Carbed up, I made it to Wyong. Following the town map toward a caravan park, I stopped off at a deli and discovered a large bag of very, very ripe bananas. They were six for $1 and came with a warning: “For cakes and muffins ONLY”. Ignoring the warning, I started dreaming of what I could create with these bananas and the just-add-water custard powder I’d purchased that afternoon, and about how I would eat this custardy, banana-y creation after a long, hot shower.
Discovering a “Manufactured Home Village” sign out the front of what was marked on my map as a caravan park, I asked around and was soon informed that it was not a caravan park for camping, but a place for people to live in manufactured homes.
Confused, I picked up my rotten bananas and cruised the streets until I found a petrol station to ask for directions to a “proper” caravan park. Following these led me to another Manufactured Home Village. The manager informed me that I wasn’t allowed to stay there either, unless I was retired and willing to book in for a lot longer than one night.
I began to suspect that my problems were originating from conflicting definitions of the term “caravan park”. I explained the concept of temporary accommodation, grass to put a tent on, and surrounding caravans in a park-like setting, and the manager gave me directions to another caravan park. “Go to the end of the street then go through the scrub to Johns Road.”
I got to the scrub and decided to stop there, before I found myself being the Manufactured Home Village Idiot. Feeling content at the good fortune of finding a secluded, free and pretty location in which to set up camp, I sat on a log, and opened a tin of baked beans for dinner. After the first bite, I realised I was covered in mosquitoes. I killed six with my first slap, put down my baked beans and set up my tent as quickly as possible, only stopping to flick massive orange and black spiders off my feet occasionally. It seemed that while my campground was entirely unmanufactured and free of retirees, it was, instead, full of over-friendly insects.
I managed to throw all my gear, my tin of baked beans and myself into the tent without spilling anything, and finished off my first course while squashing the few rogue mosquitoes that had snuck in with me. I was alone by the time it finally came to mix up a huge mug of custard and overripe bananas. I’m not sure if it would have tasted better after a shower. Somehow, being coated in a fine but visible layer of squashed mosquitoes, blood, sweat, old sunscreen, banana and bicycle grease, lets you enjoy a meal in a heightened, uninhibited way.
Monday 28 March
Taree to Kempsey, New South Wales
120 kilometres – 6 hours 6 minutes
I spent a few nights and a quiet Easter in Taree. I celebrated the holiday with what seemed to be a never-ending bag of carrots and a change in my choice of condiment. I had made liberal use of honey over the previous two months: in muesli, on banana sandwiches, and, whenever an inconvenient low blood sugar situation arose, taken straight from the bottle. As useful and tasty as it was though, I’d been considering my finances over the past few days, and decided to use a cheaper honey-replacement as part of a strategy to tighten my budget.
After my fact-finding trip to India the previous year, and then the necessary purchase of equipment, I started my ride with just a few thousand dollars in the bank for living expenses for the year. I also wanted to use any funds raised purely for the Kodaikanal trust fund, not for my own costs. My solution was to take up my mum’s offer to borrow some money from her when I inevitably ran out of my own savings. Sometimes I had no option but to pay for an unpowered spot in a caravan park, so food was the only area over which I felt I had any control. Unfortunately, I eat a lot even when I’m not riding around Australia, so I was going to have to target quality, not quantity. The cheap bottle of home brand golden syrup at a discount shop probably only saved me a few dollars compared to honey, but it did make me feel financially back in control.
I packed the rest of the carrots into Trailer and coasted further north along the refreshingly flat Pacific Highway and reached Kempsey by mid-afternoon. This gave me time to try to reduce my accommodation costs by visiting all four caravan parks in town and selecting the cheapest one at $11 for the night. For this bargain price, I enjoyed an impressive lack of facilities. It took me 20 minutes and a few trips to the front desk to procure a functioning shower, and since there was no communal barbeque, I had to eat raw zucchini and tomato with my cold baked beans.
There was also a visit from the local police. I don’t think it was for me personally, although I had been smelling a bit offensive due to recent experimentation in saving money by not owning deodorant.
When I was finally showered, fed, and not arrested, I settled down with my safety vest and a permanent marker I’d bought that afternoon in a flash of inspiration. I wanted to increase the exposure of Cycle of Learning to people I passed on the road, as they could be potential donors. I already had a fluoro workman’s vest that I wore for visibility whenever I was riding and, because I kept forgetting to take it off, quite often when I wasn’t too. I thought I might as well exploit my visibility and use the vest not just for safety but also for publicity.
Half an hour later, I had a vest covered on all available surfaces with the project website address and “CYCLE OF LEARNING” written in large black letters.
Tuesday 29 March
Kempsey to Nambucca Heads, New South Wales
74 kilometres – 4 hours
My target for the day was Coffs Harbour, 130 kilometres away, and a longer ride than I had attempted for a while. After spending a few hours in the Kempsey Library seeing to some correspondence and my blog, I made a late getaway. Once I was on the road though, I made good time thanks to a gentle breeze at my back and plenty of muesli energy in my legs. Fifty or so kilometres down the road, I stopped when I came across someone I am not sure whether to refer to as “a colleague” or “the competition”.
I realised that I had passed this man, Colin, the day before when he was on the other side of the highway but, assuming from his three-wheeled cart that he was selling ice cream, I had not stopped. If it had been any other day, this assumption would have led me immediately across the two lanes of traffic to buy a cone with one scoop of chocolate and one of mint. I was still in money-saving mode though, and felt the responsible thing was to find another three highway vendors to compare prices, so didn’t end up meeting Colin that day.
This time, when I approached Colin on the same side of the road, I got close enough to read the signage on the converted three-wheeled pram he was pushing and realised that no ice cream was involved. Instead he was walking around Australia to raise money for children with cancer. I stopped and we had a short chat on the side of the road. He was friendly, polite, and interested in my ride, but the more I talked to him, the more overwhelming my sense of inferiority grew.
Colin had spent three years planning his walk around Australia, completed a wide range of other fundraising activities previously and established a foundation for his cause. He had numerous corporate sponsors, a network of Lions service clubs, and what sounded like a team of staff behind him. In only the third month of his walk, he had already raised an incredible amount of money. Apparently, he had had drivers stop him on the side of the road to donate four figure sums to his cause.
I felt an unprecedented level of amateurness as I talked with him. I wasn’t even able to eat my golden-syrup-and-banana-pita-bread-wrap in a dignified way as I waited for Colin to finish fielding phone calls from his agent, who was setting up a parade for his arrival into Brisbane.
I rode away with a rotten feeling in my gut that had nothing to do with the cheap golden syrup that I was not at all enjoying. Colin represented everything that I was not and everything I had not done. My bike ride and speaking to small school groups and the odd church or Rotary club had been well within my comfort zone. Emailing places inviting them to invite me to speak was much easier than developing contacts and networks and pushing my cause into the public eye. Buying my own gear was less painful than approaching