Day 2: The second departure

Slept in slight­ly, then as I was leav­ing from home and not com­ing back, need­ed to dou­ble-check that every­thing was packed into the trail­er and the gear was all ready to go. Thus I arrived one hour late for my own send-off at Bal­lar­ista in Lydi­ard Street, Bal­larat. I had my cof­fee and said my good­byes, then depart­ed up Sturt Street, fol­low­ing Remem­brance Dri­ve all the way through Lucas, onto Cardi­gan Vil­lage and join­ing the West­ern High­way. I did for­get to pack more bananas, so stopped by Wilson’s Fruit & Veg in Lucas on the way.

I had a nice, but rel­a­tive­ly unevent­ful (except for some road­works) ride into Beau­fort, which is about 50km from Bal­larat. On the high­way enter­ing Beau­fort I was pulled over by a police squad car, though luck­i­ly the local Beau­fort cop just want­ed a chat and to see what I was up to. I told him I was plan­ning to stop at the bak­ery for a pie, to which he high­ly rec­om­mend­ed the Pyre­nees Pantry café across the road. I decid­ed to try his sug­ges­tion as I had­n’t eat­en there before, usu­al­ly return­ing to the bak­ery for their awe­some chunky steak pies, but I should have heed­ed my own advice on this one — the cof­fee, whilst OK, was noth­ing to rave about, and the ser­vice and atti­tude from the young bloke work­ing there was pret­ty poor. Ah well! Maybe they put more effort into the police­man’s order, which is prob­a­bly a good policy.

I head­ed out of Beau­fort and enjoyed a nice ride into Ararat, or just shy of, where I pulled off the high­way at Lan­gi Ghi­ran State Park to camp for the night. Rode my bike a few kilo­me­tres up a cor­ru­gat­ed dirt road — hell on a bike! — to the for­mal (but free!) camp­ing ground. I met a nice fam­i­ly whilst camp­ing there. David and Nicole were from Lalor, in Mel­bourne, and were camp­ing with their lit­tle boys, Sam and Char­lie, 5 and 3 respec­tive­ly. They were good kids, espe­cial­ly lit­tle Char­lie who had fan­tas­tic man­ners for a child his age, and was great see­ing them enjoy­ing a camp­ing trip with their mum and dad. Dad sang them a song on the gui­tar to put them to sleep — which I was informed by Nicole was a reg­u­lar night­ly occur­rence, not just a camp­ing thing — and then had a great con­ver­sa­tion as they shared their camp­fire with me until the late hours of the evening, when I final­ly dragged myself away from the camp­fire and hit the ham­mock at about 2300. The ham­mock is  com­fort­able enough and very warm, but being my first night camp­ing in a ham­mock, I still need to get used to the sleep­ing angles.