Day 582 | Thomson River bridge: just outta Sale
92 km | zzOz total: 19,385 km
I roll the last of the 17 km down the rail trail and civilisation hits. The Princes Highway: where do all these cars come from?
Yesterday on the Buchan Road I would have been passed by 200 cars and I don’t believe that there are even that many people in the locality, can’t even call it a town.
It was this afternoon before I’d finished my supermarket shopping, battery recharging, and talking on my mobile phone to correspondents in other states, I’d forgotten how much time it takes just to have a normal life.
It’s unsurprising the Princes was busy, it is, after all, the major coastal highway linking Sydney and Melbourne and it’s the finale of the summer holiday season. Half the traffic was vehicles towing trailers or boats and half of them had bikes aboard, I do wonder why people just don’t set out on the bike and leave all that unnecessary ballast behind, I guess they feel they have to take all that redundancy to feel they have had a proper holiday, just doesn’t make much sense to me.
I debated travelling on a more sedate road but the shoulder is usually quite generous on the highway so if you want to traverse this flat land speedily, as I am currently doing, the traffic doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve done plenty of slow travel, I’m not seeing much point in this closely settled farmland, in fact it could be said I’m hightailing it. I’ve travelled this area often enough in motorised transportation in the past and it really is the endgame of this overly long little adventure.
A few more days and it will be all over.