Blind Courage

This was the first day the Blind Courage cyclists started out with short sleeves (surprisingly for Canberra). Since Mildura the boys have had the fine company of their mate Mark Berends, who we haven’t really mentioned much because he just drafts quietly behind them, hardly pedalling or talking at all – not that anyone can get a word in edge wise with our own resident Mr Havachat, Grant Williams. Well, this was Mark’s day in a not so wonderful sense of the word when he got his third puncture for the trip – and he hadn’t even had his Weet-bix! Fair dinkum, folks, it’s just not cricket … or cycling.

Mark pulled Mitch over and jumped in the back of the KEA to do a quick tyre change as tailgate Charlie (aka Mitch) continued his slow and steady behind the cyclists. The boys were quite concerned (but not concerned enough to stop) at the absence of their silent partner. Visions of Mitch driving over the top of him prompted them to place a phone call – “Mark – where are you????” As the phone was in the other vehicle, no answer was the stern reply. Ten minutes later the side door of the KEA flew open and Mark appeared, like a genie out of a bottle with a freshly inflated tyre.

Over breakfast at a rest stop some 40km along the Federal Highway, it cooled off considerably. Then things really got interesting. No sooner had the porridge gone down than the rains tumbled down – just like Slim Dusty sang about – and it wasn’t even July! Well, weren’t they in for a wet 50km trip into Goulburn? They arrived at the Centro shopping centre resembling a group of drowned rats, so they quickly hopped into the KEA, closed the curtains, and did a quick change, like the Supermen they are.

They had a hot date at the Optus shop – as Optus has very kindly been a big supporter of Blind Courage to date. And wouldn’t you know it? The rain stopped as soon as they did. Optus has a prominent position in the Centro complex, and plenty of pedestrian traffic noticed their display and the Blind Courage posters. The good people of Goulburn opened up their wallets and dropped plenty of coins and notes into our donation buckets, for which we were thankful. Thanks to Craig Pritchard at 2GN Goulburn for the chat over the air, letting Goulburn listeners know we were in town.

The Optus store manager Karen and her assistant, Sam, couldn’t do enough for us. Area manager for Canberra and Goulburn, Jason, gave us a big welcome to town and produced the very popular Optus cup cakes in aqua and yellow colours. Yum. They always go down well.

Goulburn City Lions Club member David King and his wife Robyn, arrived while we were at the Optus shop, armed with a warm welcome and a big fat cheque for $500. Wow. Thanks Lions. You really are champions. David also informed the local media of our imminent arrival, so we had pre-press and a radio interview lined up, thanks to David’s efforts. The Lions have showed their true colours right across Australia, with their generosity and welcoming nature.

At this point we were joined by a group of tandem cyclists from Wollongong, led by Tim Manton. They’re a great mob and there were three vision impaired cyclists, who were keen as mustard to get on the road with Blind Courage to our next stop, Moss Vale. One of those cyclists is Katie Best, who is from Sydney. Katie regularly hops on the train from the Big Smoke just to go riding with the boys from the ‘Gong. The Illlawarra contingent made an early departure and it was just as well.

The Blind Courage entourage had been offered lunch at the Goulburn Soldiers Club, where chef Paul Miller provided a delicious lunch for all of us. Thanks also to the lovely Chris, our waitress, who ensured we were all well fed at the club. Not content just to feed and water us, the club also gave a very generous $200 cheque to the cause.

After a three-hour break from the saddle, the boys were a little reluctant to climb back on, but at 2.30pm, they pushed out of Goulburn bound for Moss Vale Village Park. The Southern Highlands is a beautiful part of Australia. The gorgeous autumn leaves everywhere were just a picture. The boys loved riding the hills into Moss Vale, particularly the downhill runs where Lorin and John finally exceeded Dean and Grant’s maximum speed – a whopping 85.3km/h. No matter how fast those little legs of his pumped, they couldn’t stay with the mighty tandems as they rocketed on down the hill It was also the first time Mark couldn’t keep up with their slipstream, and he was left behind in the wake. That’s not bad. It only took them 30 days to do it and that was only because they weren’t trying, said Captain Jack.

The cyclists tried to book in to the flash resort on the northern side of Moss Vale, which was booked out anyway. Actually they were having such a great ride, they overshot the runway to the caravan park by 5km. Only nightfall stopped them. We made our way back to the caravan park, showered and headed off to the Moss Vale Services Club. Keryn looked after us really well and ensured that no one left the club hungry. Thanks to the duty manager for arranging our soft drinks and our welcome to the friendly little club in that picturesque town.

You would think the boys did very little riding this trip, as we seem to talk about everything else but the ride, but of course, this isn’t the case. To date the boys have cycled for 141 hours, which equates to roughly 600,000 revolutions of the pedals. No wonder they’re tired! And their average overall speed is 28.294km/h.

Now, for the day’s stats: Total distance travelled 161.4km in 5 hours and 28 minutes; average speed 29.5km/h; maximum speed 85.3km/h; Grant burnt 3198 calories today. Minimum temperature 15.1 degrees; max temp 29.5 degrees; climbing distance 1372 metres; that’s 40.32km of climbing; average incline 3 per cent; maximum incline 7 per cent; they went down hills totalling 1292 metres, a distance of 45km; average descent 2 per cent, max descent 7 per cent.

From their picturesque camping spot on the cliffs, the boys headed out about 7am today, due to the changed time zone and the overcast weather.
When they wanted to leave at 6am, it was still dark. On the way to the Nullarbor Roadhouse, where brekky was waiting, they had to make a pit stop at the side of the road for Lorin to check in with Alan Jones on 2GB’s talkback program.  Alan had been kind enough to interview Lorin on the day we left Brisbane and Sydney for Perth and was keen to update his listeners on our progress. Lorin also took time out to speak to Felicity Urquhart, to do an interview for Saturday Night Country on ABC Radio. Thanks for all your support, you lovely folk in the media. We couldn’t get our message across without you.

The only way we could get through to anyone in this remote locality was on our trusty Optus satellite phone, which has worked where no other phone can. We can ring out just about anywhere on the Optus sat phone when other phones can only do their best brick impersonations.

Thanks to the extreme generosity of Nullarbor Roadhouse managers Jeff and Alison, the boys could take their pick of the menu – on the house. They also enjoyed their first hot shower all week – the best dollar any of them had spent in quite a while. Can we recommend the Nullarbor Special, which is a plate you can’t jump over – with sausage, bacon, eggs, hash brown, mushrooms/toast – just the tonic to fuel these cyclists’ engines for the big ride ahead. They rode through pouring rain to get to brekky, and after a slight reprieve while we were breakfasting, the rain began in earnest again as they pulled out of the Nullarbor Roadhouse bound for Nundroo.

All day the rain continued relentlessly until just after 4pm. The sun stayed hidden all day. The blustery wind proved a challenge and particularly, with the frequent passing of cattle and sheep trucks, it didn’t do the riders any favours at all – splat! They often wondered if the spray was from the wet road – or the wet trucks… possibly best we don’t know.

The Eyre Highway, which is a number 1 national route, is not a cyclist’s dream – and that, folks, is a major understatement. If the roads minister would care to hop on a pushbike and ride for a kilometre or two along that route, he might do something about the state of the road surface. But – it would be best for him to do this experiment into a headwind on a rainy day – like our boys did.

Here’s a quote from the quiet man of the group – John Eder, a man of few words, but when he says them, they’re worth listening to: “Riding your bike is like banging your thumb with a hammer. It feels better when you stop. Today was one of those days.” All agreed today was our second hardest day on the trip so far.

When they finally pulled in to our roadside camp about 25km out of Nundroo, hardly any of them could stand. The blogger takes her hat off to all of these amazing athletes. You can’t underestimate the real challenge of crossing such a vast country, subject to such diverse environmental conditions. You really are at the mercy of the elements when you choose to cross Australia on two wheels.  And when it comes down to it – it really is a battle of wills. You either decide you will do it – or you won’t.

Total distance covered 172.6km; riding time 6 hours 44 minutes; 25.6km/h average speed; 55km/h maximum speed. Further stats were unobtainable as statistician was on the phone and my laptop battery was about to run out…

It’s incredible really when this is known as one of the driest continents in the world – and the average rainfall out here is something like eight inches per year – a good deal of which fell on our riders today. The country desperately needs it though. You don’t realise what a precious resource water is until you come out here where there is none.

About 4.15am a few taps on the motor home roof woke the blogger, who has turned into quite a light sleeper of late. Those few taps built up into kettle drums and within an hour the storm, complete with thunder, lightning and the whole percussion ensemble was just about over.
Needless to say the riders got off to a late start – with nobody all that keen to battle the lightning, thunder and driving rain.
They got away about 6.30am. Now before we get too far into this, Grant has a confession. He’s devastated. His little gadget that comes up with all the stats that you’re all sitting on the edge of your computer chairs waiting for – has chucked a major wobbly.
It wasn’t all that fussed on the atmospheric pressure change, which went from blazing heat (and blazing saddles) to freezing butts and thunderstorms.
The cyclists were greeted very early by Brian and his good wife from Currumbin Valley near the Gold Coast, taking photos of the historic departure from Norseman.

A few minutes before reaching the cafe de Nicholson, at the 792km mark, Grant ran over a piece of glass and the front tyre did its best snake imitation yet – and within seconds was flat as a pancake. Within 20 seconds, there was another wheel in its place – pumped up and ready to go one kilometre up the hill to brekky.

Up until breakfast the rain had held off, despite the constant rolling thunder and occasional lightning flash.
Lorin then said the magic words: “I wonder how long we’re going to get without it raining?” Tink, tink, tink… oops… down she came. Softly at first, then whammo. Cop that. Big, big raindrops – and huge claps of thunder, around Fraser Range. In fact, there was a bolt of lightning that close that Lorin actually saw it!

The blogger was in a state of panic, as driving into Balladonia the wipers were doing double time – however, the riders pressed on. After an hour and a half of riding in the rain, the riders thought, well, we’re wet anyway, let’s keep going, so they continued on into Balladonia. The cyclists arrived in Balladonia in record time – 7 hours 11 minutes – a distance of 194.4km at 27km/h.

Balladonia Caravan Park owners Brian and Linda Hodgson very kindly put us up for two nights free of charge on their powered sites. Country hospitality doesn’t get much better than this, folks. Linda is an animal lover and has continued feeding a kangaroo, called Mitch, hand-reared by previous park owners. Mitch comes to the roadhouse each night for a piece of fruit – she loves apples and nectarines in particular. They’ve discovered Mitch is actually Michelle, as the three-year-old now has a joey in her pouch who’s kicking like Barry Hall on a good day. They also have rescued an orphaned baby camel, Miss Peggy, whose mum and dad drowned in the mud in a dam. She loves eating fresh saltbush and will gladly eat it out of your hand. Jordan just loved hand-feeding both animals.

The devilled sausages and rice went down a treat at Mitch’s diner for dinner. It was a hearty meal for the tired crew who’d had a big day and were looking forward to a day of rest on Easter Sunday.