Back in the depths of time, sometime in April, Meg and I scrounged 5 days off and headed down to Victoria. The plan was to ride the Murray to the Mountains rail trail, starting in Wangaratta and finishing in Bright. Though as we quickly learnt the locals don’t call it “Wangaratta: Rural City” as the signs would have you believe, it’s just “the Wang”. Go Aussie.

We spent one day packing and then driving to the Wang, where we camped at the excellent Painters Island Caravan Park. Day two saw us up early and packing the bikes, before heading off on the rail trail.

For the uninitiated the “rail trail” is a rough bitumen bike track which has been built along the former railway line. It’s an excellent idea, it’s fairly gentle in terms of hills, there’s already a route established, and really what else is a disused railway line good for!

We made good time on the flat, and ended up riding about 55km the first day. There was one minor hill, which I almost didn’t notice until I was all tired all of a sudden, but a quick rest and we were over. As we got closer to Myrtleford it got increasingly smokey, which was a bit weird until we worked out what it was. It made it feel a little eary, like we were riding into the appocalypse or something.

Still we spent a lovely night in Myrtleford’s campground, just near town under some big old trees. There was baked bean suprise for dinner, with fresh vegies from the shop!

From Myrtleford to Bright is only about 30km, so day two was nice and relaxed. It was a bit overcast and still smokey, but still really nice riding. Lunch was at a lovely spot beside the river near Porepunkah, followed by just a short ride into Bright. We got in early enough that we had time to ride around town, and up to a nearby hill for a view of the smokey sunset.

The original plan was to stay in Bright overnight and then ride the ~80km back in one day, it’s downhill afterall! Unfortunately it rained pretty heavily overnight and we decided riding 80km wasn’t the most sensible thing to be doing in the rain, especially with fully loaded bikes that don’t handle so well. So instead we spent the day in Bright, reading and wandering around, it really is a nice spot even if there’s a few too many tourists at times.

In the afternoon I caught the bus back to the Wang to get the car, and then drove back to Bright. It rained all night again, and in the morning we headed off. After a minor detour via the Beechworth bakery and a long drive through torrential rain we made it back to the ‘berra safe and sound.

Jk lent us his GPS, so we have a super cool GPS track.

View the photos »

From the words-you-thought-would-never-make-a-headline-department:

Turnbull gave me pep talk not bollocking: Nelson

Thanks to the SMH for that one via the Flute.

And in case you weren’t 100% sure that he is in fact the Manchurian Candidate, here’s proof:

Clarke & Dawe do a good summary too.

Ah, good times

This video is damn funny, I wish I knew who it was doing the voice-over, anyone know?

Meg and I made roast vegie risotto and grilled fish, it was yum.

Sometime a while back it was my birthday, I almost blinked and missed it. Meg made me the best ice cream cake ever!

It seems there are still people out there who I haven’t regaled with my splinter story, don’t dispair you won’t miss out!

When I had to move out of Dickson I ended up with three cupboards I didn’t really need or have space for. I managed to give one and a half away but the other one had to be dumped. In order to get it in the trailer I ripped it apart and in the process whacked my hand against the half destroyed cupboard.

I was pretty sure I’d got a splinter, it hurt a fair bit and a bit of blood and air came out of my hand, but there was no splinter visible and within a few hours it was healed over.

Once the swelling went down it was clear there was a splinter in there. To cut a long story short, I had to have my hand cut open twice to get the damn thing out – and this is what we found!

I hope I never do myself a serious injury, that was enough for me!