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Journal: |
I was late getting away despite rising at 3am because the
internet connection that wasn’t working the previous evening now
was. I did my internet chores and left about 4:30am quickly
cycling through the sleeping Cairns out to where Highway 1 turns
inland to begin the climb to the Atherton Tableland. It was
dark, lightly drizzling and busy, but I made reasonable progress on
the winding narrow road as it climbed through the dark rainforest.
Near Kuranda there was a spectacular view over the darkened
Cairns with the first daylight appearing through the offshore
clouds. The road then leveled out a bit although it was always
climbing as it crossed the Tableland, with the odd frustrating
descent (because you knew you would have to recover any lost
elevation). The Tableland is a very fertile area with many
different kinds of fruit and vegetables grown, not to mention
coffee, tea and nuts, all available at frequent farm gate stalls.
There was also lush dairy pasture and, in pockets, dense rainforest
which lined the road like an impenetrable green wall, but through
which, you could glimpse vines, deep leafy floors and all manner of
trees and shrubs.
I stopped in the busy little town of
Atherton and had a big brekky as well as buying a couple more tyre
tubes and a new rear vision mirror (the last just dropped off for no
reason), The road continued to climb higher and higher across
the Tableland and the headwind and rain became stronger. It
got cold. I finally reached the huge wind turbines that mark the
southern edge of the Tableland and turned westwards, looking forward
to some downhill along with warmth and dryness as I headed to The
Outback. I reached Mount Garnet around 4pm and had an early
dinner of sausages and masses of baked vegetables at a roadhouse,
fitted my mirror and headed into road train country. I had
been hoping to get 300km up today, but there was too much climbing
and headwind to have any hope of that. I decided to ride until about
9pm and then camp by the road, which I did. I wore quite a few
clothes and wrapped myself in a space blanket in my one-man tent and
it was OK, although a bit cool.
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