Day 10 on the bike took me from Cootumundra to Young. It was a relatively short day of 49km with about 440m of climbing (it's finally getting a little mountainous).
I had the best rest stop on the top of the first climb of the day, there was a vibrant pink caravan at a rest stop which sold coffee, it was fantastic, I really felt like I was in the Alps with crazy caravan people. It was just awesome, I know it doesn't sound very interesting but it was just so out of the ordinary. Ha! The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, nice terrain, good roads and thousands of Cherry trees before rolling into the town of Young for the night.
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| The Awesome Pink Van with coffee!!! |
Day 11 in the saddle was supposed to be an easy one, looking at the profile it looked completely downhill for the whole day. Unfortunately it was more flat, no climbs but no real big descents assured I had to pedal constantly all day, maybe I didn't sleep well or eat enough but today seemed like I had a flat tyre. Anyway, 75km later I rolled into Cowra around 2:30pm and managed to have a nice relaxing night watching the Olympics.
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| Beautiful scenery |
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| Stompy taking over Cowra with this tank at the closed down war machine museum, Cowra |
Day 12.
Brrrr, It's cold up around here, It's constantly been dropping to around -4degrees every night which doesn't inspire me to get up early, but the show must go on... Today was my first really challenging day in the hills, with 999m of climbing today over 68km the road never seemed to be easy (well except for the odd steep downhill section where I clocked a max speed of 56km/h). The average speed today was well down at 16.4km/h so I was riding for nearly 4 hours with about a 1 hour break. The highlights of today where visiting Kurt Fearnley Park in Carcoar, Kurt, who was born in Carcoar is one of the most inspirational people to me. Born without the lower half of his spine, Kurt has always been determined and has become one of the most successful wheelchair athletes on the planet. He has won nine olympic medals, 3 gold. Is a six time world champion and is the 2009 Young Australian Of The Year. He has also crawled the Kokoda trail! So whenever I think the ride might be getting difficult I look towards people like Kurt for inspiration, heck some of the hills around here are the very hills Kurt trained on to win Olympic gold medals!!!
The other highlight of the day was finishing at Gary and Chantelle's Mums (Chrissy) house above Blayney, it was fantastic to be in a house again with warm conversation, a home cooked meal and with Chantelle arriving from Mount Beauty that night, it was a fantastic way to end the day.
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| Me at Kurt Fearnley Park, Carcoar |
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| Windfarm near Blayney |
Taronga Western Plains Zoo
Chantelle had driven all that way so we could visit Taronga Western Plains Zoo together which is out at Dubbo. So we got away early and hoped for a positive elephant experience, surely it would be better than Melbourne Zoo...
The rumours were true, Western Plains Zoo doesn't really feel like a zoo, it feels more like a sanctuary. The Asian elephants include Burma 58 who arrived in 2005, Gigi 55 and Arna 55 who retired from Stardust circus in 2008 and moved into Western Plains Zoo. They have a fairly large enclosure and were never forced to do anything for the tourists, mostly they kept to themselves some 100m away from the tourist platforms. The 4th elephant who lives at the zoo has her own enclosure and is the only African elephant in Australia, her name is Cuddles and she is gorgeous. Cuddles also has quite a large enclosure but is more accessible to the tourists, the staff have a talk everyday at 11:30am (which we unfortunately missed) with Cuddles to show tourists the difference between the African and Asian elephants. What we did see however was feeding time, 3 staff at the park placed dry grass around Cuddles enclosure in different locations so she could search for it and therefore keep herself entertained and moving around. These staff members carried what they call a 'Guide' which they state is a new yet not so viscous form of the bull-hook. It's a 50cm steel pole with two bulbous ends. It is used literally as a guide, only with slight pressure and not to force via pain. Taronga zoo states on their website that they train their elephants via positive re-inforcement and only train them to benefit themselves (eg, to have their feet cleaned etc.) It was obvious to me that the keepers did show a certain love towards their elephants which really made me a lot happier than when visiting Melbourne Zoo. The fact that these elephants were free to roam around a large enclosure of grass and many fun looking obstacles to play with also made a huge difference. Surely the elephants at Melbourne Zoo would benefit by having a large enclosure such as Western Plain Zoo.
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| Cuddles eating, while staff look on. |
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| Information Board at Taronga Western Plains Zoo |
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| One of the Asian elephant enclosures |
We spent most of our day visiting the elephants and also reading the information panels displayed around the zoo, interestingly they had the crate which transported Burma from Sydney to Dubbo on display, you could actually walk inside it and see just how big the elephants are. They had some information up inside the crate about the elephants and Taronga Zoos elephant programs, which seem more positive than having elephant paintings and pictures of elephant trekking on display like they do at Melbourne Zoo. So, overall the elephants at Western Plains Zoo really do seem to have a nice place to retire, some things could be better but realistically it's a nice place for the elephants.
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| Chantelle and I in Burma's transport crate. |
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| Cuddles, Stampy and Stompy |
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| Wetlands at Taronga Zoo |
Back On The Wheels...
So after a not so restful rest day I continued on my ride for the Asian elephants. Day 13 was the shortest day so far AND it was all downhill AND I had a 35km/h tailwind AND Chantelle was able to drive my saddle bags to Bathurst. It will not get better than this on the trip, Ha!!! I rode 42km in just over 1 and a half hours with an average speed of 27km/hr. Obviously a new top speed was recorded with 65.3km per hour. Wowzers!!! Chantelle managed to get a hold of a media opportunity through the Western Advocate newspaper which is in Bathurst, so after meeting up for lunch we had the local news photographer take a few shots of me riding the bike past the local iconic courthouse, more awareness for the elephants, Yay!!!! I also was able to stay at good friends Cath and Bens house in Bathurst which was fantastic, they treated me like royalty, cooking dinner and breakfast and making up the spare bed so I could relax before heading into the blue mountains!!!
The Blue Mountains. Once considered impossible to pass, is now a major adventurer, tourist and hippy mecca. Most of Australia's top rock climbers live up in these mountains and its not hard to see why. They are steep! Bathurst to Lithgow on day 14 consisted of 60km with 1051m of climbing! I also crossed the highest pass of the trip today at 1178m. I can tell you that I felt like I was climbing all day long although I was only on the road for about 4 hours I averaged 16.8km/hr. Olympic marathon runners would have overtaken me today!!! I wandered into town and stocked up on much needed sustenance and supplies and also treated myself to a Vegetarian Korma curry from the local Indian restaurant. Wooo..
Day 15 was always going to be epic. The climb of Mount Victoria is about 5km long with an average gradient of around 7%. That's Tour de France style climbing right there!!! I was in granny gear the whole climb and it took me around 45 minutes to get to the top. I can safely say that is one of the more challenging climbs I've done... Apart from that, today was fantastic. Ha! As I pulled into a park in Blackheath I was approached by two lovely people who were so interested in what I was doing they invited me back to their house for lunch! Rob and Judy were probably the best lunch hosts ever, Judy squeezed some fresh orange juice and made a delicious sandwich for me while Rob rang around 5 different media contacts around the area, from this we were able to shoot an interview in Blackheath about the elephants and my ride and organise an interview in Katoomba for The Blue Mountains Gazette later that day. I can't thank them enough for their kindness and generosity towards a complete stranger, I will not forget them any time soon that's for sure... So after about one and half hours I continued on to Katoomba, had a quick interview and photo for the gazette and rolled down to the famous 3 Sisters lookout for an amazing sunset in the blue mountains. Now I'm here in my tent at Katoomba caravan park writing this post and looking forward to curling up in my sleeping bag...
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| Visiting the famous 3 Sisters Mountains. |
Tomorrow, Sydney beckons, I will miss the mountains but am definitely looking forward to warmer nights and seaside sunrises... 960km ridden so far, can't wait to get over 1000km tomorrow!!!
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| Stompy, Happy to visit some big mountains!!! |
Don't forget to find us on Facebook for other events happening for our fundraiser for Elephant Nature Park. Chantelle has Ride Bikes, Not Elephants T-shirts for everyone AND beautiful limited edition signed photographs of the elephants at ENP! Don't miss out! Find our group here: Ride Bikes Not Elephants FaceBook
Thanks for reading,
Matt
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