Day 4… of rain

Day 3 & 4: Wollongong, NSW
Distance cycled: 25km

We have been on the road for 4 days and it has been showering for 4 days. It didn’t stop us, and sure not the Aussies! As we rode past town after town, we witnessed one crowd after another braving the waves surfing or rowing, walking their dogs and going for a run. It was an easy and fantastic ride literally along the coast, especially thanks to the bike path shortly after we left Coledale, starting from Thirroul.

When we first arrived in Wollongong yesterday, taking shelter by the promenade and contemplating whether to cycle further south to the Windang Beach Tourist Park or backtrack towards Towradgi, a friendly stranger came up to us and said “We couldn’t have picked a better time for our ride, could we?” Charlie, on his bike with 2 dogs on tow, chatted with us and shared his cycling trip around Europe, down Mount Kosciuszko and the surroundings of Wollongong. We have spoken to at least 5 people who cycle frequently for leisure. We decided to go back north again as it is the closest place to camp near Wollongong and the university, where Charlie said only 3 trees used to stand on the university’s ground. All 3 were knocked down by wind. The trees on campus now are all hand-planted and it is a forest!

So we took the rest of the day off, cleaning ourselves and our bikes (Sue made a promise to her bike she named Reed that she would clean her!). After another go at Scrabbles with Lukas getting better and coming up with ingenious words like “brr”, “moo”, “op”, “pic” etc (that are words according to the official Scrabbles dictionary), we hit the hay early and got almost 12 hours of good rest.


It still drizzles but it could have been worse. Having found our way to the University of Wollongong’s library, we will base ourselves here for the next 2 days for Lukas to work on his manuscript and for Sue to start learning R (if she doesn’t stop procrastinating) ;p
Ciao!

Locations: [NSW] North Sydney - Heathcote - Coledale - Wollongong

Back to sea-level!

Day 2: Coledale, NSW
Distance cycled: 33km

From riding overlooking top of trees to setting up our camps by Coledale Beach, it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!! Despite our roof never stopped leaking and we were told that it will not be fixed for the next week (in other words it is raining non-stop), we rode through a foggy forest, along the coast with ocean view and being fully embraced by our surrounding where we used to fly by in our car. It was priceless!

We started off a little later at 10am, but more than 10kg lighter. Last night, we prepared a parcel to send to Sue’s awesome brother, Dan (thanks, Dan! ;p) and left behind some food and other things that we think we can live without. After fixing and cleaning the bikes, we rode off from Heathcote along Pacific Highway conquering one hill at a time.

We made it to Helensburgh 20 minutes before the post office closed to send off our 5kg parcel. We took shelter and re-fuelled waiting for the rain to stop. After 2 hours, we just pedalled on and warmed up quickly from the hill we climbed shortly after leaving the town.

By about 3:30pm, we arrived at Coledale. The campground office was closed and we waited nearby before setting up our tent. The nicest thing happened! As we sat at the ‘Table of Knowledge’ overlooking the beach, an elder man from a campervan treaded towards us. Without much of a chat, he handed each of us freshly-made still-warm pikelets sandwiched with jam and butter and said, “We just made some extra pikelets and you both look like you could use some”.

Locations: [NSW] North Sydney - Heathcote - Coledale