The very first kilometre at the start of the Mawson Trail begins to sort the wheat from the chaff, with a series of climbs with a gradient of about 30% straight away. The resident llamas watch you push your laden touring bike up the unsealed track. I offered a pat in return for them pushing my bike up but they just blankly stared and blinked at me. The Mawson Trail starts near the end of the Torrens River ride into the Adelaide hills. From there you follow a lovely ride (if it were not for the Sunday drivers hooning the area) along the trickling river with a cool, green and moist riparian environment, before it turns onto a dirt road and then the trail begins.
The progress was very slow as the gradient was too much to ride unless you have a mountain bike unburdened by gear, perhaps, where the slippery clay-ladden track with loose stones gave me flashbacks of the challenging sections of the Daintree's Bloomfield track. The scenery is amazing, and plenty of kangaroos scamper off only the stop and turn to look at you curiously, and I certainly had plenty of time to admire both in the slow trudge. By the time we made camp in a clearing we could see over the Gulf St Vincent in the distance, from whence we came, with enough time to pitch tents before the sun melted into its waters.
Next morning we continued to follow the mountain bike trail, which gets you back onto sealed backroads for a very early lunch in Lobethal, then roads and tracks of varying surface and rural scenes to Birdwood for afternoon without too much climbing hills. We rode on and managed to find a tiny bit of scrub to camp in amongst the "No camping" pine forest and pastural properties.
Next day we head into the Barossa. The Mawson trail has plenty of bits where someone mountain-bikey has gone "hey won't this be fun to ride through this forest" where they want you to lift your bike over things a lot. This is easy enough with bike alone but is a frustrating barrier for a touring bike rider. I don't recommend following every twist and turn, but rather make up your own route based on what looked less convoluted and less corrugated, to save on sanity and spokes. The up and then down down down down through Steingarten is dripping with scenery, and also extremely fun if you are feeling suicidal and don't want to use your brakes. After that we kind of lost the trail but followed the Jack Bobridge track past Jacobs Creek winery along the North Para River to find Tununda. Plenty of chances to stop off at wineries this way. Nurioopta was a quick ride up the rail trail from here, where we stayed overnight.
After visiting the Nurioopta bakery next morning to eat three plates of food (that was just me) we started to follow the Mawson trail again but abandoned it pretty quickly when it tried to get us to ride through some mud soup when there were perfectly reasonable alternatives. We rode along Truro road and into Kapunda for a pub lunch, then headed out of Tarlee road into a headwind, turning off to follow the trail again at Taylors Run road (honestly, if its winter and you aren't equipped for cyclocross, just use Ryelands Road). Again mud was our companion, until we found a triangle of bush overlooking some sheep grazing and looking over towards some wind turbines, to camp for the night. A frosty night. The sheep weren't saying "Baaa" but "Brrr".
Next morning, again not strickly sticking to the Mawson trail because it does weird horrible things, we enjoyed the Cornvale Road and Gants Hill Road scenery as we picked a route that wasn't "EVERY MUD ROAD IN SA" to ride into Riverton, for breakfast at the Deli. From here we enjoyed (despite the headwind) the Rattler rail trail into the quiet Auburn where we had a picnic lunch with a couple of local beers. We then rode along the also very nice Riesling trail, through numerous vineyards, into Clare where we stayed overnight.
The Riesling trail now goes as far as the locality of Barinia, so we followed it to there the next day (after a bakery breakfast), before heading straight up the fairly quiet Horrocks Highway and RM Williams way in a very strong, gusty headwind or crosswind throughout the day, into Spalding and then Jamestown, through pasture (which makes it extra gusty with no windbreaks to protect us), and camping at the very quiet Jamestown for the night.
The headwinds were worse the next day. This makes the finches and even galahs all act like budgies, flocking and flying around in crazy patterns. The galahs doing this were particularly impressive, the flickering between pink and grey as the flocks of 30 or more birds danced across the sky. We rode as far as Orroroo before calling it quits for the day (as the winds were just getting worse and trying to destroy our knees). The wind got up to gusts of over 50 km/h in the evening so we think we made the right call.
Next day we ride into Carrieton for a pub lunch and a couple of glasses of wine, again with a headwind strong enough to snuff the pubs fireplace. Once you leave Carrieton you start to get into the ranges more and the soil starts to change colour into a pink, or apricot and even a dry-blood red in places, with the silver foliage of semi-arid flora starting to cover more and more of the ground. The brilliant silver of the low growing shrubs dotted all over the green hills reminds me of similar scenes in the Pilbara, where it is spinifex instead. You can see the dreamy blue ranges on your horizon now, stretching out before you and waiting to embrace you like open arms. We ride 80 km into the locality of Cradock, where the pub lets you camp for free out the back if you buy a drink and a meal which we were more than happy to do, and enjoyed immensely (although I was defeated by the size). By 6pm the wind dropped down to nothing and we could, for the first time in days, hear our own thoughts instead of just the wind's.
Next morning a fog slowly rolled off the ranges in the distance, to reveal themselves to us, and we slowly packed up to ride the short distance into Hawker. The views of the Ranges just leave you grinning, with their different geology poking out from amongst the green and silver plants. Some peaks look like sleeping stegasaurs; others with layers of chocolate and pumpkin colours stacked in stone.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
A range of emotions
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