We left the lovely Gary in Maleny and headed west with the promise of some downhill cruising.
But before we descended the high country we found some familiar friends, Slippery Jacks (
Suillus luteus) in a typical spot, underneath a copse of pines.
These mycorrhizal (symbiotic relationship with plant roots) mushrooms have pores instead of gills, as you can see in this picture. As far as we are aware there are no poisonous pore mushrooms in Australia. At the bottom of the hill we found a free BBQ and while Patrick cooked our haul of slipperys with herbs and eggs from Gary's, Meg checked Zero and Woody for ticks.
We were making our way to Kenilworth when we came across this lovely park. Wow! Imagine how Australia could be transformed if this was the norm rather than the exception.
The further inland we rode the more we had the road to ourselves and the more we didn't have to listen out for cars and could engage instead with our creaturely intuitions.
We arrived in Kenilworth mid-afternoon and found the local artisan cheese shop we had heard so much about. We bought 500 gms for $3 and set about devouring it in record speed.
We have become big eaters on this trip. Food is our major fuel and we burn it off at a rate of knots. Getting the right kind of fuel sometimes proves difficult so seeking out forageable foods, organic farms and gardens, small growers and producers and community grown goodies has become a significant part of our daily performances.
By the time we left Kenilworth we didn't have much light left to find a camp, and not long afterwards Patrick's right gear cable snapped. We pulled over at a little park just out of town to see whether it was suitable for an emergency camping spot when David, who lives across the road, appeared, inviting us to spend the night at his house. David and Patrick quickly got to work to make the bike rideable for the next day's ride. Thanks David!
A number of people live at David's in varying forms of permanency. This is Carl, who cooked us all dinner on the wood fuelled fire. Carl is a descendent of the
Bigambul people and a survivor of the stolen generation.
Carl's indigenous name is Purri, which means
spiritual hunter and he told us a little about his time out bush living on bush tucker, hunting feral animals and employing bush medicines to heal himself, specifically talking up the power of the Bangalow palm (
Archontophoenix cunninghamiana) to strengthen bones, although he didn't divulge the specifics of how to use it. He told us his family, who live on country, are very sick, which he puts down to fracking in the area as their illnesses followed the development of nearby CSG drilling.
Carl is also an artist. While at David's we met another talented man, Keith, who shines in making traditional long bows out of bamboo. Keith kindly oiled our bow with Tung oil and gave us a cover to protect it from the weather. Thanks Keith!
The following day, after farewelling our new friends, we faced a 60 km ride to Gympie, to the nearest bike shop. Despite David and Patrick's hard work on the bike, the tandem had just three working gears. It wasn't going to be an easy ride, but it was a beautiful day and beautiful country,
and again not much traffic to worry us.
We arrived in Gympie for a late lunch. Patrick was especially exhausted, sorely missing the other 24 gears on the hilly entry into this large regional town, large enough to support two bike shops. Dave, at
Pedal Power, is a fellow tandem rider and his shop was the obvious choice to look for extra long gear cables. Thanks Dave!
Fellow cycle tourer and writer
Greg Foyster told us we must avoid the Bruce Highway at all costs, so from Gympie we mapped our route to do just that,
and headed west to Widgee, stopping at a mid-week garage sale where the owners were moving to a wetter region because they couldn't afford to keep buying in their water.
It was at this sale we bought Woody his first bow and arrow for 50 cents.
Later on, after arriving in Widgee, Patrick gave Woody a lesson,
We toured around the town on dusk looking for a place to camp,
and when we found it, the afternoon's warm sun wasn't the only gold we discovered.
Early season loquats (
Eriobotrya japonica), one of our favourite autonomous fruits. Loquats are a rare species that has adapted to many climates, and like the Australian Ravin (
Corvus coronoides) has followed us from home all the way into Queensland. The Widgee community centre made for a great overnight stay and the next morning we used the cricket pavillion to string up a line for our dew sodden tents.
As we have moved away from the (politically) green belts of southeastern Queensland, the roads are getting more dangerous. Sure, there's less traffic, especially the ones we're carefully choosing, but drivers seem more oblivious to cyclists than anywhere we've been so far in Australia. We decided to start documenting this phenomenon, riding with our camera ready – this truck literally drove us off the road and lucky for us there was something to ride onto.
We stopped for lunch in Woolooga, a town that boasts a pub, an Indian resturant and a town hall. Two whopping floods in the past decade have submerged the town.
We tried all three local establishments and the public toilet block, finishing at the pub to ask for directions and road advice.
On the way out of town we came across these two future community-scaled coolamons,
and we picked up some vegies for the evening meal.
We arrived in Gundiah at beer o'clock,
and Zero got to work charming the locals.
We pitched our tents at the back of the hotel, took a warm shower, and hit the hay.
In the morning we were gifted some organic home-grown kale by the lovely Alison. Alison's five year old son Banjo had grown the kale in his own garden on the family's farm. Thanks Banjo! Alison has recently returned to the cattle farm she grew up on and is looking into the ways she can work with her father to transition the farm to a more sustainable way of operating, reminding us of the great film, A
Farm For The Future.
We rode on to Maryborough, making yet another crossing of the Mary River west of Tiaro,
and came across our first sighting of a pineapple farm.
In Maryborough we found a garden stall selling these tropical delights and used a $2 coin we had earlier found on the road to procure one of them.
We eagerly found a park in which to devour it. It was the best tasting pineapple we'd ever had.
On dark that park became home for the night.
We woke early, packed up the tents wet and rode east towards Hervey Bay. We would have to wait for the fog to lift to dry out our wet things.
We were completely exhausted when we arrived. We have travelled 260 kms in the past six days, having not really found a place to properly rest, and quite troubled about the mental state of some drivers on the road. What's more, we arrived in Hervey Bay to find these kinds of attitudes:
World damaging vehicles in; low impact bikes and dogs out! And, is that bumper sticker the Iron Cross cradling an Aussie flag?? Woah!
The churches in this part of Queensland seem to be getting bigger and bigger and the architectual aesthetic appears to celebrate not critique industrialisation.
We've also found a general compliance to rules here in Queensland, which we haven't seen elsewhere. If we ask someone in the street for a good place to free camp we get moralistic responses, as if rules are there to be obeyed regardless of their idiocy or oppressive nature. This sort of compliant culture really plays into the hands of manipulative authority. We took to the beach to find some solace.
We think we're getting close to turning south. This is a big decision for us as it has been seven and a half months of slowly moving north. Weatherwise it makes sense to keep heading north for a while longer, but we may have to don some winter woollies and start our descent. We hear it's all down hill on the way home south.
