Tumbarumba – a town of dandies

This is the second time we've been forced to stop in one place waiting for a bike part to arrive, but as our wise friend John (who we met in Colac Colac) says, "It's not the problem that's important, but how you handle it." Time is expanding out for us in this slow journeying through beautiful hill country and we are appreciating what happens when life is slow and ecologically calibrated.

We saw this incredible Walgalu coolaman at the Tumbarumba museum. A coolaman is typically used for baby cradling and bathing and food storage, gathering and preparation. One tool, many uses – brilliant, appropriate and non-polluting technology! It has made us think about each of the tools we've brought along on our ride.

This is our root vegetable tool. It slices down through the soil and uproots deeply buried sources of free and highly nutritious carbohydrate. But we also use it for digging toilet pits, digging for worms to fish with, and Woody uses it as a toy. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) roots are everywhere in temperate Australia and now is a good time to harvest the young tap roots and the tender leaves, especially in the ranges where it is still cool and the roots haven't become too woody.

While in Tumba we had the chance to rest and laze, throw a line in the creek and do a little gentle foraging.

We caught a 25cm rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and made a delicious meal using local and bicycled ingredients:

Tumbarumba Creek trout, Tumbarumba parkland dandelion root and leaves, our home-grown garlic (bicycled), Tallangatta backyard lemons (bicycled. Thanks George and Laura!), Biodynamic Powlett Hill pasta (bicycled from our local region) and Benalla olive oil (bicycled from Benalla).

We cooked the garlic inside the fish and BBQ'd the dandelion root in the fish juices, adding some olive oil. We cooked the pasta, strained and emptied it onto a bed of washed dandelion leaves. We added more olive oil and squeezed lemon and let the pasta gently steam the leaves. We then added the fish and roots and, well, we can highly recommend this dish...

After a few nights free-camping in the Tumbarumba township we thought it time to do some washing and headed along to the caravan park and pitched our tents beside the Tumbarumba Creek.

With time to drift we closed up the tents, covered the bikes and hopped on a local bus for a wee adventure to Batlow where we knocked on a door to a house with a yard full of chooks and asked whether we could purchase some eggs.

The delightful Eileen welcomed us to her little appley town and we paid $2 (after insisting on paying something) for six just-laid eggs from happy gals such as this proud mama.

In both Tumbarumba and Batlow the towns are filling with a multiplicity of ethnicities to work in the orchards. These particular itinerate workers are using their Sunday to write to loved ones, hotspotting from the town's library and pulling free spark from the public toilets next door.

Sudanese, French, American, Japanese, Nepalese, Thai and Taiwanese are arriving in the towns to pick blueberries or thin the apples.

Our little caravan park is a hotspot of culture mashing. Amber, a graduate of literature from Taiwan, took a particular liking to Zero and hung out by the creek with Meg and Woody

while Patrick jumped into the outdoor communal kitchen to see what he could rustle up with another large bunch of freshly foraged dandelion. Notice the modern day coolamon.

We thought it time for a medicinal booster using three of the most punchy beneficial foods – cayenne, garlic and dandelion – none of which are store bought but either grown or foraged by us.

Patrick caramelised this awesome threesome in the Benalla olive oil, added the chopped dandelion leaves, cooking them through before adding water and boiling. He then changed the water to lessen the bitterness, simmered towards a soup,

strained off the water, laid the highly medicinal veg on a bed of Tumbarumba sourdough and finished the dish with Eileen's gorgeous eggs. A simple and delicious preventative to illness and the need for commercial pharmaceuticals.

Our bike part has now arrived (thanks Sam!), we're feeling nourished, rested and nurtured by a host of local peeps (thanks Peta, Laura, Geoff, Kate, Heather, Adam, Wayne, Peter, Debbie, Graeme and Julie), and we're ready to face the hills again and the next stage of our journey. Thanks for travelling along with us.

Ups and downs

From 34 degrees celsius in the shade at Colac Colac (note the bike rider's stockings),

to an overnight low of 6 degrees at Paddys River Flats free camping ground, just shy of Tumbarumba,

it has been a short leg of ups and downs, but mainly ups.

We left Colac Colac refreshed and recharged ready for what we knew would be a few big days in the saddle, regardless of which route we took.

We wanted to go through the Snowy Mountains (Khancoban, Thredbo, Cooma etc), but we have Zero with us and (the long and the short of it is) dogs are only permited to pass through National Parks in climate changing cars. Say it like it is Zero!

So we headed north, crossing the Murray into New South Wales at Towong,

and climbed and climbed and strained and at times got off and pushed our heavy loads

right up into the clouds

so we could look out across to Tidbillaga, one of the many Indigenous names for the Snowy Mountains,

and like true ecological mammals, return some precious nutrients to the soil before tackling the afternoon's ascent.

It was an extrutiating 64 kms to Paddys River Flats where the weather turned cold and wet and Woody experienced rain on a tent for the first time. Things got a little wet overnight so we packed up and cooked breakfast in the camp ground amenities,

before we realised Patrick's bike had more issues, this time electrical. With the climb up such ascents as Clarkes Hill (742m above sea level) we've been relying on some electrical assistance. Now we're in NSW the stretches between towns is greater and the chance to recharge the bikes reduced.

Out of the half dozen or so campers at Paddys River Flats was Graeme, a fully licensed electrician. We couldn't believe our luck.

Graeme scrutinised the root cause of the problem while his partner Julie brought us all cups of tea. He ascertained that moisture had got into the controller, something not fixable in the bush, so he offered to take Patrick's panniers into Tumbarumba when he went in to do some shopping and we set off to climb another 18 km into town and find a camp spot here,

hidden behind the melaleucas in the town's park, nestled among the leaf litter

where we can fish for trout, use the municipal BBQs, toilets, power, playground, drinking water, wake with the birds, wait for a new controller to arrive, and

generally practice our particular form of creative frugality.