilcoy. The other one made it to the finish. The recumbents didn't seem all that efficient. I'm not fast and keeping up with them was easy. They looked scary going down hills.

There were a lot of hybrids. These had the style of a mountain bike and the roadability of a tourer. Both genders rode these but some women were riding old & newer style step-thoughs. Most of them were in the $450-$1000 price range. Mountain bikes were in a minority because the smaller wheels meant a lower top gear, but later in the hills that was no handicap. There were some fairly old 80s tourers and these acquitted themselves well despite a weight handicap. I even noticed a couple of choppers. Let's figure $500,000 worth of bikes on the tour and that might be a bit conservative.

Just as there were all sorts of bikes, there were all sorts of people and plenty of time to observe them too. I'd say the majority were over 40 and some, of both genders, were frankly obese. A lot of these porkers left me for dead. I was passed by bums that blotted out the horizon. You just can't judge a book by the cover.

Shower times were interesting. The showers were arranged in a row of about 8 cubicles down one side of the truck and each had a plastic curtain to stop water splashing to the area in front of the cubicle where there were hooks to hang stuff on and benches to put stuff on. The latter area was where you got dressed. Let's be honest, if you're a bloke, you can't help unconsciously noticing the other blokes' tackle. It's probably primal mammalian behaviour to wonder where you measure up in the pecker order. Possibly related is roadside pissing behaviour. One of the many benefits of being male is to have a penis and having a penis makes roadside pissing very easy as quite a few male riders demonstrated each day. I didn't notice women exercising the same option.

Much safer shower activity was the observation of scars. One of my many faults is shameless curiosity. "I couldn't help noticing but..what the hell is that?" was my usual tactful gambit. One bloke's chest looked like it was criss-crossed by a series of clumsy electric welding jobs, scar tissue nearly as wide as my pinky finger. There were zippers and appendix jobs, backs that looked like a cat-of-nine tails job, burns, knee jobs, leg and arm scars and quite a few rotator cuff jobs including my own. These were mostly on the predominately older demographic and reflected a lifetime's wear and tear. One bloke, and there were others, had had a quadruple by-pass. Nevertheless, he looked leaner and fitter than me. A lot, me included, had heart conditions. All the same, we were on the tour and all the better for it. I'd say cycling was keeping a lot of people alive. It's certainly done a lot for me.

According to my spy in the ladies showers, some riders resoutely didn't come out from behind the shower curtains to the dressing area; some were quite overweight; no remarkable scars to report (women aren't as silly as men, as we know). It isn't just the young and fit who go on these tours.

This was not, however, just a tour for Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers. The Urangan High School mob and their affable teacher weren't there this year. However, there were contingents from a couple of private schools. Jan and I happened to catch up to a couple of these teenagers dawdling along, looking bored and riding erratically, not bolstered by an iPod or mobile. The young woman seemed to have no idea of gears and I offered some unasked-for advice on how to pedal more efficiently and what those funny levers on the handlebars were for. She, like the 15 year-old boy we also overtook, did not take long to remember pressing business elsewhere and disappear over the horizon. Their speed transformation was quite remarkable. It's very embarrassing when old people talk to you. You might be seen by your mates, even on a lonely road, and old people are so boring.

Jan noticed the general absence of families this time. In the past, she had noticed the difficulties parents seemed to have getting kids to move in the morning and to behave. In some cases, like the concert the Biggenden High School students put on, some parents let their kids wander onto the stage and annoy the orchestra and conductor. Generally, there was an absence of kids this time, and those parents who did bring them, seemed to be working hard. An example was the family with one of the tandems, although in their case, it seemed to be the tandem that was causing all the trouble. Generational change is essential to any movement and it was heartening to see how well the young people performed on this tour.

My choice to take the GT was justified on the ride to Kingaroy which was along the Bunya Highway. There was a sharp climb out of Bell that was a bit rough to be coming first up for the day, but I found myself using my granny gear on only some of the short sharp grades leading up to Porter's Gap, the highest point of the tour at 710 metres. My middle chain ring was the lowest I had to go most of the time and I went over Porter's Gap on the big chain ring. We had crossed the Great Dividing Range. The country was wooded and the road not particularly wide. Fortunately, there were not many trucks, but there were a fair few single cars, trucks and utes and cars towing caravans or trailers. Some of the riders didn't display much sense by riding more than two abreast and some hairy overtaking occurred. I particularly recall a mid-80s Ford Fairlane towing a trailer full of household furniture overtaking three riders abreast on the crest of a hill. Didn't look good for a minute or two.

We had two morning teas today, because lunch wasn't going to be until 2 o'clock or so. The first was at a farm in the hills, not long after Porter's Gap, of a jovial family which had a large pink porker in a cage in the backyard. We were assured he wasn't going to be butchered (yet), but was there because he was not only a scrounger, but a leg-humper. Apparently, one of the tour organizers checking out the route a year ago knows about this first-hand. Despite being deprived of the latter possibility, the pig was enjoying being the centre of attention, grunting cheerfully while gutzing anything that was chucked into the cage. Among the helpers serving wonderfully bad things to us was a young bloke about 17 in a Lee Kernaghan-style black Akubra and very smart rodeo gear. When I told him I liked his belt buckle, he actually blushed. Ah, these county people...

Later on, I was to see a less fortunate pig. Its pink head gazed resignedly at me from the rear of a semi-trailer which had just overtaken us. Unhappily for me, it maintained eye contact until the truck was out of sight. As the rider behind me remarked, "Bacon tomorrow", I felt some vegetarian self-righteousness mingled with sadness for the pig. I hoped it died without suffering too much.

The county opened out after we got out of the foothills. Farms began to appear. We crossed a lot of watercourses, but there wasn't much water in them. Outside Kumbia, we passed a place called Old Boyneside where farmer/B&B operator/dog trainer Peter Curtain was watching at his artistic front gate, drawn down to the road by the passing cyclists. In no time, he had become an unofficial stop. Many cyclists checked, initially arrested by the Border Collie balancing on the property letterbox, then by the sight of the nearly immobile dogs standing quietly on the Old Boyneside sign. They let us check them out, completely unfazed by all these strangers. Peter sells these dogs, trains them and releases them to their new owners.



Peter Curtain's dogs, Old Boyneside, near Kumbia. The dog standing on the letterbox jumped down before I could photograph it.



Janelle, Elly, & Michael, Old Boyneside, near Kumbia. That's a mobile fix-it van behind Janelle.

Kumbia is a pretty little town which has won the Tidy Towns competition. Awaiting us was whole gamut of community groups selling coffee, tea, biscuits, cake: great bike riding fuel for morning tea. I've since heard a story about a Kumbia that aptly illustrates the farmer pre-disposition for killing trees. Apparently, the shire council decided to further enhance Kumbia by planting rows of trees into and out of the town. A local farmer then killed the whole lot by repeatedly pulling them then stuffing them back into the holes. The council hasn't repeated its mistake.

It seemed paradoxical to me that we made a U-turn after leaving Kumbia, but it was good to get off the Bunya Highway. This U-turn took us up a long anticline with a drunken procession of lurching telephone posts on the left and lonely, cold-looking farms on either side surrounded by paddocks of red dirt. The bleak, predominately 30s-40s houses set back from the road took me right back to places I had been as a boy in the 1950s. They still had that anguished, hard-graft look. At the crest of the rise, the road took a dip at right-angles into a long syncline, which saw us doing 30 kph or better before climbing another anticline. The crops changed from grains to beans and grapes. By then we were also experiencing very light rain and it was looking murkier ahead.

At the top of the anticline we turned at right-angles again and rode through well-wooded country, saved from logging by rocky outcrops. Eventually, we came out into the rolling country of anticline and syncline again, but 20 km further North-West. Lunch was in the front of another tired-looking farm. The sun chose to re-emerge and we ate under the supports of a small front-yard silo. It was obvious that the rain was going come back, and we were heading right into it, so we got a move on, because when we re-joined the Bunya Highway outside Kingaroy, we didn't want to be doing it in the wet and dark.

The day then turned into an exercise of getting it done, head down in the wind and bursts of light rain. As we got into Kingaroy, riding single-file down the road into town, we were overtaken by a speeding truck-and-trailer combination being pursued by the tour's motorbike cop. It was our first instance of the local psycho truck drivers and it wouldn't be the last. At the tour briefing that night Ben Wilson told us the same motorbike cop had also pulled up a speeding B-double whose driver had panicked so totally that his rapid deceleration had caused his load to fall over. We all cheered. It was good to know, that on this level, as well as all others we were being looked after. That policeman, whose name was Chris, I think, endeared himself to the whole tour: cheerful, self-effacing, competent, protective: a credit to the girls and boys in blue.

We got in to pretty soggy campground in the Kingaroy Showground about 4.30. It was, by now, heavily clouded and raining lightly but steadily like it wasn't going to let up. Fortunately, Mark Taylor had got in early, (he rides like a demon) found our gear and tent and set it up for us, ensuring our gear didn't get wet. He wasn't using the Campese tent option, but was camping in a pup tent. Like some others he established himself in one of the showground sheds. We organized getting our laundry done, the matter exacerbated by some of it being wet from Bell. A representative from a town laundry took it away. To our surprise, they didn't lose anything either, we discovered next day.

After a shower and a very convivial meal during which a band called Swinging Doors ran some pretty competent, if somewhat generic, country pop and 50s & 60s toons past us, which was another chance to raise some dust, (I won't care if I never hear "Sweet Home Alabama" again, however), we had the nightly briefing, during which time "our" policeman's activities came to light. The mayor of Kingaroy welcomed us and thanked us for bringing the rain (Kingaroy was on Level 6 water restrictions) before telling us he was going to be the last ....etc., then it was off to Kingaroy High School for a "Back to the Seventies" night.

The band at the high school was somewhat different, a cheerful, irreverent bunch of blokes called Blues Excuse. Getting in the 70s thing, the singer looked like Jimmy Barnes, the rhythm guitarist like Peter Garrett, the lead guitarist might have been a Peter Frampton lookalike, the drummer was invisible behind his kit and the bass player was classic 70s, hulking and thundering in a dark corner. Peter Garrett regaled us with various anecdotes, including the 2004 Cycle Queensland tour when they had played in Goomeri where "some old chooks cooked up a giant feed and it was primo!" and played some pretty dirty riffs: vintage Beatles, Rolling Stones, Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, Tom Petty, Lynyrd Sknyrd ("Sweet Home Alabama" again! Aaargh!)and to my surprise a couple of Free songs. Didn't think anyone had heard of Free except me, but, of course, that polymath Mark Taylor had. As a northern Englishman, Mark holds Paul Rodgers ("from Middlesborough") very high in the rock pantheon: a local boy who made it very big with Free, Bad Company and later as a highly respected solo act.

The "Back to the Seventies" theme continued, giving the tour's exbibitionists a chance to play dress-ups in gear for which they had been ransacking Kingaroy op-shops all afternoon. There was a John Travolta who was pretty cool, a couple of hippy chicks stoned out of their brains, a couple of heavy metal blokes, and few others that I've forgotten. The winner was an Ozzy Osborne type in a dark wig and various other black garments. He was deserving winner, but they were all a lot of fun. I forget what he won, possibly a bottle of red.

We were tired and happy when we left at around 11 to return to our tent which was flapping in the wind and rain pattering on its soaked roof. Not only was the tent leaking slightly, but it was also fairly cold. Things were getting contentious and we had been told the weather was going to get worse.

5/9/2007
Rest Day, Kingaroy

As someone who grew up in Queensland in 1960s and 70s, its a bit hard to associate the word "Kingaroy" with anything other than the Hillbilly Dictator, Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Peanuts would be a distant second. Under Joh Bananas' jerrymander-rigged reign, Queensland become the backward Australian equivalent of America's Deep South. To everyone south of the border, Queensland was the Deep North.



Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland, 1968-1987. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joh came from grim farming stock and life for farmers in the 20s and 30s (when his family arrived from New Zealand) was tough. Joh had little formal education and no time for pansy intellectuals. Symbolic of his later lack of subtlety and sense of style, he pioneered the infamous scrub-clearing technique of connecting a heavy chain between two bulldozers. Attitudes formed during his early years of wresting a living from a grudging countryside were to become the cornerstones of his political career when he became Premier of Queensland in the late 1960s. He was eventually brought undone in the late 1980s by the corruption that had flourished in the type of social climate he had fostered: greed, ruthlessness and development at all costs.

It is obvious, given the almost extreme conservatism of the area, that Joh was only slightly atypical. Warren Truss and Ian McFarlane, two other conservative politicians, also come from Kingaroy. Truss eventually became leader of the National Party. McFarlane, as a Minister in the Howard Government, was a trenchant greenhouse sceptic and vigorous fossil-fuel industry supporter.

The name "Kingaroy" sounds to me like combination of an English word and a French word which both mean "king", but it's reputed to be a local aboriginal word meaning "red ant" or "hungry ant". Red ants are probably an appropriate symbol of the grim need to survive at all costs in a farming environment. The area was first settled in 1843, and a town called Taabinga, named after a huge pastoral holding (on land which was taken from the Aborigines) was established in 1878. However, in 1904, the arrival of the railway favoured the other settlement, Kingaroy. Taabinga rapidly declined after that. Dairying was the mainstay for a while, but after peanuts became successful in the 1920s and the first silo was built in 1928, Kingaroy became the present prosperous little town of about 8000 people firmly linked to the land. This link is symbolized by the very large peanut silos right in the oldest and highest part of the commercial area. Gourmet tucker such as fine cheese, wine and olives, along with symbiotic tourism are also big earners for the area.



Peanut silos, Haly St., Kingaroy. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. It would've been good to have had a day like this the day we were there, but alas, it wasn't. Character building comes at a price.

After we lost a negotiation with a tour representative from the Kingaroy Shire Council to get our money back for a trip to the Bunya Mountains for which we had pre-paid (the lousy weather was no excuse - it'll be good in the Bunyas; the tour operator already had been paid; deals had been done; we've got your money), we nixed the Bunyas and wandered off to look at the town instead. Lesson: never pre-book, especially in Kingaroy. The hard-nosedness obviously hasn't stopped with Joh. In my case, they might have trouble with return business.

As we wandered into Kingaroy in rain jackets and under umbrellas, Mark Taylor wondered how Kingaroy might be faring without the Bjelke-Petersen "drip-feed". Evidence of that was everywhere: the Johannes Bjelke-Petersen Airport (which is co-incidentally located next to the Bjelke-Petersen property Bethany); Bethany is located in Bjelke-Petersen Road; the Bjelke-Petersen Primary Industries Research Station. The latter is particularly ironic given Joh's scorn for education (his Minister for Primary Industries, the only minister in his cabinet to possess a tertiary qualification, Mike Ahearn, B. AgSci.) was derisively referred to as the Minister for Chicken Coops. Mementos, such as tea towels which combine a picture of Lady Flo with the recipe for her famous pumpkin scones, are available in abundance. Even though he had been dead a couple of years, the Bjelke-Petersen name is still writ large around Kingaroy.

The Kingaroy Shire Art Gallery, the Kingaroy Heritage Museum and the Kingaroy Heritage Precinct seemed like good places to start and they were out of the weather. The Art Gallery was sited in the former Council chambers, an Art Deco building next to the Visitor Information Centre, which, in turn, adjoined the Kingaroy Heritage Museum in a three building complex across the street from the silos. Once again, Aborigines were not largely represented, except in the Art Gallery. The Heritage Centre was mostly full of agricultural machinery.

Outside, you could see the way Kingaroy had developed along the old alignment of the railway line. A couple of old pubs (ca. 1904, now backpackers' haunts, of course) were situated adjacent to the old railway station. There was a new railway station now and this was aligned with the present town of Kingaroy which went for two or three blocks downhill to an ominous generic shopping mall which is probably the town's new focal point. We spent the day cruising cafes and had a very good leisurely lunch at a place called Burning Beats. After that, we looked at a Landcare display in the shopping mall and hunted down some ride necessities such as gloves. All day, the temperature had barely stayed in the mid-teens and the rain kept coming and going, but always promising to return. It wasn't a day to take photos, so I didn't. Here's another link instead

http://tourism.southburnett.com.au/townkingaroy.htm>

We had booked another tour too, to Maidenwell Observatory 42 km away, and reckoned since we'd done our dough on one tour, we might as well check this out. The same tour operator took us and several others and reckoned, somewhat falsely, I thought, that the Bunya trip had been successful, the weather better than it looked. He couldn't possibly say that about the trip to Maidenwell. It rained nearly all the way there, and the temperature went below double figures. The Maidenwell pub was the venue for tea, and I enjoyed the vego pizza. The Observatory was literally washed out. Cloud and rain precluded any practical astronomy, and the proprietor, who seemed puzzled about why we were still there, gave us some of his own theories of astronomy and cosmology before letting us out into a very chilly night. In the bus on the way back, we considered tomorrow. It didn't look good. We considered pulling out of the tour. The puddles of water on our tent floor, a temperature around 6 degrees, strong wind gusts and patchy, nasty blasts of rain as we helped a couple of cyclists relocate from their sodden tent to a dirty but dry showground shed, helped to reinforce this notion. That night I slept in my bike gear (but I did take my shoes off)

6/9/2007
Kingaroy-Blackbutt (86.8 km.)

Sometime later, back in Brisbane, talking to other cyclists who did the tour, we learned that about 30 cyclists pulled the pin in Kingaroy. We didn't. Emerging from the tent in the morning, we found a squelchy, pretty cool day, barely in the teens. The clouds seemed to have lifted, though, the rain had stopped and the wind had died down.

It could have been my imagination, but the volunteers seemed to be looking at me with even more compassion than usual as they loaded up my tucker tray to the max. After cleaning gear and loading stuff into the truck, we faced the music. The organizers wound us carefully through town and we said our hoo-roos to Joh as we passed Bjelke-Petersen Road and went past the Bjelke-Petersen Research Centre in Taabinga. The rain held off for 10 kms, then joined the headwind in giving us a good time all the way to morning tea in the yard of a rural church, when both died down. We had been warned that Tarong power station workers used this road, but, if they did, they gave us no trouble. As in Kingaroy, the small traffic was very courteous. Since we were going pretty slowly, we paused only briefly for a munchy bar and tackled the pungent grade which curled above and away from the church on the way to Maidenwell. On the way, I wished we'd stayed in the cosy pub last night instad of willingly going back to Kingaroy.

Maidenwell didn't look much better when we got there than it had last night. The only difference was that it was light and we could see the rain better. There was a small shed there, into which a lot of cyclists crammed themselves, but the rest of us were outside in the drizzle. I think we all scoffed our lunch without taking advantage of sightseeing in the observatory or checking out the pub which was a classic bit of country pub vernacular: built in 1913, low set, thick timber walls, big central fireplace, full of pub artifacts. I had the camera stowed away so it wouldn't get wet, so here's a link

http://gdaypubs.com.au/QLD/maidenwell.htm>

Here's another link to the observatory. It seems that, on a good night, you get quite a show

http://yarraman.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=34>

What I remember of the ride to Yarraman was mostly hard work. The country became more heavily wooded as it rose and was soaking up the the steady light rain. The road wasn't very wide and some of the edges were tricky. I read a book of Ken Kesey stories once and remember a description he used of the cattle on his Oregon farm on a very cold day "standing ass-backward to the wind". The image of Keysey's herd came to mind. Proceedings were enlivened by the passage of a light delivery truck from Toowoomba (Toowoomba Taxi Trucks?) barrelling past, too fast, and seeing how close he could get on the somewhat narrow road. I heard later that he took the rear vision mirror off one bike and gave others like us some cause for alarm.

After that, I spent most of the time keeping my head down watching the surplus grease I had packed into the GT's front axle caramelize in the light rain. It was a good thing Jan and I had gloves or we would have had frozen fingers. A lot of the riders were wearing tights and longjohns, but I'm not that exhibitionistic.

I thought I was warm enough until Jan had a flat tyre outside Yarraman. In the wind, and not working on the pedals, I found myself shivering steadily as I fitted up a new tube, refitted the tyre and relocated the wheel. The shivering might have contributed to my inability to pump the tyre up all the way, because my right shoulder doesn't work very well, or it might have been my pump failing its first real test. I never have much luck with these small pumps. Its predecessor is probably still rusting away in some part of Kedron Brook. I was tempted to send this one spinning off into a paddock where some cattle were regarding us incuriously, but I was saved from having a tantrum by the arrival of the maintenance bloke/angel on the motorbike. This bloke had been, as he did every day, passing up and down the procession of cyclists all day. I pumped the tyre up with his big pump and felt warmed by his cheeriness, big grin and advice that it was only 10km to Yarraman past the edge of the Yarraman State Forest. Jan was interested in the amount of vine scrub she could see in the forest from the road. (I now have minature foot pump, one of my early purchases after returning to Brisbane).

In Yarraman, we learned that despite our slow progress, we were ahead over 100 cyclists, and had been surprised to have been re-overtaken by Elly and Janelle only just outside town. Our quick stop at the country church had paid dividends. We also learned that the temperature was only 13 degrees, but the gusts of wind certainly made it colder than that. At Yarraman, we made a right-angled turn onto the D'Aguilar Highway and were once more at the mercy of vigorous traffic and greasy roads on undulating hills. The trucks, particularly the semis owned by the same Kingaroy company, made for a few close calls. After the tour, on a Sunday run, I met a cyclist who had seen another cyclist that day washing the blood off in the shower after being blown off the road by a semi.

One my abiding memories of the tour was being greeted by the Bicycle Queensland's ebullient Administration Manager, Jane Clarke, clapping and cheering us in by name at the front gate of the muddy Blackbutt Showgrounds. Our fears of wet gear were only minor ones and unfounded. We unfounded our gear in a showground hall, nice & dry. After inquiries at the always-there-always-good information tent, we were transported by the affable BQ El Presidente Bill Loveday in a mini-bus up to the RSL Hall to set up for the night. BQ had made these arrangements because the tents were too wet to use. Those big dirty white amenities trucks never looked so good as they did this night, standing there all solid and reassuring in the waning light. All that hot water and soap!

Dinner was a crowded affair in the main shed/grandstand. Tales of suffering, stoicism and heroism were exchanged, but Mark Taylor topped it all by saying "I don't know; Stalingrad was worse than this". The tour organizers praised us for our perseverence, but I noticed some people looked fairly shell-shocked. The mayor didn't endear himself. We'd heard the "last mayor...etc." a few times already, but he had to go one better by saying "Blackbutt" was a reference to naked Aborigines. Didn't go down well. The muted response reminded me of the time a very senior TAFE Queensland manager (a former National Party minister) came into our workplace and made a remark about our female manager in a Wet T-Shirt competition. As with the former boofhead, this boofhead attempted to redeem himself fairly unsuccessfully. I'd say most of the bike riders knew the Blackbutt tree gave the town its name. I suppose we get the elected officials we deserve, because we aren't venal and stupid enough to nominate ourselves.








Various images of E. pilularis. Courtesy of Australian National Botanic Gardens.

http://www.anbg.gov/au/copyright.html

It had been a long hard day, officially 87 km, but could've been 92 km. Those travelling with their own tents were in for a hard night. Mark had got in early and grabbed a small open-sided shed in which he set up his tent. All night, he heard the snuffling and snorting of horses in the yard beside him.

The entertainment was a big band all ominously wearing big black Lee Kernaghan hats. When they started playing country music I had first heard 50 years ago, the tolerance I felt back in Miles evaporated. All I wanted to do was go to bed and feel sorry for myself with my brand-new cold, but it might have just been the effect of the music.

7/9/2007
Blackbutt-Kilcoy (54 km.)

Well, if I had been feeling sooky last night, waking at 12.30 to hear rain falling steadily on the roof of the hall failed to ameliorate my sookiness. However, in the morning, after another decent food intake, there was cause for optimism. In order to avoid having us mix it with peak hour traffic down the D'Aguilar Highway, BQ was starting us at 10am intead of 7. This gave us time to be leisurely, have a Devonshire Tea and to check out the art galleries along the main drag, which was the D'Aguilar Highway. Most of it was very good, even to my untrained eye. Perhaps the arts and local cultural and social mores co-exist uncomfortably in Blackbutt.



Blackbutt RSL Hall in which we spent the night.

The Blackbutt area was settled in 1842 and gold discovered in the 1880s. The Brisbane Line railway line was established to serve farms but was ripped up because it couldn't compete with road transport. There's a rail trail there now. When we weren't dodging cars and trucks, particularly the latter, we often saw the forlorn-looking rail trail.



Preparing to depart Blackbutt. Note Police car and murky skies.

We departed Blackbutt in single file on a damp morning. Our genial motorbike cop was joined by two normal patrol cars and a reddy-orange highway pursuit car, all of which cruised up & down like a hungry shark and three barracudas. It wasn't a great day, despite being mostly downhill. At one spiralling descent not far out of Blackbutt, the police held up the traffic until we all got through. The road was too narrow and the surface too bad to have traffic going both ways. After this section, the road flattened out through grazing country, but the traffic was worrisome. Trucks from that same Kingaroy company continued to be extra scary despite our increased police protection. The rain and wind came and went and my cold got worse. I don't remember much about the little town of Moore, where we had lunch. It was overcast and cool. It was about this time that I decided cycle touring sucked, was nothing more than expensive masochism and I wasn't going to do any more. I was feeling as sour as the Panamaxes I was chomping down to hold my cold at bay. If it got away, I'd be in the sag wagon all the way to Mooloolaba, which wasn't the plan. I was determined that if this was going to be my last tour, I was going to finish it on two wheels.

I wasn't feeling any better when we got to a soggy showground in Kilcoy to discover some of Jan's luggage lost. Because the tents were still wet, BQ had arranged for the same accomodation as Blackbutt, the local RSL Hall. As usual, they had done their best, but it necessitated going to and from the Showground to the RSL Hall 500 metres up and down a steep street. Locating the luggage involved doing this several times until I found it nice and dry under a sheet of plastic in the showgrounds, but first I had to find out which truck had been carrying our stuff and where it was parked, and this took a while.

It took the good old shower truck to get me feeling better again and another beaut meal to almost completely restore me to a state where I was fit to be with. At the briefing we learned from Ben Wilson that Elly had come off pretty heavily after braking on a white line. White road makings are very slippery in the wet and she couldn't get her clip-ons unclipped in time. The ambulance and Ben had arrived on the scene very quickly. She subsequently spent 4 hours in the Kilcoy Hospital getting stitched up. Now she was in the tent with us wearing her brand new dressing like Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage and was embarrassed about all the applause, fuss and her hero status. After the buster, Ben said she had wanted to get right back on, but he wanted to ride her bike so she had to go to hospital.

If there was a band, I don't remember it. It might have been the night of the singer-songwriter in the black beanie. We were damp and cold and all I wanted to do was sleep, and I did, in large dry hall. Our luggage had got to Kilcoy dry, complete and safe. Under trying conditions, BQ had done it again and indications all day had been that the weather was improving.

8/9/2007
Kilcoy-Maleny (71.1 km.)

Situated on the D'Aguilar Highway, Kilcoy seems to derive most of its attractions from its proximity to Woodford and Maleny, both places which are 20 km away. I've been up there few times, but usually on the way to somewhere else. In 2004, I went through there in my on the way to picking Jan up from CQ4, the Miriam Vale to Goomeri Cycle Queensland. Kilcoy has the usual country primary industries, dairying and beef cattle with attendant businesses selling 4WDs, tractors, farm equipment and hardware. The 2000-odd locals seem intent on removing all the trees they can. It is also close to the Somerset Dam, one of the two dams responsible for watering Brisbane and which received very little rain while the clouds were concentrating on watering us. Maybe if there were some trees around it, the clouds might hang around.

The Kilcoy Yowie is probably the most famous resident. Over the years, there have been several sightings, so I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone shoots it. Kilcoy seems like that kind of place.



Kilcoy Yowie. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. His penis comes and goes, not with heat or cold or the influence of comely female Yowies, but whether a wowser or a wit has passed by with a saw. Bull statues in Rockhampton have the same problem.

The district is said to have been established by Sir Evan Mackenzie in 1841 and named Kilcoy after estates in Scotland. The tourist industry chooses to evade the issue of the main event for which Mackenzie is associated by using phrases like "Mackenzie did not stay long". He was actually there 13 years. Wikipedia notes,
however, Mackenzie's connection to the deaths of between 30 and 60 Aborigines who died from eating flour laced with strychnine or arsenic. While Mackenzie was not directly involved, it appears his overseer was. The overseer disappeared after Mackenzie returned. The incident was egregious enough to warrant government enquiries and reprimands. Similar occurrences are probably the ugly secret of many Queensland country towns. Mackenzie soon after sold his property to Captain Louis Hope, who built Kilcoy Station Homestead which is listed by the National Trust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilcoy,_Queensland

Our penultimate day on the tour opened bright and shiny, but everyone knew that today was going to be Big Hill Day. Jan never stops thinking, and suggested we help the luggage truck driver who would have to come up from the showgrounds, then load the mountain of luggage on his own with maybe one offsider. Normally, the truck wouldn't be far from the tent and we would all load our own stuff before setting out each day. A few other cyclists also pitched in and we got the pantech loaded in about half an hour. Just as well, because my right shoulder was starting to squeak. As a compensation, I did find a bottle of 2006 Hardy's Cabernet Sauvignon left behind by one of the departed cyclists and stowed it in my backpack to hand in to Lost Property at the Info Tent in Maleny.

The run to Woodford was very pleasant. My cold was Panamaxxed into temporary submission and we made good time, especially after getting off the D'Aguilar Highway. The road was somewhat secondary with uneven surfaces and edges, but there was not much traffic and the countryside was looking good after some rain. The grass on the bare hills around Somerset Dam was very green. Closer to Woodford, the trees were thicker and there were some very idyllic properties and homes along the road. We were seeing it at its best: the drought had broken somewhat and there weren't any bushfires around.

We fetched up at the Woodford Showground for morning tea, then negotiated and crossed our nemesis, the D'Aguilar Highway, onto the Kilcoy-Beerwah Road. On this quiet morning, there was no hint of the site of the Woodford Folk Festival off to the right on a former dairy farm in the foothills. The festival is usually held in either stinking hot or very wet weather each year (sometimes one extreme following the other) between December 27 and New Year's Day and hosts nearly 100,000 people. Since it's the time of the year that I like to be as immobile as possible and drink a lot of beer (which I can get more cheaply at the local bottle shop), I rarely go. While music is one of my major interests, mud and heat don't do it for me. The precursor to the Woodford Folk Festival was the Maleny Folk Festival (1987-1994). The move to Woodford was necessitated when the Maleny Festival got too big.

The climb into Peachester was the most severe climb we'd had so far. This was real granny gear country and where we first encountered open hostilty from car drivers. One incident involved a young woman screaming abuse and blowing her Daewoo's horn as we laboured in single file up a fairly narrow and winding climb. The other involved three young bullet-headed shirtless blokes in a battered grey Hyundai, surely the ultimate choice in getaway cars. When I saw them, the red Commodore was parked with the policeman sitting in it, emanating menace, blue light circling. These apprentice skinheads seemed to be slinking off, looking chastized from what appeared to me to have been a discussion about who had the fanciest or fastest car. The story came out at Peachester when we staggered in for lunch.

It appeared that some cyclists had been abused by these three dorks who had cruised past the riders few times exercising their wit and throwing a beer can or two. The red Commodore had caught them er, ah, red-handed, and the scenario seems to have evolved as follows

Siren erupts from Red Commodore.
Bravado in grey Hyundai turns to apprehension as it comes to a halt.
Some cyclists stop to observe the fun.
Very big policeman wearing cap, gun, tight pants, big boots and very black shades strides up to Hyundai and nearly reefs door off hinges.
Very big policeman loudly orders driver out and bellows "Put on your shirt! I don't want to see your scrawny chest!".
More verbal invective in the same vein follows.
Driver ordered back into Hyundai in which his mates are cowering.
Hyundai slinks off and not seen again.
Cyclists go about their business after applauding policeman who affects not to notice.

You have to wonder about some people, haven't you? As Jan would say, "wouldn't have two neurones to rub together".



Mt. Beerwah (557m). I came out of the trees and there it was.



Mt. Beerwah, same spot but in context with the road and the other Glasshouse Mountains.



The GT takes a rest on the road to Peachester while I take pictures of Mt. Beerwah.

One of the characters of the tour was the water-cart bloke. Whenever he stopped, the sound system in the Cruiser would start playing Dixieland jazz. His taps gave an enticing selection too. In Maleny when the band started playing jazz in the dinner tent, he spread a piece of blue plastic on the soggy ground and started started dancing with one of the female volunteers. A man of style!



Well travelled Land Cruiser towing the water tralier.



Bundy & Coke; Dark & Stormy



Dark & Stormy; Lemonade



All Drinks Free

From then on, the climb to Maleny got more and more severe, obviated only by spectacular new horizons.



Another hill on the way to Maleny



Photo/rest stop at the top of the same rise



The Glasshouse Mountains from the same spot. That house has views!

My left knee was competing with my cold to see which could discomfit me most and it was winning. While I could beat Jan up the hills, she paid me back by cackling mercilessly at my piteous wails and sullen mutterings about "bloody bike tours" and "sadists who organized this". She told me a sadist is someone who is kind to a masochist and I had to agree because it's very hard to disagree with someone laughing as much as she was. I didn't even suspect her motives when she bought me a coffee and a cake in about 5 km from Maleny. The young waitress said old people kissing wasn't yukky, but nice. The weekend traffic pounding up the road from somewhere else was very heavy and annoying, so it was good to get out of it for a while. The only downside to this was that the pubs were almost shut by the time we got to town.

That evening we were reunited with a tent. It felt like home. The showground was not as sodden as Kilcoy or Blackbutt, but did have a large squelchy area that had to be navigated cautiously on the way to the pub and did have duckboards over an even-larger squelchy area near the tucker tent.

At dinner in the tent, the band was seriously Maleny cool. There was an unmistakable anti-climactic air, tinged with disappointment, now that the tour was nearly over. After those hills and the bad weather we'd gone through, we now had to think about life after the tour. When the announcement that Cycle Queensland 8 would be from Bundaberg to Brisbane was made (but not along the same route as 2002), I said cheerfully that it wouldn't include me, I'd learned my lesson, but it was obvious that I was the only one who thought that way.

Later,we went to the dance in town. It was a fancy dress night and some of the costumes were very clever. Some of the Kingaroy costumery may have re-emerged with 70's stuff, big lapels and flairs and one costume was some kind of pun on cycling, but the gist of it escapes me for now. There was also a very stylish silver squid on someone's head. I wondered how the wearers managed to fit this stuff in their luggage, but maybe they'd got in early and cleaned out a few of Maleny's op-shops. Despite my knee and cold, we had fun, but knowing tomorrow was going to be tricky we headed off to our tent before it was over. By Maleny standards, the band wasn't that good and I didn't want to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" again. Tomorrow, we still had some fearsome hills to climb and we had to be there by midday. As we found out, the drop to the coast from the Blackall Range is not necessarily down.

9/9/2007
Maleny-Mooloolaba (51.8 km.)

Maleny has always struck me as being the Queensland equivalent of the New South Wales hippy town of Nimbin. In an unintentional co-incidence, given where we've been, Ludwig Leichhardt was here too. He covered a lot of ground in 1844. The Gympie gold rush of 1867 opened the area up for settlement and the Aborigines melted away, as they always had. Timber fellers razed the area's giant trees and Maleny was a timber town until the early 1920s. The cleared forests were ideal for dairying and the town had a butter factory which declined in the 1960s. It gradually evolved into an alternative lifestyle centre. In 2004-05 some locals protested the construction of a Woolworths shopping centre, but it was built anyway, Maleny being controlled by the development-mad Maroochy Shire Council. While there were once a lot of I Won't Shop There bumper stickers referring to the Woolworths Shopping Centre, Woolworths is still there and there are new cars and 4WDs in the car park.

I've been here before with Jan. We came here a few years back, bussed up there to plant some trees to help replace the logging depredations of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Self-righteous, bumptious people annoy me whether they're greenies or not and I probably won't do that again. Maleny appears to be gentrifying at a great rate, so urban sprawl should take care of replanting notions and Maleny will eventually look like everywhere else. You can't get too uptight about these issues. Life's too short.

In the morning my cold had returned to defeat my left knee in the battle to make me sore & sorry, which was just as well because I knew I was really going to need my knees today. Have you gone up to that sticky tourist trap, Montville? The joint full of chintzy shops and cafes? You know, along that road along the top of the Blackall Range? Do you recall how the road rose and fell like a crazed roller-coaster? That was the route we followed today.

Jan had left early, worried that she would be too slow (not a chance!) to rendez-vous with the truck that was going to take our bikes back to Brisbane and the bus that was going to take us back to Brisbane. I loaded our luggage onto the truck and set out after her AFTER I reclaimed that bottle of 2006 Hardy's Cabernet Sauvignon. I'd lugged it from Kilcoy to Maleny and I'd earned it. I also started chomping Panamaxes again.

I nearly came seriously unstuck on the first decent downhill. I had been gaining on a pack of cyclists on hybrids and mountain bikes riding two and three abreast. A road bike was between me and them. This bloke seemed hesitant/undecided, and, since I like sticking it to road bikes, I decided to pull a very snazzy overtaking manoeuvre on a twisting downgrade. On the outside of a turn, with me drawing up to his back wheel, at about 60 kph, the road bike rider decided to overtake the pack. I was forced out wide, almost to the middle of the road. The driver of an oncoming car looked startled and I hoped she'd stay where she was instead of claiming me as a hood ornament. I let the road bike go. Couldn't even yell at him. My narrow escape had given me a big fright. Maybe that road biker has had a lot of practice at stunts like that; maybe he didn't know I was there. It was good to catch up to Jan again on a gut-busting uphill and slow right down. Mark passed us somewhere around here, his longs legs propelling him up the hills.



Jan beats another hill on the top of the Blackall Range. She vowed she would not walk up a single hill on this, her 3rd tour, and didn't.



Another photo of Jan beating another hill. Note the steep descent in the gash on the hill behind her. It's one of those rare occasions when something is more left of centre than she is. You might be able to see that it drops away pretty steeply. In cycling, whatever goes down comes at a price.

Just before Montville, we hung a right and plunged down the side of the range. Still trembling from my earlier scare, I took it easy. In any case, the road was occasionally tracherous, with a rough bitumen surface, bad edges, varying width and occasional water runoff from the range. Some mad buggers (not on the tour) were actually riding up the range on a training run! Still worried about being late into Mooloolaba, we skipped morning tea at Palmwoods and crossed Highway One and headed into the increasing urbanization and traffic around Mooloolaba.

As Wikipedia says

Mooloolaba is bounded on the east by the Coral Sea, on the south by the Mooloolah River, on the north by Alexandra Headland and to the west by Buderim. Mooloolaba harbour (actually the mouth of the Mooloolah River) is the home of a large fleet of fishing vessels, as well as the northern base for the pilot vessels that control shipping through Moreton Bay and the Port of Brisbane. Due to its sheltered location in the lee of Point Cartwright it is an all-weather harbour favoured by recreational sailors.

The Esplanade facing Mooloolaba beach is a centre for tourist activity, containing the UnderWater World Marine Park, as well as many souvenir and clothing shops, galleries and restaurants. Behind the apartments facing the beach are camping grounds, backpacker hostels and canal villas.

What all this translates into is Development Gone Nuts; a place where southerners escape the South by shifting it all North. It is crowded, it has too many houses, too many apartment blocks, too many cars. We wended our way down to the seaside park rendez-vous point, but only after negotiating a final series of climbs and really nasty hill right at the end. After the hill we negotiated a car park jam-packed with bloated urban assault vehicles and careless drivers, but we got though without incident. Mark was there to give Jan a hug and a kiss, but fortunately all I got was a hug. He hadn't beaten us in by much. Skipping morning tea had paid off again. We were way ahead of the pack; we'd done well.

There was no time to feel congratulatory or deflated. We located bike boxes and bubble wrap, dismantled the bikes and loaded them into the boxes. It felt strange being separated from our trusty steeds. There was some confusion about which truck to put our boxes in, because there were a couple of delivery and pick-up options. BQ had an information table, but it was separated from the frenzy by about 70 metres of park landscaping, community groups and a few hundred cyclists. A long-suffering BQ guy with the clipboard sorted that too, despite all the confused cyclists milling around, proving you can't go wrong if you have a clipboard. We weren't as lucky with the food. The local community group enclave (Lions, Apex, etc.) was under-prepared and whatever food they had gave out early. There was no vego stuff. We got an uncomprehending look instead: "Do people who don't eat snags exist?". The much-touted Mooloolaba eateries along the crowded foreshore were a fair distance off in either direction.

This didn't put me in a very good mood for when a classic blonde helpless female rider needed someone to dismantle her snazzy road bike because she didn't know how. Despite my better judgement, I agreed to help. I had just removed the pedals when I was confronted by the pernickity old bike mechanic/geezer from either Epic or one of the other tour-accompanying bike shops who questioned my methods in a way that I found annoying. Since she appeared to side with him, I picked up my trusty spanner, told him it was all his and left them, or rather him, to it. I had better things things to do, like find edible food.

Fortunately Jan had, but not much. Because the local eateries were a fair way away, keeping our gear secure was a consideration while we awaited the bus to take us back to Brisbane. Meanwhile, another bus and a truck took riders and their gear all the way back to Miles to get the cars they had left there, which might have been a bit strange. I think these would have mostly been inter-state people who would then set off home through inland Queensland and New South Wales. Our friends departed by various means, mostly relatives and friends who had driven up from Brisbane to get them.

On the way back, our bus driver decided to take a short cut around a traffic snarl and found himself and us in a dead-end street looking at a wide drain. After a deft bit of manoeuvreing, involving a U-turn in a very tight street, he got us back to the traffic snarl, out-muscled some of the local traffic (Die Four Wheel Drives!) and got us back onto the road to Brisbane. I got very middle-aged and went to sleep. Jan said I didn't snore much.

In Brisbane we disembarked at the Transit Centre and fell on the food stalls which were, fortunately, still open. Later, the truck with our boxed bikes arrived and, co-opting a baggage trolley, we wrasseled them down the escalator under the disinterested eyes of the security guards to a table with a vantage point on the carpark for Jan to sit down at. I went off by suburban train to get my ute.

Parking at the Transit Centre costs about $50 a nanosecond, so when I came back, we loaded our gear and the bikes fast enough to not have to be sold into slavery to pay the bill. It seemed to be very strange being back at Jan's putting her bike together and throwing smelly bike gear into the washing machine, but later at a good meal in Boundary Street it felt good to be home.

Postamble
10/9/2007 and on

In the short term, I had a few days off with bronchitis, then returned reluctantly to normality. My riding resumed to 90-150 km/week, interrupted only by rain or needing to take a car for errands. Jan and I elevated our riding to include at least one 60-70 km bike ride a fortnight. I have colleagues who are involved in veteran athletics and cycling. Both recommended Glucozamine Sulphate for joint problems and I have been taking that for my knees. It might be working, but I wouldn't know, because I have adopted the stance of ignoring the existence of hills. I think I've done my time on them. We avoided the Woodford Folk Festival for various reasons and I spent the time drinking beer and putting jobs off as long as possible, including this blog, which I am now finishing on St. Patrick's Day 2008, perhaps in time for Bike Week. One of the jobs I did do during this period was to resurrect one of my Diamond Backs with a brand-new second-hand chain ring. Currently I'm on a three-day rotation with the Diamond Back, GT and Shogun as work transport.

Regarding the GT: after the tour, I reassembled it, gave it a squirt or two of RP7 and a bit of a wipe down. During the tour, I occasionally thought I should do something to it, like pump up a tyre, but I think all I did was dry the seat when it got wet. It didn't put a wheel wrong for the whole tour, a far cry from all those bikes that had to be psychoanalysed on the Epic couch every night after a stressful day.

Regarding BQ: what can we say? Incredible organization, smooth operation, friendly, obliging people, even under quite stern pressure, marvellous volunteers, AND they look after vegos. Jan and I are proud to be members. We attend most of the events and don't care if we're not fast. It's all about participation. We've volunteered a few times for envelope stuffing and I was a marshall once when my arm was in a sling, but when it comes to celebratory cycling events we want to be participants.

CQ7 took me to places with which I had had hitherto only fleeting acquaintaince. If I ever disappear from the face of the earth, you'll probably find me in a little place like Bell, Jandowae or Kumbia. I never want to see Mooloolaba again. Riding with Jan also put me in touch with the ugly evidence of some cliffhanger issues confronting our country: sustainability, illogical and perverse government policy and commercial practices, overpopulation and climate change.

The act of cycling itself is a form of social activism. It encourages a healthy lifestyle and, by that, acts to relieve some future pressures on our beleagured health systems. It also advertises the alternatives to burning fossil fuels in copious quantitities to have fun. It informs the public that cycling is a serious movement and a viable transport means. It demands respect from car drivers. It lets politicians know that cyclists are voters too. Some politicians (Anna Bligh, Tony Abbott, Campbell Newman, Ronan Lee) know this already, but more need to be convinced to realign their agendas.

Jan and I have registered for CQ8. It didn't take me long to recall all the fun I had and the extra focus that her encyclopaedic knowledge of environmental and social justice issues gave to the landscape through which we passed. I have to do a tour again, especially after Jan said

"Not only are there no hills, it's downhill all the way. You can see that from the map :)"

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Jan McNicol, Mark Taylor, Sarah Moles, Bicycle Queensland, Wikipedia, www.AustralianExplorer.com.