Paul's Touring Blog

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Update Day 53 22-3-2026 (3-21-2026 in the US)

Added posts for days 30 & 31. We’re in Bonny Hill and doing a short ride today to Port MacQuarie. Along the way, we’ll visit a Koala hospital. We have Warmshowers hosts tonight who will hopefully help us figure out the train system to get on to (or closer to) Brisbane. Only 11 days left for this adventure.

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After a good night’s rest, we had breakfast and left Maggie’s for a walk in the rain to the train station to get our tickets for that afternoon. A quite easy process and we were soon walking around town. One thing we’ve noticed in both NZ and Australia is that the downtown areas are still very vibrant. Lots of small shops and restaurants with awnings covering the sidewalks so you can window shop out of the rain. Even when there are big box stores, they are located in or close to downtown in a mall, but very few malls or big box stores as we know them — well outside the downtown surrounded by macadam parking lots. Sunday morning the cafes were full of people as were the streets.

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Well, we got some sleep last night. Dana was kept up by some women playing tunes well after the dudes got quiet. I did not hear that at all as I had earplugs in trying to block the “hoo-rahs” and cackles coming from the guys party. Fortunately, today’s ride wasn’t too difficult: 50 miles and 1600′ of climbing. Relatively easy given the earlier parts of the GOR.

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Happy to report no kanga intrusions last night. Our planned short day today allowed for other activities and we walked to the beach where we watched our uni-student-trio attempting to surf. The surf was pretty rough and they aborted their first try as the current was pushing them toward some rocks. Dana went for a run/walk on the beach and I headed back to camp and the kitchen to charge up and work on the blog. Ian and Janet stopped by and Janet left us a bag of blackberries to go with our breakfast. They were planning on going birding again and that if they were gone, we knew how to get our cooler items. I said thanks and good-bye in advance in case we didn’t see them again.

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We left Apollo Bay after a pretty good night’s sleep, and though my cold was still a presence, I felt better and ready for the first climb that started 2 mi outside of Apollo Bay. The short day yesterday allowed us to change our destination to Princetown, which avoided the almost 10 mile round trip detour into Johanna’s Beach campground. I was happy about that!

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A good night’s rest, a warm breakfast, and we were ready to move down the GOR to Johanna Beach campground.

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Back in Geelong again. It’s 7 AM and we had a mixed night of sleeping and short naps. We hopped on the bikes without a plan of what we were going to do next, heading to a McDonald’s for the free wifi, some coffee and some what ifs.

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After we got back from the penguin & possum hunt, we had a relaxing sleep. We packed up, left our bags at the reception office, and left for the Tasmanian Arboretum in search of our next wildlife experience: platypuses.

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We packed up early and rode the very short ride (for us) back to Devonport. Rain was called for and we got some on the way, and we rode to a little bakery near the ferry terminal and had breakfast and coffee. We had a reservation at the Eli Hotel on the other side of the river and headed there in hopes of dropping off our stuff and being free to tour around the city sans extra weight. The hotel folks were delightful and helpful and let us check in early since the people who booked our room the night before never showed. What a surprise bonus.

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In the morning we packed up camp and hiked back up main drag. Got some coffee at a local shop and had our breakfast at a park bench on the busy main street. We got on our way to Sheffield and our intent was to go past a wildlife reserve that also had devils and then do a big climb over to Sheffield.