Day 5: Wondai to Kilkivan

The end of the rail trails, yeah! Only one more day entirely on bitumen. Did I tell you how much I love bitumen? Today’s trip from Murgon onwards was rocky, or sandy or generally so bumpy that my head nearly fell off. Not to mention the number of gates that drove Ray to distraction. It will be all smooth sailing tomorrow as long as a motorist doesn’t take umbrage at cyclists being on their road.

We stopped at Goomeri for lunch, and who should be sitting in the park at the next table but an old tennis mate and his wife, Barry and Michelle. We tried to ignore them for as long as possible, but Barry recognised us. Barry offered to drive us and the bikes to the next destination, it sounded so tempting, but Ray, the sadist that  he is would have none of it. We spent a delightful half hour with them but it was only delaying the inevitable and we were soon back on the bumpy track.

It was a further two hours and forty minutes of hell before we reached our destination. So we are now ensconced in our salubrious motel room beside the Kilkivan pub. It comes complete with hub caps as decoration on one wall and the grill from a V8 on the other. 

Another couple of cyclists are in the room next door. We might meet up and share survival stories over dinner in the pub tonight. I’m looking forward to my last pub food for a while. I don’t think I will miss riding long distances either. Roll on Gympie.

One crosses so many creeks without any water in them, we were a litte surprised when one had quite a lot. A couple of hundred metres on, we were even more surprised to see this: The Burnett River with some Pelicans and ducks.

H and S gone MAD!!! So at every crossing of a road or track in the South Burnett Shire we came upon three of these devices which you had to zig zag through (apparently - see below) They had various informative doodlings, but this one took the cake. You have to WHAT? Get off your bike to cross a road when about 2 vehicles a day use it? Although i was very pleased to learn that we should only cross when safe. THAT'S what I have been doing wrong all this time.

But here is what usually happens. People that look suspiciously like me just ride around them. It looks like this zig zag obstacle course has not been used in quite a long time. 

We are going to have to cross those mountains in the background tomorrow.

Enter the Gympie region shire and the zig zag obstacles are gone. No, this time they force you off your bike and make you open a gate on every road and creek crossing (twice of course). Nothing like an enjoyable ride down some quiet roads where you have to open (and close) about 50 bloody gates. And i fogot to mention, you have to manouvre your bike into and out of a little compartment (as seen in the background), just to make extra hard. All this is particularly galling as there does not seem to be any obvious reason why the gates are there in the first place

Grass promenade.

There are dozens of these rail pins scattered along the trail. They are about 10 - 12 cm long

Some one tried to burn the grass promenade down.

What a day! Completed the Rail Trail double - about 340 kms. Not one of our more enjoyable days. To Gympie on the road tomorrow.

This made up for it! We were assigned the V8 room at the Kilkivan Hotel. On one wall the grill of a long forgotten Ford (I think) and on the opposite wall various chrome hubcaps. (I can not attest that they all came from V8 s)