A while ago I decided to take a new direction in my life and not get another job after I finished up my last entomology contract. That approach sounds like fun, right? But, there are a couple of problems: I like money. I like doing something meaningful with my time. I like being around other people working towards an outcome and sharing in achievements. With this in mind I thought I could perhaps start a very small business. I live at the beach and love riding my fat bike on the beach and on the sand tracks. I’m sure other people would love this too, so the idea of starting up a fat bike hire business arose in my mind.
This is Chow. On an extremely hard ride through the sand to Bundaberg. The seven circles of pedalling hell.
I don’t have a massive amount of capital to invest, so I thought I’d probably start with two or three bikes. I reckon I can do this, I thought. I don’t know a great deal about how to do any of this, so like any other reasonable person I thought I’d start my market research to find out whatever I could. I put a post on the local community fakebook page. This is what I asked, “Do people think a fat bike (pushbike, not electric) hire would work here? They’re bikes for riding on the beach and on the sand tracks. The tyres are from 3.8″ to 5.5″ wide. You can still ride them like a normal bike on roads and gravel too. Thoughts?”
Holy shit balls! It went south pretty fast. The first six responses were level-headed responses with people giving honest and useful feedback about whether they thought it would work or not work, but it was all downhill after that. People started attacking each other’s characters, pasts and motivations. I didn’t get involved in any of the arguments because what’s the point? But I guess it was pretty entertaining if nothing else. It was also really amazing to see how total strangers could formulate opinions of me (and of each other) based on me asking about a bike hire business. Why do people even care about this stuff, I wondered outloud as I watched the comments roll in:
First it’s bikes then it’s scooters, then mini bikes dirt bikes [sic], quads and jeeps and full blown 4X4 The same contributor went on to write, Interpreting from your own words that you clearly don’t get enough of a high from just sitting and enjoying the beach you feel the need to add the “high” of riding a bike along it to make it a better experience for you and now you want to market that artificial high for others to also enjoy because you can make the experience “better” than what nature provides. This person seemed to think that somehow I was going to turn Woodgate into another Gold Coast. Man, I’d love to have that power (I probably would use it for something else other than making a second Gold Coast, maybe equality? Hmm?), but I just don’t, I really don’t have that power. I’m just one person who wants to live a meaningful life. Asking too much? Maybe in this town it is. I just don’t know.
See, the thing is, nature doesn’t belong to us, we belong to nature and we all like to experience our connection with the natural world in different ways. I don’t like to go fishing. Does that mean I’m a bad person or that I think people who fish are bad? No. It just means I don’t like to go fishing, so I don’t do it and then I get on with my life. Problem solved, if there even was a problem to begin with, which there wasn’t because I can’t see the point of catrastophising about unrealistic futures that will never eventuate, like theme parks in Woodgate. Although, I did wonder how the group might react if I put up a post asking their thoughts on a waterslide activity park. That was really tempting, but because I’m not an arsehole I didn’t do it.
There is an interesting peer reviewed article here about how tourism operators can create experiences that result in conservation outcomes. I have a Bachelor of Environmental Science majoring in Ecotourism and understand that if more people are given a way to interact with the natural world it improves outcomes for sustainability and conservation because the more people know about something, the more they can care about it.
I’m not a social researcher or anything, but it does seem to me that people who live here are in a constant state of fear. They all seem to hate anything new, any new business, any new building, any new people moving here. I think they don’t like this stuff because they’re worried that if stuff changes that means there will be less for them. It’s like the equality thing where people who are against equality freak out because they think it’s pie: more for other poeple means less for them, but the thing is, there is no pie. Having more equality and more non-destructive ways to experience nature will only ever mean we get to live better lives.
That is if we can get past this sort of shit:
Clearly nature is not enough for you. You have no foresight [sic] or business planning. Old pricks. Sad old people. Go to a nursing home. Get fixed wombat.
Adopting a more constructive way of seeing the world would help here. Getting out of the echo chambers would help because then everyone could embrace a larger life. Imagine a world where you aren’t held back by your beliefs or need to feel like you are the one who is right ALL the time. We live in reality, not inside fakebook and the internet. We only get one life and we should be living it, not worrying about stupid shit online.
I read a book recently called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. He said in the book somewhere that people have used up over 200 000 human lifetimes by spending time on mindless internet bullshit. Arguing about stupid shit online on inconsequential fakebook community groups is a waste of your life. I just can’t understand why people do it. People really need to read Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
As for me, I’m still not sure about the bike hire business and my role as the Bike Hire Antichrist. I’m tossing up a few other ideas as well. I certainly won’t bother putting any more posts on the local community fakebook group, that’s for sure. So, I’ll keep doing my thing (the artificial high stuff) and it’ll look like some of this:
Chow and cows on a rail trail loop near Toowoomba somewhere.
My original fat bike at Woodgate boatramp. This one was called Fatty.
Sign post from when I walked the 30km round trip to the lighthouse at Double Island Point
Me at Cooloola Great Walk trail head. Yeah, as you can see, I’m a real nature hater.
Last bikepacking trip I did. This bike is called The Can’t Bike because everyone told me, you can’t!. But I did, so sux to be them. The more people tell me I can’t do something, the more likely it is that I will do it.
From the last ento job I had: Soldier fly pupae. I’m not doing this job anymore, but I still like flies, which occur in the natural world and are an important part of all ecosystems. This particular species is native to Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inopus
Halfway along Heidke Road, Woodgate: 1st day, just setting out
This year I decided I was going to start back on adventure. I kind of lost my mojo for it a while back after being diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and the last hike I tried to do felt like my back had snapped in seventeen places. I told myself that if I started bikepacking then the bike was carrying the weight not me, so everything would be solved. Easy. Well…
Just about to head out onto Woodgate Road. There was dead cow just next to this sign with crime scene tape on it. WTF!
I mapped a bikepacking trip from my home in Woodgate, Qld to Ballina in NSW, which would take me 17 days to complete, but after struggling to ride the 58km between the start point and the first campsite I began to question my ability to plan such a long ride. I hadn’t taken into account the difficulty of riding up hills. I’m sure it’ll be fine, I tried to convince myself as I kept riding. Afterall, I’d spent a lot of time mapping everything and organising stops and accomodation all the way down the coast to Byron Bay.
Things started to go sideways early. For a start, I went the wrong way at the end of a road and had to ride all the way back, then when I got back to where I veered off I didn’t know which one of the other two roads I was meant to go down. Luckily I picked the right road, but wasn’t sure until I’d gotten almost all the way to end of it. All of this because of my ridiculous aversion to technology. A small example of this is how I haven’t written a blog post in a few years because I didn’t want to have to face turning this new computer on. I bought it and it’s sat there doing nothing for several years, which means I’ve also done nothing in the way of writing. Another example of my aversion is this:
Paper maps I made from Google Earth images as a form of navigation for an 800Km solo bikepacking trip. It would be great if I could let go of the idea I have of myself of being a neo-luddite.
On the way from Woodgate I stopped in at the Isis River BP and got a cup of tea. I thought I only had a little way to go to get to the road that ran along the railway corridor off Buxton Road, but I totally underestimated how far down the Buxton Road the level crossing was and it felt like I would never get there. I got across the crossing ok, but I was a bit worried about riding through the water because the concrete surface is underwater and all slimy, but it was ok.
Isis River crossing underneath rail bridge. I only found this by looking at tracks as I drive along and going back later to investigate. This track takes you from Buxton Road up into Barretts Road area.
It got bad after this. The road up and out of the crossing is almost vertical and it was so fucking hard to push the bike. It was very close to me not actually being able to push the bike forward, but I couldn’t go back either, so I just had to go one step at time, put the brakes on, take another step, repeat X 100. It was horrible. This wouldn’t be the last time I’d wish for a Steerstopper. The track after the concrete road was all kinds of fucked up, but I was going ok and didn’t think to put the seat down and when I lost balance down a big washout I fell off because I couldn’t reach the ground with my feet. It didn’t really hurt, but I got some skin off my right knee and something jabbed the absolute shit out of my other leg. The worst thing was trying to move the bike out of the fuck up. That was hard. Pushing it all the way up to the road was very hard too and I started to get the shits with the whole thing. What the fuck? I yelled at the scrub repeatedly.
One voice in my head said, just camp anywhere, it’ll be fine, but the other voice said, no, it’s shit, let’s keep going. I started to worry about water, but I found the billabong I knew was in the bush, so it was fine.
First campsite at secret billabong off Barretts Road, Isis
The next day was 47km from the camp at the billabong to Wongi Waterholes campground. I was pretty complacent about this stretch. That would be part of my downfall, but I didn’t know it at the time.
Oh my fucking god!! What a horrendous nightmare! I had a lot of trouble sleeping because it was so cold. My sleeping bag and liner that had always worked a treat in the past didn’t keep me warm at all and I had to get up after a few hours and put extra clothes on. It made no difference though and I was freezing all night long. This is a result of another aversion I had: washing and drying my good Mont down sleeping bag. My Grayl Geopress water filter also wouldn’t work properly to filter the billabong water and I was pissed off I didn’t bring the Sawyer filter as a backup, so I started out with only about 1 litre of water. It’ll be fine. I’ll be at Wongi in no time, I thought.
I rode out to the highway and along the inside of the treeline in the direction of where I thought I had to cross to get onto Broadhurst Homestead Road, but I got scared I’d go too far down the hill then not be able to push the bike up the side of the highway to get across it. I couldn’t see the highway from where I was, but I knew I was only around 80 metres away from it, so to avoid the disaster of getting stuck down the bottom of the hill and having to push the bike all the way back up I pushed it through the trees towards the highway, which was really bloody difficult because it was full of kneehigh grasstrees and fallen logs and jabby sticks. I made it in the end and wasn’t too far from where I had to cross over.
Now the easy stuff will start, I thought because I knew where I was going and the road ahead was nowhere near as difficult as the roads I’d already ridden on after leaving my house. I’m golden, I told myself, but I was pretty wrong, actually I was totally wrong.
It was pretty hard to get through the first gate onto the powerline easment, but I knew that gate was difficult and got through eventually. Things weren’t as easy on the powerline easment as I’d fantasised they would be and I had to get off the bike every 50 or 100 metres to push it up really short, steep hills, which was just as bad as the day before when I almost couldn’t push the bike up the road leading out of the river crossing, but probably worse because there were what seemed like hundreds of these hills and they kept coming and coming. I couldn’t remember it being this hard when I’d done it in the past, but told myself I must’ve glorified the last trips I’d done.
What actually happened was at some point I’d migrated onto the wrong easment. There are two that run parrallel to each other, but due to my neo-luddite tendancies, had no way to know if this is what I’d done. It’s fine because although they diverge, they converge again at where the powerlines meet the forestry, so no big deal, I reminded myself and started to relax a bit. Except they didn’t because I ended up at a gate that I hadn’t seen before, which opened onto a big paddock with a house and shed on it. I stood there staring at the house, which looked like a total murder house, and wondering what I should do. I had to go forward (I could see pine trees in the distance), but to do that I had to ride through the paddock and right past the house. Ok, I’m not in America, they’re not going to shoot me, so the worst thing that can really happen is that they’ll yell at me, I told myself, so I opened the gate and started riding only to see that access to the top of the property was cut off by a massive eroded gully that I had no way of traversing. I rode along all sides of it and couldn’t see a way across and small flutters of panic began in my chest. But somehow, in a little corner behind some trees I spotted a tiny gap, which I was able to slosh through and heave the bike up to get up onto the paddock. I rode towards the house thinking, please don’t let there be dogs, please no dogs, please, please, please. But there was nobody home and there were no dogs, but as I passed right by I could see that it was most definitely a murder house and I was so glad that nobody was home. I could imagine bodies hanging from the rafters and all kinds of maligned shit going down right here. Yep, I probably would have been shot.
After forcing my way through the longest, seediest grass of all time (I had to throw my socks out the next day) I made it out onto a forestry road. This is when I started to feel a little bit scared because I had absolutely no idea where I was in the 11 000 hectares of forestry that surrounded me. Plus, it was mid to late afternoon and I had only around 600ml of water left in my hydration belt and I was totally exhausted. I tried to use Google maps to navigate my way to Wongi campground, but after riding 750m in the direction it told me to go, it wanted me to turn left into a gate that lead back into the property I’d just come out of, so I called it a fucking idiot, put the phone back on flight mode to conserve battery and rode back to where the 750m had started. I’ll just ride straight and generally to the left, I told myself because it seemed to me that I was meant to go in that direction, but I kept saying very loudly to the trees, I don’t know what to do! which is not a common headspace for me because I am usually very decisive. After a while I saw I was approaching a t-intersection and I wished silently for someone to help me, but I knew that was unlikely, so I stopped thinking about it and almost started to cry, but I yelled outloud, “No! Stop that, you dickhead. It’s going to be fine!” Almost straight away, two white vans drove around a corner and I waved them down to help me. The two drivers got out and showed me where to go on their phones (this is when I realised it wasn’t google maps that was the fucking idiot, it was me for not knowing how to use it properly).
I tried not to think about how weird it was for the timing of the vans and me to be in same place at the same time in the middle of a massive forestry. I reckon if it wasn’t for them, I’d probably be out there still, lost like a dickhead in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. This is where believing in god would come in handy to explain how the vans and me crossed paths, but I don’t believe in that, so I just have to accept it as something that happened. It still feels wierd though.
Old wooden bridge in Wongi on the way to the campground.
I didn’t get to the campsite until almost 8pm and was totally dead by that stage. It was hard to put the tent up and get my dinner. I just wanted to go to sleep, which I couldn’t do again because I was even colder than the night before. It really felt like it was the worst day of my life!
Packed up and ready to leave Wongi Waterholes campground
The next day my destination was Maryborough, which was only 23km, but given how difficult the terrain had been so far I was worried about getting there in time to meet my mates at Canegrowers at lunchtime, but I made it by 10am, so I had plenty of time to faff around, buying another sleeping bag and trying to find chain lube, which I’d left at home. I went out for lunch with my buddies and then headed off to the motel I’d booked for the night. The bed was amazing, so was the hot shower. The bike loved it too.
Bike inside the motel room in Maryborough. I didn’t think they’d let me put it in the room, but it was the first thing the dude on reception said, “put your bike in your room.”
I was worried about the next day, which was a 73km stretch to Kia Ora, the increasing distances following that and the unmapped sections I had to get through from Brisbane to Byron. In the comfort of the motel room, while reflecting on what I believed was the worst day of my life, I got talking to the Cool Guy I’m Married to about it and I decided that even though I really wanted to keep going, the wisest thing would be for me to loop back towards home and he could pick me up in a couple of days. I really should have at least driven the section from Maryborough to Tewantin to get an understanding of the landscape and leave water drops for myself, and I definitely should have learnt how to use technology properly before I set off. I wonder how I imagined I’d get through the zig zaggy streets of the Gold Coast to the campsite in Pottsville after that? And what about Byron? How would I find my way there? I had this attitude that boldly claimed, don’t worry, it’ll be fine, but would it? I had started to doubt that approach very much after my experience of getting lost in Wongi and I DID NOT want to get lost on my way to Kia Ora because unlike Wongi, I’d never even been to Kia Ora before.
So, I made my way the next day to Susan River Homestead, which wasn’t very far, but I managed to ride 25km overall because after checking in and unloading my bike I found a secret track, which was really fun to ride on.
Secret track near Susan River Homestead.
On the last day I rode back up the highway towards Maryborough and down Churchill Mine Road. Google maps said it was 17km and a 54min ride from Susan River Homestead to Torbanlea, which is where the Cool Guy was meeting me that afternoon. Piss easy, I thought. Wrong again. I was still riding after 2.5 hours and the actual distance was just over 26km. What pushy can travel that far over that terrain in 54 minutes? Google maps was back to being the fuckhead again.
In total the ride was just over 200km, which isn’t bad, but not the 788km I’d originally imagined I would be riding. Still, who cares. At least I did something. It’s better than sitting around whinging about stuff and waiting for something to happen.
I got a lot of advice and information during this ride from people who have zero adventure experience. This is some of it:
Just put it in highest gear and keep pedalling (in relation to riding up steep hills). Oh gee, thanks, you dickhead, I never though of that.
Get an ebike. Yeah, that would’ve been real helpful when I was trying to push the bike up steep hills because they’re peddle-assited, not throttle-assisted.
It’s only a five minute drive up the road. Go away.
Just pull up and camp anywhere. Not safe or possible if you don’t have a caravan.
My friends just ate tomatoes and they rode 200km a day on their remote bikepacking trip. What a load of codswallop. How did they keep the tomatoes from being squished? Where did they buy them from in the middle of nowhere. Who likes tomoatoes that much?!
Generally, people have no understanding of what it’s like to do something like bikepacking or hiking and give out advice about how to do these things based on their experience of driving a car and/or car-based camping. Also, I don’t think many people do shit like this on their own, so they don’t really get that you have to do everything for yourself by yourself and there’s no one to help you out.
On this trip I had someone ask me why I would do this sort of thing. I couldn’t think of a good answer at the time, but now I know why. It’s because I want to see what I’m made of. Each time I do an adventurous thing I get to see more of what I’m made of, which gives me leverage to keep finding out more about myself. Yeah, shit went sideways a fair bit on this trip, but I handled it and now I get to do more adventures with more knowledge and an even greater understanding of how completely awesome I am.
Free State of Jen 