Days 47 and 48 (December 19-20)

The Hay Plains at sunset – flat and featureless

On December 19 we started across the Hay Plains. It’s an area of flat, nearly treeless plains about 150 kilometers across, and is directly between Adelaide and Sydney. We’ve been hearing from locals for the past several weeks that the Hay Plains will be hot, flat, and boring. They got the flat and boring parts right, but luckily we haven’t yet experienced the hot part (and I hope we don’t). By the end of the day we pedaled only the western-most 30 kilometers, and have many more to go in the next couple of days.

In the morning of the 19th, we started from the little town of Tooleybuc, New South Wales, situated on the banks of the Murray River. As usual, we got going around 6:30 am and were on the road for only a few kilometers when we came across Lake Coomaroop, the largest lake we’ve yet seen on the trip.

Lake Coomaroop. This is the largest lake we’ve seen since arriving in Australia.

It was quite a scenic lake, with bright green duckweed lining the shore and with various ducks and black swans paddling around. Very nice.

Two black swans on Lake Coomaroop

The ride on the 19th was demoralizing in the morning, due to the shifting wind which gave us a headwind all morning. Yesterday the wind was from the south and southeast and I was hoping that’s what we’d have today, as the first 55 kilometers of our ride would take us in a northerly direction. So I was disappointed to see that the morning wind had shifted and was now from the north, which slowed our progress considerably. Fortunately, our route turned southeasterly and easterly near the town of Balranald, and even more fortunately, the wind also shifted to a northwest and west wind, giving us a moderate tailwind and crosswind. But it seems Australia always has something in store for us, as with the tailwind, the flies could keep up with us and continuously buzzed our faces as we rode.

Our “deluxe” campsite in the shade of a rest stop outhouse and water tank

We’ll reach the town of Hay on the 20th, which is only 93 kilometers further east. As a result, between the flies and the moderately hot afternoon, we decided to spend the night of the 19th at the Willowvale rest area next to the highway. It’s a rather dismal place as there’s practically no shade to be had. The best we could do was to set up our tents in the shadows of the outhouses and water tank. It’s not the most scenic campsite we’ve had, but you have to take what you can get on the Hay Plains.

While the conditions on the 19th were not ideal, they certainly were on the 20th. Our route took us easterly, and soon after the pedaling began, a strong westerly and northwesterly wind kicked in, giving us a spectacular speed boost with very little expenditure of energy.  We easily cruised along at 30 km/hour in front of the leading edge of an approaching storm front. We got rained on for about five minutes, but we didn’t care – the rare tailwind put aside any worries about getting wet.

Mattie checks out the status of the thunderstorm developing behind us

We arrived in the town of Hay at 11:15 am, checked into one of the very few rooms available in town (due to the upcoming Christmas holiday) and set about our normal chores of showers, laundry, grocery shopping, and meals. We’ll head out tomorrow, the 21st, for the remaining 800 or so kilometers to Sydney. As usual, we don’t know when we’ll next have Wifi access, so further posts may be several days from now.

Posted by Scott