Descent out of the Mountains

The town of Ebor has the highest altitude in New England, and at 7,000 ft marks its highest settlement. Though it would be another 40 odd miles or so before the rolling hills were done with, afterwards would begin a tremendously long descent through a cavalcade of climates: barren scrubland to tall sand-colored grasses to forested pasture, and finally tropical rainforest as the rain-drenched eastward side of Great Dividing Range spilled toward the coast. This part of Australia is some if its most beautiful, making the long haul uphill worthwhile and becoming my favorite stretch of cycling so far in years. Passing through dense, tangled canopiesa tangled green canopy stocking hundreds of species per square foot, I let the bike freewheel for large portions taking bend after downward-sloping-bend while hundreds of different birds and small animals chirped, gurgled, and dashed through the canopy above me.

My free-wheeling came to an end in Bellingen, a hippy town that receives much of its climate from the coast. It was a fine 20 degrees (70 F). The air had lost its aridness, seeming to warm the temperature still further and had Bellingen been actually on the coast, I would almost certainly have gone for a swim.

One thing held me back from pressing on to the coast, however. Having lived the last 10 months in New Zealand there was an appointment I simply could not afford to miss that afternoon, the kickoff of the All Blacks versus NZ's "western island," aka arch-rival Australia. I bunked down in Bellingen early and grabbed a barstool at the nearest pub.

The full-to-firecode pub nearest the hostel went silent as the All Blacks did the haka - a ritual dance that commences every All Blacks game. The haka is Maori. Fierce. Serious. Performed by guys (many of them Maori themselves) surely big enough to make a meal of most people. And for a country of roughly 4 million people, New Zealand has a habit of thwomping others in professional rugby whether 3, 4, or in the case of Australia, 5 times its size. The All Blacks game this time turned out to be no different with NZ fracturing the Wallabies (literally in fact, professional rugby rarely goes a game without stretchers on the field) 32-12. I left the pub grinning with trans-Tasman loyalty.

I made dinner that night at the hostel kitchen, swapping stories with a fellow cyclist named Roger and ecologist-turned-permanent-traveler Thomas, each of us sharing a mutual fascination with the Australian road keeping the three of us up into the night. When the Southern Cross finally tilted vertical at about midnight, I turned in for the night.