XMAS-time inland adventure (Inverell, Armidale, Boyd River, Cangai)

It’s fair to say that all of my life inspiration comes from songs from the 70s. Most of my life is actually modelled on the lyrics to the Billy Joel classic hit Movin’ Out (Anthonys Song) <link: here>.  Then there’s the timeless wisdom about dealing with adversity captured in Devo’s Whip It <link: here>. In the case of our Xmas road trip adventure planning, we took inspiration from the bastion of team-based Manliness that is the Village People, in particular, their song Go West <link: here>

Anyone that’s been on a Xmas road trip on the east coast knows that it’s anything but peaceful. This time of year every campsite is taken, the coast road is full of caravans and camper trailers, you’re camping tent wall to tent wall with a million people.

Go West, Life is Peaceful there.

Go West, lots of open air.

So go west we did. We planned an inland Xmas adventure of camping and mountain biking through inland northern NSW.

We started with XMAS at Katie’s parents’ house in Inverell. When we weren’t eating and drinking far too much at the inlaws I was riding at the Inverell mountain bike park, which I’d driven past plenty of times but this was my first ride. I was really impressed. The small country town mountain bike club has built 3 trails all in a circuit, a 1km easy and a 3 and 5km Intermediate loops.

Trailforks Trail map

The 5km loop covered heaps of different riding. In some spots is was loamy, in others loose. Then it had technical rocky sections with massive boulders and one part you seemed to be riding on the surface of the moon. The downhills were great fun and the uphills could get pretty technical . By the end of four laps I had worked out how to carry my speed and pick my lines enough to make it up all the uphills.

Entry Sign

Well placed berms and features were found throughout.

pretty shitty photos, after a phone mishap I was transported back in time to a Samsung S4 with a broken camera lens…

After Inverell we moved on to a free camping area at The Pines mountain bike park in Armidale.

The camp site here is a large parking area at the edge of the pine forest. There’s a short walk to some drop dunnies in the bike park. It’s off the highway and nice and quiet.

The riding consists of a lot of mellow green trails through the pine forest. They’re all reasonably flat and relaxing. There are a few more advanced trails with some small jumps and obstacles. Also, there’s a few sneaky cows on the track that you need to keep an eye out for, and it looked like some kind of drifter was living in a hut in the forest (an actual drifter, not like the wannabe drifters sleeping in their cars at the edge of the forest…)

After enjoying the relaxing Armidale trails we moved on to follow up a hot tip given to us by a family friend at Inverell. They mentioned the old Glen Innes to Grafton Road which winds along the Mann and Boyd River with plenty of nice camp spots and a tunnel that had been dug by hand by convicts. As we were on the Armidale end we decided to drive along the road from south to north and we headed to Nymboida.

 

On the way to Nymboida we stopped for the night at the Clouds Creek free camp site. It’s next to the Armidale road, and if you’re lucky you can camp right next to the creek like we did.

This was a great find, if we weren’t on the way somewhere else we would have stayed there for a few days. The one funny thing about this camp site was that there were wild chooks!! Unfortunately, there was an overly excited rooster that would start it’s cock-a-doodle-dooing really early in the morning. (seriously, not a sexual innuendo.)

From Cloud Creek campsite we headed on to Nymboida and the Old Glen Innes road.  The road winds along the Boyd river and there are a lot of campsites to choose from. It was reasonably quiet considering it was over the new year period and we chose a camp site right next to the river away from the few other campers.

There was a track across the river that I took my bike across to and went for a ride. It led to a lonely scenic lake and stream up in the hills.

This place was paradise. We’ll definitely be back.

Creepy Dalmorton a few k’s upstream from where we camped. The town looked to only have one resident these days. There’s also another campground here by the river.

Apparently hand-made convict tunnel.

After Boyd River we headed to Cangai to camp next to the Mann River. There were a lot more campers here and for some reason I got the impression that the river gets pretty high at times.

When compared to the Boyd river camp Cangai felt a little crowded. After a nice night we decided to head back to Brisbane after a stop off at the Grafton Mountain bike trails, Bom Bom state forest.

After the awesome, well thought out tracks at Inverell, Bom Bom state forest felt pretty lame. It was just some really mellow single track and the features and flow of the track weren’t really all that well thought out. Seemed like it might have been made by road bike riders, or people without much mountain bike experience. This really highlighted how good the Inverell trails were.

We did a lap and then made the drive back to Brisbane.

I really enjoyed getting away from the normal coast based camping trips that we usually do. In general I never really think to head inland, but there are a lot of really great camp spots, often with few or no people and they’re often free. In fact, we didn’t pay any camp fees for the whole trip. It was really nice to be able to swim in fresh water at a lot of the camps. I really enjoyed taking bikes too.

We planned the trip using an app called Wiki Camps (https://www.wikicamps.com.au/) which I highly recommend.

We planned the mountain bike parts of the trip with an app called Trail Forks (https://www.trailforks.com/). About 15 years ago (jesus I’m old) I went on a bike based road trip up the east coast and we needed to use internet forums (they might have been called bulletin boards back then…) or stop at bike shops and chat to people to work out where the trails were to ride. Now with the Trailforks app it makes it really easy to find somewhere to do some skids and hucks wherever you happen to be. It’s awesome.

BVRT, yeah you know me

What’s really dirty, results in a sore arse, guys tend to like more than their girlfriends and isn’t anal sex? Bike touring on the Brisbane valley rail trail.

The Brisbane Valley Rail Trail (BVRT for those fond of acronyms) is an old railway line that’s been converted to a multi use trail, multi as in bike, hike or horse.

It’s about 160km long and goes from Yarraman to Wulkuraka.

With the last of the start of the year long weekend bounty coming to a close Katie and I decided we needed to squeeze some adventure into the last one.

Riding from start to finish with hiking gear it was.

Day 1.

We drove to Wulkuraka station near Ipswich and got a lift to the Yarraman end with Josie from Out there cycling for the reasonable price of 50 bucks per person.

We rode 69km from Yarraman to stop at Harlin for the first night.

The section from Blackbutt to Linville is a highlight, steady long downhill through the forest.

Rail trails are nice because they’re never too steep, but currently the section from Moore to Toogoolawah isn’t complete and there’s a detour that consists of riding through some paddocks and a lot of back roads that can get a little steep at times.

Day 2.

Day 2 we rode 68km from Harlin to a little past Coominya.

This was the hardest day for Katie, the hills on the detour really took it out of her. Luckily just at the point where it looked like all hope was lost the track turned downhill and she stepped back from the edge.

We ended up sleeping under a bridge like homeless people. I think I could get used to this.

We also rode past a pretty big fire.

Day 3.

Day 3 we finished riding 39km from near Coominya back to Wulkuraka station.

Once we’d finished first stop was to see the Colonel for a bucket of his finest. I demolished most of a family feast on my own, delicious.

Other highlights included Katie eating almost 2 packets of ibuprofen over the 3 days. Impressive.

It was pretty quiet on the trail but we met a few people, 2 of whom volunteered for rail trails Queensland. They also mentioned there is another one from kilkivan to kingaroy which you could join onto the start to make it into potentially a week of relaxing riding, or if you wanted to get really serious you could ride the whole Bicentennial Trail of which the BVRT is but a small part. I’d never heard of the bicentennial trail before, and after going all the way down the bicentennial trail rabbit hole on Google I could feel the seriousness slowly but surely building.

FACTS:
How to get there:

Drive to one end and give Out there cycling a call to drop you at the other end. They can also drop you off and pick you up from any town along the way.

Camping Cost:

Free

Other Resources:

BVRT website

Queenstown extreme

With the end of fun soon approaching (real life, living in a house as opposed to a car, being gainfully employed and daily showering) I’d planned one last hurrah with my mates Kev and Terry for a week of mountain biking in Queenstown, New Zealand. Hurrah!

The plan was to ride, drink, sleep, repeat.

As I’d never been to Queenstown or the South Island of NZ I wasn’t sure what to expect. The only other time I’d been to New Zealand was a surf trip to the north island. If you’re planning a surf trip and you live in Australia, don’t go to the north island of new zealand, go surfing in Australia instead.

I’d heard good things about the riding here, but the last time I’d been mountain biking was at Whistler, Canada and I didn’t fancy Queenstowns chances of impressing me more than Whistler. But bloody hell, it sure did.

The hill at Queenstown isn’t as big as Whistler, but they fit an amazing number of really well thought out tracks into such a small space. The more you ride them the more you appreciate them. The faster you go the more you realise that keeping your wheels on the ground is completely optional. You can send it (mountain biker talk for take inappropriate risks) the whole way down. 

Instead of a chairlift there’s a gondola. On my first day, after a big night I was convinced this glass cocoon of sea sickness’s only purpose was to prevent me from emptying my stomach of last night’s tequila into consequence-free free space. My main concern in my delicate state was sure that once the Mexican liquid left my mouth/nose/eyes/ears and got spayed back into my and my compañeros faces it would trigger what I like to call tequila hangover critical mass. In short order the gondola would turn into a fish bowl of worn out, dehydrated middle aged men swimming and convulsing in last night’s tequila and kebabs. With this in mind most of my gondola rides were made holding onto the seat, breathing deeply, remaining perfectly still and staring at the horizon.

But, the riding.

Speed.

I'd like to thank my sponsor, Speights Gold

Air.

Aggression.

Jumps.

Skids.

The tracks in Queenstown are so good they make you feel like kung fu panda in his opening scene. There’s no charge for awesomeness, or attractiveness.

We spent most of the time riding downhill in the bikepark, courtesy of the gondola. But we also made a trip out to the 7 mile bike trails and Coronet peak trails.

You can ride out to 7 mile, but we took a bike taxi up to Coronet Peak. This was organised through Vertigo bikes. There’s also the Gorge Rd dirt jumps.  Probably the best jump park I’ve ever seen. The effort put into these in incredible, I’m pretty sure some of the ramps even go upside down.

Unlike most mountain biking destinations there are plenty of non mountain biking tourists in Queenstown due to the towns status as the adventure capital of the world. This means that the place generally smells nicer than other mountain biking destinations and there’s less hairy smelly men in their 20s acting like teenagers. But, the town is just really pretty.

The view from the top of the gondola

I took one day off riding to head out for a walk at Mt Cook but unfortunately it was pretty overcast. Even so the drive out there was amazing. I felt like we were driving to Mordor.

These legends

At some stage I’ll definitely be back. There’s so many hikes I would like to do around Queenstown and plenty of other extreme for extreme men like myself to get excited over.