Category: Pine Rivers

The ride today started out as an experiment to see how long it took to ride from home to Ferny Grove via Bunyaville. (An hour as it turns out). But after that it turned into a hillfest. I decided to pit myself against the short-steep climb up Camp Mountain. In the past I was intimidated by it, but today I gave it my all, and surprised myself by conquering the hill.

I was yelling at myself towards the end (I must have sounded crazy) “Get Up!” “Come on!” “Go!”. And it seemed to work. I gave it everything I had, and nailed that monster of a hill for the first time. It feels fantastic to slay a big hill – doing something that you thought you might not have been able to do.

From there I headed up the mountain towards Scrub Road….

Scrub Road is an easy way to get from the bitumen on Mount Nebo Road, into the Forest. It’s a fairly steep descent down to the pretty creek, and then a long slow climb up to the shelter and water tank on South Boundary Road.

The wattle blossoms on South Boundary Road look beautiful, and smell fantastic.

South Boundary Road runs from Mount Nebo down almost to The Gap.

It has some fun smooth descents, beautiful forests and raucous birds.

I always love riding this trail.

All up, 80km, 4,700kcal, and about 1,600m of ascent. On the tough-o-metre, this one gets 9 out of 10 because of the distance, and the climb up Camp Mountain.

D’Aguilar National Park is spectacular – even on a bleak. cool, cloudy day like it was today.

I rode up “The Goat Track” headed for Mount Glorious, then set off down Joyners Ridge Road.

The cool rainforest at the top of Joyners Ridge Road at Mount Glorious is a delight to roll through on the bike.

All up it’s about a 10km descent to the South Branch of England Creek at the bottom. Enjoy the descent, because once you get to the bottom of the hills, you have to go up!

Goodes Road is a steep fire trail that climbs 550m in 5km from England Creek back up to Mount Glorious.

I must confess I took this photo, not because I was impressed with the view, but because I needed a rest.

That climb is hard work!

In hindsight, the view is pretty good too 🙂

At the top of Goodes Road there’s a strange looking spotted gum that has a couple of signs on it.

The strange thing is that it looks like it has grown over one of the signs so all that’s left is a square “lump” in the trees “throat”.

Dare we hope that the trees are taking over?

Once I managed to climb back up to the top of the hill, Dundas Road provided a really pleasant ride along the ridge top back to Mount Glorious.

This is a fun ride after the hard work of the climb – quick easy trails that wind through the rainforest, with Bellbirds tinkling in the background.

All up this ride was just over 35km, with 1240m of ascent and almost 3,000 kcal. It was hard work, but a lot of fun!

Last year I tried to ride to Dianas Bath. Today I thought I’d give it another go.

Diana’s Bath is a beautiful rock pool on Byron Creek in the D’Aguilar Ranges. It’s secluded, hard to get to, and picturesque. You can drive there in a 2wd car from the west via Esk. You can get there via 4wd and a bit of a hike over the mountains from the East. So I thought I’d (again) try to get there from the east via Dayboro.

I drove to the foot of the mountains, and rode from there, rather that riding from home – saving me about 60km. The ride starts with a 200m ascent in less than 2km. It’s a tough climb but if you sit back and work hard, it’s do-able. The views at the top of the hill are worth the climb:

Then there’s some fun downhill, and bouncing along the creek beds. Byron Creek is really pretty. The water actually looks a light cloudy blue colour. I don’t know whether it’s sediment, or something in the water, but it’s amazing to see. The banks of the creek are fringed with palm trees and rainforest vegetation, and there’s a continuous sound of Bellbirds and Whipbirds ringing in the air.

Eventually you have to do another 200m ascent, but this time it’s in about 1.5km along Diana’s Bath Road. I think they should rename this road “Heart Break Hill” because you need to be totally committed to be able to ride to the top.

When I got to the top, I saw a sign which said “A Break” – so I thought – why not? 🙂

I followed the road as far as I could and eventually it disappeared into lantana and weeds. So I decided to play it safe and turn around. I wasn’t going to get to Diana’s Bath today.

It was only when I got home and checked out the track log that I realized I had gotten to within 100 metres of Diana’s Bath, but didn’t realize it at the time. So I think it’ll be a case of “Third Time Lucky”. Perhaps I’ll take a long-suffering friend with me next time for my final assault on this elusive part of the world!

All up, about 1,000m of ascent in 25km, and about 3,000cal. Very hard work. Some of the ride was flat, but when you consider that I came and went on the same track, and if you subtract a few km for the flat bits, that works out to 10km of 10% climbs, 10km of 10% downhills, and 5km of bumpy creek beds.