Year: 2011

Last week I complained about how monotonous Pine Plantation Forests can be to ride through. Today I thought I’d rectify that by exploring the Beerburrum Pine Plantation for a few hours to see if I could find some more interesting tracks.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that they all look like this, with long straight dirt roads and rows of pine trees, but that’s not the case.

Some of the land bordering creeks and swamps is unsuitable for plantation timber, so it usually is just left as is – an oasis of biodiversity within a larger monoculture of slash pine. Riding along the borders of these sections I often found twisty narrow little tracks which were much more fun to ride on. Because of the extra grass, the tracks were less muddy than the big wide dirt roads.

This was another section of pine forest bordering a creek. While trying to avoid some puddles, I looked down at my feet and spotted this magnificent looking Lace Monitor, or Goanna. He didn’t move a muscle – just stared at me and hoped I’d eventually go away (which I did).

In between the large straight roads, there are myriads of smaller tracks like these. Some grassy, some just two lines of vehicle tracks. They’re all fun to ride – it just takes a bit of curiosity to find them.

Today I rode about 54km in almost 4 hours. I didn’t rush it – it was nice just to take it easy and see what I could discover. The tracks were mostly flat, and easy to ride. I hardly raised a sweat, so I’m giving this one 5 out of 10 on the tough-o-meter. But for enjoyment, I’d say it’s well worth the time.

I thought I’d try another A to B ride where we rode between two points, and caught the train back. This let me cover more distance, and allowed me to scout out some new trails that I might take some friends on in future. Today my long-suffering friend Simon came with me.
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Over the last month or so I’ve been planning a ride over the D’Aguilar Range with a few friends. We had arranged for about 15 people to do the ride today, but it started raining a few days ago, which meant most people didn’t want to do it due to the weather.

Despite the rain, five of us decided we’d give it a go today anyway. After all, fortune favours the brave, and as Woody Allen once said, 99% of success is simply turning up.

So we set off on our bikes from Ferny Grove Railway Station shortly after 7am, hoping to arrive back their later in the day by train.

This time I think our determination paid off. The rain didn’t really hassle us too much until we got to the misty high-point of the trip at the top of Dundas Road near Mt Nebo.

From there the track became steep and muddy. The rangers have taken a grader along the fire trail recently to smooth it out. This is normally a good thing, but in the current wet weather it made the trail loose and muddy with a consistency in some parts similar to peanut butter. Some of the descents are steep, and I think we did well to keep the bikes under control and not fall off.

By the time we got to Fernvale, the bikes were caked with mud, and the chains were clogged with grit.

Darb had a brilliant idea to hijack the firehose at the local petrol station (after asking them first) and blast the mud off the bikes. I think each bike lost a couple of kilograms of weight in the process.

From there we followed a few of the quieter gravel roads south to Walloon. The rain got heavier, the roads got muddier, and we eventually rolled into Walloon dirty, drenched, cold and thirsty.

I read somewhere that beer is one of the fastest drinks to re-hydrate and replace minerals lost due to hard work. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but we decided it would be worthwhile trying it out. I think we agreed.

The ride was trickier due to the rain, but easier because we avoided the “Wall of Dirt” due to the wet weather. Almost 70km, about 1,350m ascent / descent and 3,900 kcal. On the tough-o-metre I’d still give it 9 out of 10.