Keeping Balance

This entry is part 4 of 17 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #43

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Graeme Sedgwick squeezed in a ride just before Victoria’s second round of travel restrictions

I headed southwest from Mount Napier, one of the youngest volcanoes in Victoria’s western district. It rises 150 metres above the surrounding plains and is one of the highest points north of the small rural township of Macarthur.

From there I pointed the Beemer towards Mount Eccles, another volcanic high point on a landscape scattered with larva blisters, before taking an assortment of less-used gravel roads and tracks which generally followed the western side of the Fitzroy River north to Lyons.

Then it was a cruise along the bitumen to what turned out to be a quick, enjoyable charge along the main Winnap-Nelson Road. This section offered a plentiful mix of dips and rises joined by fast links and get-your-attention curves at the southern end.

A scoot west along a gravel detour beside the Glenelg River then ran toward Nelson.

Shanty town

The 27,000-hectare Lower Glenelg National Park, abutting Cobboboonee National Park to the east, the South Australian border to the west and Southern Ocean to the south, boasts a surprising choice of riding options.

The Glenelg River is Victoria’s third-longest and flows from the Grampians in Victoria’s midwest to the shores of Discovery Bay, deep in the state’s south-west. At the mouth of the river is the town of Nelson and the curiously named Nelson Boat Shed & Landing, an eclectic mix of boatsheds and jetties that haven’t just stood the test of time, but have survived a divided community, environmental challenges and government opinions to become getaways for their owners. It’s a quirky assortment of structures, some more than 50 years old and all with odd proportions, which boasts some fascinating individual stories.

Aside from the unusual buildings at Nelson Boatshed & Landing, from Simpson Landing north of Nelson to the edges of the National Parks something like 135 structures still stand. There’s another 30 or so hard up against the border in South Australia between Donavan’s Landing and Dry Creek, including some commercial piers.

Some tracks were hard-packed between towering pines and hardwoods.
Some three million tonnes of plantation-timber products depart Portland, the mainland’s single biggest port for export hardwood chips.

Pipe dreams

The unique nature of the Nelson Boat Shed & Landing buildings is magnified when their stories of survival are peeled back.

The period from 1981 through to 1982 is interesting. Parliamentarian – and later Victorian Premier – Denis Napthine took up the cause for existing structures to be retained and used by leaseholders.

In contrast were those people who wanted them removed on the basis they were unfit for habitation and an environmental liability.

It was a complex discussion in which emotion clashed with logic. Thankfully for owners, and maybe from an historical perspective as well, it was successfully argued in favour of keeping the huts, provided owners maintained a standard of good repair within the structure’s original footprint. An outbreak of Teredo Worm – naval shipworm – around the turn of the century meant many owners had to undertake works to minimise and eliminate the risk of structural failure, typically establishing new foundations using fresh timber or PVC pipe filled with concrete.

Pondering on the future.
Author Graeme ‘I’m stuffed’ Sedgwick (left) and instructor Paul Bray in Mathoura, NSW.

Learning

Away from Nelson my journey in part retraced the Portland-Nelson Road, which gave the opportunity to explore an overwhelming number of forestry tracks.

Some were hard-packed and snaked between towering pines and hardwoods, some were heavier going through hectares of replanted plantations, and others had amazing views across to a very blue Southern Ocean. There were even a few which stretched across the open expanses harvested to serve multiple commercial enterprises. Some three million tonnes of plantation-timber products depart Portland, the mainland’s single biggest port for export hardwood chips.

I’d spent some wise bucks to help gain a better understanding of riding basics in heavy conditions coached by Paul Bray.

Paul was a great inch-by-inch help before the ride with his training in sandy country west of the railway township of Mathoura, just north of Echuca.

Nelson has an eclectic mix of boat sheds and landings.
Nelson has an eclectic mix of boat sheds and landings.
A quirky assortment of structures, some more than 50 years old.

Don’t give up

My return ride took me through small towns like Hawkesdale and Framlingham, along many and varied secondary and less-travelled laneways that run south to Laang, then north of Brucknell skirting Lake Elingamite.

The late-afternoon sun gave Camperdown’s Mechanics Institute a crazy pink glow as I concluded my ride.

I’m an optimist at the best and worst of times.

Prior to the COVID 19 problems I’d imposed upon the patience of a considerably more experienced mate for some good riding advice, laughter and encouragement to assist my riding confidence. I’d planned a ride from Cape Agulhas, South Africa’s southern-most point, to Windhoek in Namibia, but the restrictions imposed on travel forced the abandonment of the ride and, as it’s turned out, the closure of Compass Expeditions with whom I was to do that ride.

If nothing else this ride heavily under-lined for me that we must all continue to seek out those rides and adventures that can balance sanity in a world that seems to have gone mad.

Spoiled for choice.
Lunch stop.