Saturday, 22nd May, 2004
22 May - Rockhampton, the cattle capital
We rode past lots of cows today, all stopping to look at us as if we're crazy. Waist high lion coloured grass swaying in the (head) wind, hawks riding the thermals, 1.5km long coal trains clacking past, hundreds of trucks ploughing the highway despite it being Saturday.
We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn at the Rockhampton Visitors centre (the one behind the big bull). Ross was sorry not to be able to record the moment on film, but our camera is still in Brisbane waiting for parts.
It was hard riding - about 90km door to door in very very strong winds. We got buffeted a lot between b-doubles, semis and car carriers. But that's all over for a few days. Right now I've got a comfortably full tummy of cous cous (with tomato, cucumber, salmon, fresh lime juice and garlic, chilli and thyme from Dave and Debbie's garden - who says you can't eat well when you travel?). Ross is asleep already in a nice warm down sleeping bag with a freshly washed silk liner. It's 7.30 PM and I think I'll go join him.
21 May - dragging ourselves to Mount Larcom
It was very, very hard leaving Debbie and Dave's. We gave Tas a bone to stop him from coming along. Debbie and Dave wanted to come along too, but they had to go off to school - but not before going for a spin on Argo. They rolled back home from the ride with big smiles on their faces. Argo has that effect on people (but not usually on dogs or cows - cows always look at us as if we're crazy when we ride past, maybe it's that flashing red tail light...but I digress). Actually digressing is quite a good idea as nothing much happenned today on the way to Mt Larcom (except a few - erk - hills) and nothing much is at Mt Larcom either. Which is not a bad thing, because it meant we had an early night and a good sleep - looking forward to a few more like that!
Wednesday, 19th May, 2004
17 to 20 May – Boyne Island
We started the day riding with Simon but got separated by a long hill and an even longer morning tea break. We hit town at late lunch time and moved in to Debbie and Dave’s. Their dog Tas made us right at home. Boyne is a sort of mainland island, separated by a river from Tannum Sands. It’s incredibly beautiful here, so Dave is going to lend us a camera to capture the sights… as soon as we get our admin done, you might have noticed we got a bit behind with the web updates and we have the next leg of the trip to organise too.
Debbie and Dave are both teachers, and they arranged a visit to the local high school for us to talk to some year 8 and 10 students. The students were very well behaved and no one fell asleep for the whole 45 minutes – probably a good sign. Questions included things like “Don’t you get bored?” (no), “can I have a ride?” (no), and “How much does the bike cost?” (as much as some people’s cars – but worth more).
Gotta sign off now – there’s a beach to ride to, shopping to do and dinner to cook.
16 May – Miriam Vale
After a hard but extremely beautiful ride, we reached Miriam Vale’s pub tired and thirsty. Time for a beer, highly recommended for replenishing depleted cyclists. It didn’t take long for Chris to join us and replace our light beers with heavies. Chris’s stamina is amazing – he told us he had finished night shift then been drinking in the pub since 8am. Chris works for Queensland Rail, and before that he used to drive semi-trailers. Needless to say he had many stories to tell and we had a very enjoyable evening. Simon, a fellow cyclist on his way to Cairns, wandered in a bit later and joined us for some good tech bike talk.
14 and 15 May – discovering 1770
Captain Cook landed here in 1770 for repairs, and the Town of 1770 got its name. We rode 100km to get here, a very hard day full of hills (aargh!) and bumps (double aargh!) that our bottoms still haven’t recovered from. We arrived at sunset overlooking a spectacular bay, interspersing our pants with “wow” as we pushed the bike up near vertical inclines to get to the headland cottage we had booked.
We left at sunrise the next morning (with more “wows” as we stumbled down the hill) to catch a day cruise to Lady Musgrave Island on the Great Barrier Reef. This was Ross’s birthday present from March, which we never had time to celebrate.
We’d been warned that trips on the open sea lead to sea sickness, but the weather was perfect and the ocean like a mirror. It took just over an hour to reach Lady Musgrave, not really an island but a coral cay. You can camp on the island, but are warned to set a tarp over your tent to catch the guano from the resident noddy terns. Camilla – this place is for you, lots of birds, sea cucumbers, starfish and tourists only visit a few times a week.
We got to snorkel over the reef from a pontoon, and watch giant sweetlip, long toms, surgeon fish, butterfly fish, clown fish (alias Nemo’s) and parrot fish. Ross was thinking about BBQ fish – yum – but not today.
Sadly we had an early start the next day, and couldn’t spend as much time as we would have liked chatting to Walter and Regina who owned the headland cottage. Walter is 83 and had a stroke seven years ago, he still walks widely but is frustrated that he can’t take his boat out on the reef any more – too dangerous. We’ll have to come back, walk around the headland and take lots of photos – what an irony that we had no camera while visiting the most beautiful place on our trip so far. We just concentrated on soaking up the images instead – not a bad thing really.
13 May – No smoke in Winfield
We spent our last night in Bundy with Jeannie and Greg. Jeannie is fighting cancer while she and Greg watch their incredible garden on the river take shape. She laughs about her fridge magnet which proclaims “Eat well, keep fit, die anyway”. They have a two room fishermans’s shack right on the creek at Winfield which is our destination for the night. The creek is bigger than most rivers. We’re not allowed to tell you how beautiful it is there in case it gets discovered. But it was definitely worth the 26km detour to get there.
9 – 12 May – Bundy no Coke
We were due in at Bundy at 4pm, to meet with the local cyclists and mayor. But the threatening rain put extra power in our pedals and we arrived three hours early. We camped in Hinkler Park opposite our rendevous spot (we later discovered that everything not rum related is named after Bert Hinkler). By 4pm it was pouring with rain so once again we had the honour of soaking a town’s cycling community. After drying off, we had a lovely dinner at Bron’s with the Mad Cycologists (social cyclists) and The Reds (aka the ‘whoosh’ group). Bron lives in a magnificent high set Queenslander, which she restored beautifully, with her tremendously photogenic dog Baxter. But you’ll have to take our word for it because our camera broke and has been posted to Brisbane for repairs.
Bundy has a very active stroke recovery group, run by Debbie and Di. Debbie had her stroke in her late twenties, but that didn’t stop her becoming a mum and getting on with life – and making sure everyone gets on with theirs too. Di joined the group as a carer following her husband’s stroke. Sadly he passed away three weeks ago but Di is still an active group member – as are other carers who have stayed with the group after losing their partners.
They are a wonderful group of people, and we enjoyed having morning tea with them in the botanic gardens – so much so that morning tea lasted well into the afternoon.
Next stop was the Base Hospital, where we met the committed team who look after stroke patients and talked with Wally who is making a great recovery from his stroke two weeks ago.
We also did an interview with the local paper in the lift on the way up to the ward – it will be interesting to see how that one turns out!
Peter, who runs the hospital (and is a Mad Cycologist) suggested contacts for us at the hospitals heading north, which will make organising the hospital visits much easier.
No trip to Bundy would be complete without a visit to the distillery – so off we went, straight from the hospital.
Doesn’t sound right, we know, but we are very responsible with our alcohol – and besides Ann had never tasted rum before.
Never seen (or smelled) so much molasses in our lives. After the free samples Ann decided she didn’t like rum but Bundy Royal Liquer is very, very good. So good it was worth the weight to buy a bottle.
We were only a little wobbly riding out of the distillery.
8 May – Wetscort to Childers
The day dawned with rain falling in heavy sheets. Jenny and the crew – Gary, Marty, Bruce and Ken – braved the weather to ride out with us the first 20km. Thanks guys! 
Needless to say we were all soaked in seconds. Riding in the rain is actually very nice, except for the wetness! Stopping is the real problem, because it gets very, very cold – and when Ann is cold she gets cranky… watch out Ross.
We didn’t stop all the way to Childers, so not only was Ann wet, she was also tired and hungry. You’d think Ross would know to be careful of situations like this after 15 years braving it, but he couldn’t help being friendly to everyone we met instead of attending to fundamentals.
The visitors centre is at the site of the old Palace backpackers hostel which tragically burnt down in a fire in 2000. A new state of the art hostel was opened just last week by John Howard. It was packed with young, dry people. Eventually we were installed in a very comfortable full house B&B on the edge of town (for the same price as the backpackers) and after a hot bath and a huge pasta meal things were very nicely on track.
7 May – Cycling, Maryborough style
We got away under light rain and after a short ride were met by some cyclists from Maryborough. Jenny had organised a ride into town with Barb the mayor and Chris the local state member on a tandem. Despite having never ridden one together before these two were instant experts.
We arrived at the historic city hall and were met by the local survivors group along with the media – it was fun seeing the poli’s getting the five second news grab. Lunch at the town hall before we rode down to Bruce and Dorothy’s where we were spending the night.
A quick ride around town reveals turn of the century Queensland architecture at its finest. The large timber homes display beautiful, intricate detailing that is lost from a different era.
Then dinner at the local pub with the stroke recovery group, a good night, and cheered as we watched the ride in on the news. Rain threatened ominously as we went home to bed.
Thursday, 6th May, 2004
6 May – Tiaro’s 100 year old hotel (with beds to match)
After a good solid ride, we made it to Tiaro’s oldest hotel just in time to get the last steak sandwich before the kitchen closed. Plus a nice cold beer to have on the verandah. Aah, this is the life.
After recovering, we did a quick spin around town, unloaded of course, and spotted a vege barn with all the essentials including a local prize winning ice cream, Mammino’s. If you come up this way it’s a must try.
5 May – getting lost in Gympie
We didn’t want to leave Jim and Gwen’s, as usual it was time to go well before we were ready to say goodbye (and besides, Jim still had pumpkins left). We had meant to catch up with Greg from Coolum while in Nambour, but thanks to the virus we almost missed him (see what happens when you let a computer run your life). Luckily he checked email on our last night and he caught up with us on the road to Gympie. He gave us a book of poetry he wrote, and managed to convince the gram police (that’s Ross) that it wasn’t too heavy to take with us.
We had quite a hilly ride into Gympie, and then got lost trying to find Jeff and Aileen’s place. We found their street easily, but as the street was broken into several sections and numbering was not consecutive (102 next to 1) we were pretty lost until daughter Candace came to rescue us. We didn’t feel so bad when Aileen told us that the postmen get lost too. The family is very hardworking – Aileen spends the day bent over a sewing machine making protective clothing for firemen, Jeff is a timber harvester working to the early hours of the morning, Candace works at Jeans West after school and son Jade has two after school jobs – at the video shop, and the fitter and turner.
4 May – our computer gets intensive care in Nambour
Somehow our laptop managed to catch a nasty virus on the weekend. After Argo and Bob, our computer is our most important piece of equipment, so getting two viruses in our first month on the road really hurts. Don’t worry – you won’t catch it from us – it’s gone now. I managed to get rid of our last virus (worm blaster) by downloading a fix and a patch over the net, but this time the computer was so far gone I couldn’t even get on the net. I rang the IBM support telephone number because we have a hardware and software warranty. After two hours of diagnostics, IBM confirmed that I had some sort of software problem (which we knew anyway) and advised me to reinstall to system defaults. This would mean losing all our data and all our software. Under no circumstances should I go to a local repairer because they would mess up the hidden partition on the hard drive and all sorts of other nasty things. Since we wouldn’t be any worse off than their recommended solution, we went to a local repairer and thanks to the boys at Aeon Maroochydore we are online once more.
After getting the Sassa virus out of the way, we then free to enjoy Nambour. Thanks to our hosts Jim and Gwen we really did enjoy it. Jim is a stoke survivor, and has been left with some challenges like numbness in one side, but he manages it so well you would never know it. They’re building a house on a magnificent block of land on the top of a hill (which thankfully Jim drove us to, we didn’t need to ride!), flanked by an avocado orchard (yum!) and views all the way to the sea. The soil is very rich and they’re planning to plant a small orchard, amongst other things. We’ll definitely have to go back to help them munch through their next crop of pumpkins (the ones we had roasted with our baked dinner we soooo delicious you could play bongos on our tummies afterwards…) Gwen made us sandwiches the next morning with the leftover roast lamb, so it’s a miracle we managed to do any cycling at all.
3 May – our first 100km ride (quick, back to the country)
We set off from Brisbane well stocked with Meryl’s delicious fruit slice, Argo’s new matching luggage and all our new gear. Meryl also donated a jumper to the cause, because winter seems to have arrived at the start and end of the day. As a result we’ve had to rename our trailer FAT BOB to OBESE BOB (OB for short). Getting out of Brisbane on the morning of a public holiday seemed like a great plan – we got out alive – until we hit the highway and all the holiday traffic. Then something amazing happened, something that’s never happened before and I’ve only ever read about – we got a tailwind. I never thought they really existed until now. It was marvellous, and we made great progress, until… a motorcycle policeman flagged us down.
Surely we weren’t speeding. We had a bit of a laugh about maybe he wanted to breath test Ross. The limp the straight line test wouldn’t work too well either. Maybe we had a broken tail light… Nope, none of the above. Cyclists just aren’t allowed on the freeway. He very kindly directed us off at the next exit, and showed us how to get to Old Gympie Road and back on the motorway after Deception Bay. Only problem was we were now heading in the wrong direction, had lost our tailwind, were travelling on a lousy road surface with no shoulder and myriads of hills. Then when we got back on the motorway some mentally challenged motorists threw softdrink all over us. You have to feel sorry for people like that, their lives must be so empty and their intelligence so low that they get amusement from doing something as stupid as that.
We were still making great progress so we decided not to take the Caboolture turnoff and made a bee line for Nambour, the next day’s destination. So we hit our first 100km day at the Big Pineapple.
2 May – Brisbane stroke survivors
Callum was very upset he wasn’t allowed to drive us back to the city to pick up Argo. Maybe when he’s a bit older (he’s two years old now). Malcolm dropped us back at the bike shop instead. $1,000 later we were back on Argo, with new chains, tyres, original chainwheels fitted, panniers, shoes and raincoat for Ann and a very wilted credit card.
Next stop was Roma Parklands to meet the Young Person’s Stroke Survivors Group (Colin, please get that naming convention thing happening!) We were meeting at the picnic area at the carpark at the Main Southern entrance. To our horror we discovered that the carpark extended all the way around the park, the park was huge and full of people. Since stroke survivors look like everyone else we still hadn’t found the group after more than an hour of searching. In desperation I followed a man with a limp. When he started talking to another man with a limp I knew we’d found them.
The fact that they stuck around so long to wait for us says a lot about the perserverance of this wonderful group of people - some of whom learned to talk and walk many years after they were told they never would.
Then it was off to have afternoon tea with Owen and Ian, the president of Stroke Association Queensland. Ian is well qualified for the position, having survived three strokes without losing his smile or his will to help others. We're dying to write lots more about Owen and Ian, and we will when we finally get time to get our Heroes page up and running. In the meant time, you can meet Owen here (he can introduce himself much better than we can).
1 May – aaargh! It’s a city!
Meryl’s worker’s cottage is an oasis of country in inner city Brisbane. She has a garden full of herbs and a larder full of home made jams and preserves. While Argo languished at the mechanic, we visited Brisbane’s “Green Flea” market, drank endless cups of tea made from Meryl’s herbs and worked our way through her larder.
Malcolm, who used to work with me at AMP, came and picked us up in the afternoon. He gave us a dose of instant Brisbane at the Mt Cootha (or something like that) lookout, to make up for us not having time for any close up sight seeing. Malcolm, Siobhan and Callum moved from Sydney to Brisbane two months ago to live in their dream home without winning the lottery (Sydney property is outrageously expensive). Their home is beautiful, but they miss their friends dearly.
30 April - Beenleigh, done that
Linda organised a group of cyclists to ride with us to Beenleigh, a lovely ride to do with company. It would have been hard going alone, as we had to travel on back roads - cyclists aren’t allowed on the freeway (what a waste of good road). We caught the train from Beenleigh to Brisbane, as we were advised it wasn’t safe to cycle in. The ticket seller said she would arrange for someone to help us get the bike and trailer on to the train, but they didn’t show up – as we scrambled on board I wondered if maybe riding in wouldn’t have been so bad after all. That thought didn’t last more than a few metres into Brisbane. As our host Meryl escorted us to the bike mechanic through the traffic, all I could think of was getting back on that train and heading for the country.
29 April – it never rains in Southport
… except when we visit. Linda, our Coolangatta host and organiser of Gold Coast Cycling, escorted us to Southport along some of the most beautiful beaches we’ve seen. Well Ross didn’t see too much because the rain was coming down in sheets and he had to ride without glasses again (Linda said she was a bit worried about riding in front of us, but we knew she was having us on). So this description is for Ross’s benefit too. The amazing thing about the Gold Coast is that the beaches go on for miles and miles. The sand is platinum blonde and the sea joins the horizon in a blur so it seems the sea and sky are continuous. Thanks to the rain, the tourists were indoors and didn’t interrupt the blanketing beach views (or block up the cycle ways).
As we approached Surfer’s Paradise, the high rises became denser and higher and more outrageous. One building site proudly proclaimed that the highest residential building in the world was to be built there. It looked pencil thin. Hope the wind never blows. Linda is studying town planning, she plans to save Coolangatta from going the same way as Surfers with high rises threatening to destroy the very beauty that attracted them in the first place.
It had stopped raining by the time we arrived at Colin’s place in Southport and wrung 500ml of water out of our socks. Colin runs the Gold Coast Stroke Recovery Group (not sure I got that right – one of Colin’s crusades is that all the stroke groups should have similar naming conventions, I agree!) Colin has an air of power about him which might have something to do with his former occupation as a bank manager. I would hate to ever disagree with him on anything – but that would be unlikely because everything he suggests makes perfect sense. Colin’s back deck is crowded with bags of milk bottle tops. We find out later on a visit to the shopping centre that all the local coffee shops collect them for him. Paul’s milk provide 10c per bottle top, and this is how Colin funds the stroke group. Their last cheque was over $7,000.
We met with some members of Colin’s group – Kevin, who had his stroke at Mt Everest, and Russell, a former CEO who has just published his second book – and visited the rehab unit at the private hospital. We ran out of time to visit the public hospital. Then local tandem riders Merv and Elaine came to escort us to their place at Labrador. They looked just like us, in lary yellow, matching everything, and a Cannondale tandem. It was wonderful to ride with tandemists, and lots of fun seeing onlookers do double takes as the four of us whizzed by.