Getting away

It was quite some effort to leave Daylesford last Friday. Months of work, teary farewells with friends and family and a general emptying of settled life. All this culminated at the Albert Street community garden before we pushed off towards banjo country, accompanied by our friend Clay.

At Guildford we spotted water ribbons (Triglochin spp.), a traditional bushfood, and dug up a small plant to discover that the rhyzome was comparatively small. While our digging tool was out we dug a hole for our first compostable nappy.

The hills of home flattened out and it was a cruisy ride into Castlemaine where Juliette and Tosh kindly offered their home and Lee and Dave generously cooked for us. But despite all the warmth and familiarity of Castemaine we were keen to push on.

There is free food everywhere (milkmaid tubers, roadside trees coming into fruit, dozens of edible weeds) but we have brought supplies still fresh from home to keep us going (thanks for the lovely cookies Chris),

so we just pass by many noteworthy things. A magnificant crop of roadside Salsify (Tragopogon spp.) en route from Redesdale to Heathcote.

We are just finding our pedals in our very new way of transitory living, which is tiring and mid-day seistas are mandatory,

for all.

Yesterday we travelled for 75 kms to Nagambie, happy for the most part. We found that our 70-80 kg bikes are rideable without electric assistance, even up the hills. We're in training for the high country.

Yet this is a year-long, low-carbon art performance, not the Olympics. We're only wanting to travel around 30 kms a day but we're finding out that sometimes a good camp spot is worth the effort. Zero leads our road train, forever on the look out for free food and free accomadation,

which isn't as difficult to find as you might expect.

We're spending about $20 a day and the nightlife is awesome.