Day 3: Horsham

I awoke ear­ly this morn­ing to the sound of kook­abur­ras laugh­ing, and then cock­a­toos hav­ing a scream­ing match, so much bet­ter than an alarm clock! I love the bush!! Enjoyed a beau­ti­ful sun­rise through the gum trees as I packed up camp and had a mues­li break­fast. The fam­i­ly I’d met, the two lit­tle fel­lows were up bright and ear­ly like me, so we enjoyed break­fast togeth­er before I head­ed back down the grav­el track to the high­way. Love­ly people!

I stopped along­side the high­way at the Djab Wur­rung Embassy, a protest camp against the cut­ting down of sacred, 800-year-old birthing trees. The camp is on the West­ern High­way on the incom­ing side to Ararat’s town­ship, but I did­n’t have the time to do much more than take a pho­to, wave and encour­age them not to give up until they received the respect they deserve; I had to move on, with over 110 kilo­me­tres to cov­er today.

On this ride today I real­ly start­ed to feel the cumu­la­tive fatigue of the past few days. My quadri­ceps are burn­ing and my right hand, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ring and pinkie fin­gers, has gone com­plete­ly numb and I’ve lost a large amount of my strength in that hand. It is dif­fi­cult to write this entry, and to use the hand in general.

The scenery as I ride past the Grampians is beau­ti­ful­ly pic­turesque, even if the weath­er is rather drea­ry. As I came into Great West­ern, I stopped at the Grampians Estate Win­ery for a toi­let break and to hope­ful­ly grab some wine for tonight, but alas! I could only car­ry a very small bot­tle or can and they only had the reg­u­lar sizes; my plan to have a lit­tle tip­ple of wine with din­ner: foiled. I set­tled on a tiny jar of spiced pear paste instead. I also gar­nered some dona­tions from some kind fel­low trav­ellers as well.

I also stopped at the Giant Drop Bear Koala in Dadswells Bridge, a fun­ny tourist spot in the vein of “Big” things like the Big Mari­no, the Big Pineap­ple, etc. This one is a huge con­crete koala with a shop under­neath. I bought some lit­tle sou­venirs that could fit in my pack and kept mov­ing. I try to buy some­thing at these places as most peo­ple pull over, snap pho­to, and dri­ve off, and local busi­ness­es like this are impor­tant to these lit­tle towns.

I stopped for lunch in Stawell. Now, to be fair to Stawell, I was in a slight hur­ry, but I’ve nev­er real­ly enjoyed the town very much and I opt­ed to sim­ply stop at the infor­ma­tion and rest area and cook some noo­dles on my Furno stove than a local eatery, hav­ing seen noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing on the way in.

I am still find­ing the truck dri­vers to be incred­i­bly cour­te­ous and con­sid­er­ate towards my pres­ence on the road — most of them, and when­ev­er they could; it was­n’t always pos­si­ble for them to give as much room, but many tried to give me as much as they could man­age. The ‘grey nomads’, on the oth­er hand…

By the time I arrived in Hor­sham it was rather late to be out scout­ing camp­sites, so I booked into a very bud­get motel, the Dar­lot Motor Inn. It was pret­ty basic, the kind of place Nor­man Bates would adore, with gaps in the ceil­ing solved by the com­pli­men­ta­ry bug spray on the bench. The show­er how­ev­er was mag­nif­i­cent­ly high-pres­­sure and it was a warm and dry roof. I crossed the road to the Toy’s Gar­den Restau­rant, the kind of Chi­nese restau­rant that most Aussies grew up with, and the food was pret­ty good, the ser­vice excel­lent. Then off to bed for a good night’s well-deserved rest.