RoughGuides #1:
Dispatch from Australia
12/2/99

My pushy, as bicyles are known in Australia, is called Possum. It's set up to carry a tent, stove, sleeping bag, medical kit, spare parts, water and a few clothes, so I can roam where I please. A tiny Psion palmtop and an Ericsson mobile phone allow me to send emails along the trail, keeping my website updated with stories and photos. Weight is my obsession. In an unnending quest for lightness I regularly jettison my possessions. One Australian friend likened the amount I carry to four carrier bags of shopping, which sounds like too much to me.

Australia is a country so vast that at times it seems to have no beginning and no end. The Pacific Highway carries most of the traffic heading north from Sydney so I chose the smaller coastal roads. The days passed by in a haze of beaches and sunshine. In Queensland there was less opportunity to escape the Bruce Highway and the trucks that thundered past. For days I watched little but the long grass of the sugar cane fields sway in the wind. Distances between towns grew, and at times I would find myself nestling in the shade of a lone tree or signpost for lunch. It was over 45ºC on the road and the heat felt like a warm blanket that couldn't be shrugged off. As the wet season approached with the summer, storms relieved the high temperatures and humidity. When it rained, a cascade of warm droplets bounced off glossy leaves, miniature rivers flowed by the roadside and steam rose off the hot bitumen.

Cycling keeps you in touch with nature, allowing you to see what otherwise might go unnoticed - a koala asleep in the treetops, the bright blue flicker of a Ulysses butterfly against the darkness of the rainforest. At sunrise off Hinchinbrook Island I watched a pod of endangered dugong, large lumbering sea cows, rise up for air after munching on the sea grass below. At sunset in Hervey Bay a colony of fruit bats disappeared over the horizon like a plume of smoke to feed at a nearby island. At dusk, I bushcamped by creeks and waterholes in the Atherton Tablelands, and watched nocturnal marsupials emerging to forage for food.

Possum and I have attracted a lot of interest. A macadamia nut farmer in New South Wales invited me in and we feasted on freshly caught fish. In Brisbane an Aboriginal lady warned me of the myth of the Min Min lights, which lead unsuspecting travellers away from the main road in the outback. And as I write, I am staying in a family's open house in the middle of the rainforest. In the morning my wake-up call is the sound of birds calling high in the forest canopy.

For the last few hundred kilometres north of tropical Cairns, where the rainforest-covered Great Dividing Range seems to almost spill over into the sea, I cycled with a community worker from Cardwell. The road that I felt I knew so well came to an abrupt end at the chocolate-brown Daintree River. Salt water crocodiles are common in these waterways and tour companies capitalize on the theme. A ferry deposited us on the other side, and once a convoy of mud spattered Toyotas had overtaken us, we were left alone on a narrow twisting road surrounded by thick jungle on either side. Torrential rain fell and waterfalls cascaded onto the road in front.

It is at moments like these that I am reminded why it is that I choose to cycle. The reality of what I am doing after so many months of preparation hits me. As I crossed the last range to Cape Tribulation, the rain drowned out all the sounds of the forest and I was barely able to see the road before me. I looked round at my surroundings and could hardly believe that I was cycling in such a beautiful and ancient rainforest.

Which brings me to the end of the first leg of my journey, and of my ride across Australia. As I prepare to move on and catch a boat to Indonesia, my first taste of Asia, I feel that cycling has been the perfect introduction to this continent. As Ursula le Guin. said, 'It's good to have an end to journey to, but it is the journey that matters in the end'