Bad Dog!, More Germans, and The iPod is Dead? Long Live the iPod!

Date: 26/11/2010 to 30/11/2010

Finally leaving Port Macquarie on the 25th, I decided to take one of those “scenic” drives…I really don’t know why I so often choose to drive completely out of the way, spend even more money on gas and run the risk of dropping the bike on dirt roads.  It probably had something to do with me doing nothing in Port Macquarie for five days, aside from accruing bed bug bites.  If the point is to drive around Australia, why go from A to B to C, when you can do A to C in half the time?  Especially when B isn’t even worth seeing…  I guess it’s one thing to go on a scenic drive if you live in, say, Switzerland (why else drive mountain passes when there are perfectly good tunnels that get you from A to C?), but along the Australian east coast the landscapes are so similar that the scenic route just ends up being the long way.  Oh well, time is the one thing that I’ve got enough of…

So from Port Macquarie, I drove on to a town called Kempsey.  Running low on gas, I hit up the local gas station, and this delivery van driver filling up his truck asks me, “are you coming to Kempsey or leaving?”  I thought this was a bit bizarre, but told him I was just riding through.  His response: “Good, if you get off in town, I’d take your valuables with you…especially this town.”  Nice to know there are shady places in Australia too.

To the “scenic” part of the drive…from Kempsey, I turn off the highway on to the road that serves as a shortcut (first warning) to a town called Armidale, the so-called country music capital of Australia.  It was a nice, winding road not dissimilar to the drive I had in the Hunter Valley – smooth curves, high speed limit and little traffic, though the views weren’t half as good.  Around 20km into the ride, I begin to pass signs that say “2km east of XYZ road suitable only for light traffic.  Not suitable for caravans” (second warning).  So, 2km east of wherever the sign said it would be, the road turns into gravel.  Not too bad though, as I’m getting used to riding on dirt / gravel roads.

The ride was more or less uneventful until the last part, when I was 1,400m up in a really windy section of the road.  I exit a blind left-hand turn and continue uphill on the road.  Coming down the mountains were two crusty yokels with their six or so horses in tow.  I keep on up the road, wave to the townies, and – BAM – their young border collie (whom I hadn’t seen before) bolts from behind one of the horses straight for my front tire.  I try to maneuver around it, but the road was too narrow and I didn’t have enough time to react, so I hit the dirt and my bike ends up propped up against the hillside, with my leg in the smallest of recesses between the left pannier, the ground, and the frame of the bike.  If I landed any differently, it’d probably be broken.  Crusty yokel #1 takes his sweet time getting off his horse to help me (I had to turn around to make sure they were still there), but finally comes around and lifts the bike off my leg, so I could get up and finish picking up the bike.  There really wasn’t any point in yelling at the guy.  He seemed nice enough, and his body language was definitely apologetic.  He cracked a joke or two, lit up what was most definitely not just a cigarette, and went on his chubby, hairy, merry way back down the mountain.  As a side, dogs seem to love my motorcycle…I just wish they’d admire it from a distance like everyone else.

There was a point to this whole ride…at the end, were the Wollomombi Falls.  Once believed to be the tallest waterfall in Australia, they are actually second or third.  They are still pretty impressive, with a total vertical drop of 220m.  The light wasn’t that great for pictures, and the flies seemed to love being right in front of my lens, so I got back on the bike and rode on.  Then ensued the much-longer-than-I-had-imagined ride to Coffs Harbour.  In total, I rode in excess of 350km today, and all I got for it was more scratches on my bike, a bruised leg, and an ass that is starting to KILL me.  Really, you’d think Yamaha would make a halfway comfortable seat when designing a bike meant to chew up miles on paved or unpaved road.  Nope, they definitely went for the “wooden park bench” motif.  So I’m getting used to sitting a bit further up the seat, where the pillion passenger would be, to get some pressure off my aching rear end.

Enough about the ride into Coffs…though to be honest, that was about the most exciting thing about the week (other than no more bed bugs).  The hostel was OK, nothing to write home about though.  Later in the evening, the hostel organized a bus to drive us into town to the local pub, which was a pretty weird place.  The largest age differential had to be in excess of 50 years, distributed pretty evenly across the board.  It was a good time though, had a few too many beers for my budget, and ended up walking the 2km back to the hostel in consistent rain.  That rain would continue at least once a day pretty well through the rest of the week…

The next day, I decided to walk around and see what Coffs Harbour was about.  To be honest, not much from what I saw.  There was a surf lifesaving competition going on at the main beach though, with teams of 8-9 racing rowboats out into the surf and back.  It was pretty cool to watch – some teams didn’t make it past the first wave, as it pushed them back onto the beach, and others flipped over halfway out to the buoy.  I hung out at the beach watching for a while, disappointed that I had forgotten my camera.

Back at the hostel, I plugged in just about every electronic device I had to give ‘em a charge…just for laughs, I decided to plug in my iPod, half expecting to knock out the power to the entire hostel.  To my surprise, it booted right up!  It was a VERY nice surprise to finally have my music back.  It definitely helps while writing blog entries and going through pictures.

Something odd that I noticed while in Coffs was the number of people working while on holiday.  I counted at least 10 people who either worked in the hostel for a few weeks at a time, or even out picking fruit (bananas and blueberries) to make ends meet.  I thought most people save up to go on holidays, not go on holidays and then find a way to pay your way around.

For most of the rest of the week, I hung in or around the hostel like everyone else there – the walk to the beach was about 20min, and the weather was spotty at best.  I ended up meeting two more German girls (surprise), this time from Dortmund (Verena) and Aachen (Britta).  For whoever's keeping track, I've now met Germans from Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, Bavaria, and now Nordrhein Westfalen.  We went one day to the Dorrigo National Park for a hike in the rainforest, which was actually a nice walk…of course, I went in my flip flops and picked up a leech along the way (flicked him off pretty quickly though).

As you can tell, there really wasn’t much going on in Coffs Harbour…I didn’t even bother seeing the Big Banana since the weather on the last day was atrocious, but I’ve got two more opportunities to catch it – one riding back down for Christmas, and the other racing back up for New Years in the Whitsundays.

That’s about it…most boring blog post ever, pretty much covers how exciting Coffs Harbour was.  In a couple of days I’ll have a new post up for Yamba, the coolest place in Australia you’ve never heard of.  I promise, I’ll make up for this one…