Over the Moon…bi
Moonbi lookout
After a lovely breakfast with the Anderson clan I pressed on North to Tamworth. My guide reckons it’s Australias country music capital and evidence of this was a giant guitar on the edge of town. It was enough to send me scittering around the edge of town on narrow back streets to avoid the possibility of an aureal assault on my senses. Good country music is OK but bad country music makes my ears bleed.
After Tamworth came the Moonbi range over which is the New England Plain, a 1000m plateaux in the Great dividing range. After grinding my way up for 5km the road started to level off and there was a sign for a scenic lookout so thinking I’d made it over I pedalled joyfully to see what I had acomplished. Bad mistake. The lookout as about another few hundred meters of climbing and I was almost spent by the time I got to the top. I had lunch, admired the view and set of back to the main road where a sign saying second Moonbi Hill awaited me. This lasted 6 or 7km taken in 750m bursts. I’m proud to say I didn’t get off and push but honestly I don’t think it would have been any easier. At one point doing a heroic 12.1km/h I was keeping pace with a truck, naturally my heart was near bursting point at this eye-watering speed so I backed off to a less insane 8km/h – barely faster than walking pace. By the time I got to the top I was seeing stars!
I have almost no recollection of the next 60km or so, I just kept tapping away on the pedals in a zombie like state until it got dark. The only thing I do recall and very vividly I might add is one of the grey army almost killing me. I glanced over to see an elderly lady waving at me from very close range in her car as I struggled up another hill. About a second later I find myself spearing towards the ditch! I bravely took my hands off the bars because thats what you should do but the bike didn’t go over and I managed to get the brakes on and stop without dying. They were so close to me when they drove past that the caravan they were towing hit my pannier and sent me skidding into the bushes. And they told me to watch out for road trains! Beware the grey army I say!!!