Tom’s Bike Trip

I rose before dawn, ignoring the scent of bacon, and rode out of camp. My goal was to reach Forster before lunch, get my broken spoke replaced, and live happily ever after.

I stopped for coffee in Seal Rocks (flat white, no sugar). While waiting for my order among bleary-eyed barefooted surfers, I popped into the store nearby. I’d been told it had “very limited supplies”, so I was surprised to find bananas on the shelf among a range of fresh produce, groceries and souvenirs.

(Where I live, a village store with “very limited supplies” means one that only sells certain brands of vodka and cigarettes.)

Then I hit the road inland. Surfers paddled out to the break as I pedalled waves of asphalt. More campers sped past, the din of eager engines announcing their approach through the forest, heading to Seal Rocks for one last late-summer weekend of fun. I soon recognised the spot where the north end of the Old Gibber Trail had spat me and my broken wheel out the previous evening. Had the detour been worth it?

At some point on the third day, the ride began to acquire its own momentum.

The Fernleigh Track tailed off (see my previous post), and Newcastle came and went in a dull morning of hilly coastal headlands strewn with bike paths and promenades. I stopped thrice en route to the Hunter River: once at a dead end at the bottom of a fabulous freewheeling descent (and, it turned out, fabulous first-gear ascent), again to make myself another instant roadside cheese toastie, and a third time at a bike shop for some chain lube.

The Queen’s Wharf ferry terminal was perched on the far side of Scott Street from Newcastle’s former railway terminus, a Victorian red-brick edifice that looked for all the world like it had been uprooted from a provincial English city. This, I guessed, was where the Fernleigh Track would once have delivered its wagons. Had I been in the mood to dawdle, I might have stopped to snoop around. But the road was pulling me onwards, and so I boarded the Stockton ferry and left bustling Newcastle behind for another time.

As I pedalled towards The Entrance through a never-ending conglomeration of suburbs and seaside towns, the hills seemed to get steeper, the hard shoulders narrower, and the traffic heavier.

Tangled cycleways gave way to long-winded highway crossings, nasty climbs through hilly rainforest spat me out onto caravan-clogged beachfront boulevards, and all under a sweltering late-summer sun. The momentum that had inspired me to push on into the afternoon began to taper off. Had following the New South Wales Coastline Cycleway been a mistake?

In Bateau Bay, struggling to reconcile the route I’d planned on komoot with the signage on the ground, I sailed blindly past the Aldi I’d been aiming for to stock up on food for the ride ahead, not realising until several kilometres later. Things briefly perked up when I reached the longest jetty in New South Wales (351 metres!) on the eastern shore of Tuggerah Lake, but I couldn’t be bothered to walk to the end and back like all the other tourists were doing.

Hungry, low on blood sugar and still with no food in my panniers, I spotted a backpackers’ hostel nearby and made an impulsive decision to check in for the night.

The reception door was locked, so I called a phone number I found online and asked if the place was open. The guy on the other end said he’d check. 

When he forgot to call back and left me standing outside for 15 minutes, I should have seen a red flag. 

But I was tired. I wanted food and sleep.

My plan was simple: leave the house, follow the coastline north, and see what happened.

The deadline was a family wedding in Sydney; the route already established. I’d stop pedalling when I ran out of time, take the night train back, show off my fabulous new tan-lines, and we would all live happily ever after.

It was a nice, simple plan of the type I encourage newcomers to cycle touring to try, requiring no preparation beyond throwing some gear in a pair of panniers and hitting the road.

Now, given my particular history of bicycle-mounted expeditions, you might think a ride up the Australian coastline sounds rather tawdry. 

So – if you’ll indulge something of a tangent – let me put into context why I decided to ride alongside the sun-drenched beaches and through the colonial seaside towns of a rich English-speaking nation in peak holiday season.