The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR), developed and mapped in 1997 by the Adventure Cycling Association, is approximately 2,700 miles long and is considered by many to be the birthplace of bikepacking as a sport. But the road was pulling me onwards, and so I boarded the Stockton ferry and left bustling Newcastle behind for another time.*We acknowledge that the majority of this route travels through the unceded traditional territory of the First Nations and Indigenous peoples who first occupied it. Had I been in the mood to dawdle, I might have stopped to snoop around.
This, I guessed, was where the Fernleigh Track would once have delivered its wagons. The Queen’s Wharf ferry terminal was perched on the far side of Scott Street from Newcastle’s former railway terminus, a Victorian red-brick edifice that looked for all the world like it had been uprooted from a provincial English city. I stopped thrice en route to the Hunter River: once at a dead end at the bottom of a fabulous freewheeling descent (and, it turned out, fabulous first-gear ascent), again to make myself another instant roadside cheese toastie, and a third time at a bike shop for some chain lube. The Fernleigh Track tailed off ( see my previous post), and Newcastle came and went in a dull morning of hilly coastal headlands strewn with bike paths and promenades. Had the detour been worth it?Īt some point on the third day, the ride began to acquire its own momentum. I soon recognised the spot where the north end of the Old Gibber Trail had spat me and my broken wheel out the previous evening. More campers sped past, the din of eager engines announcing their approach through the forest, heading to Seal Rocks for one last late-summer weekend of fun. Surfers paddled out to the break as I pedalled waves of asphalt. (Where I live, a village store with “very limited supplies” means one that only sells certain brands of vodka and cigarettes.) I’d been told it had “very limited supplies”, so I was surprised to find bananas on the shelf among a range of fresh produce, groceries and souvenirs. While waiting for my order among bleary-eyed barefooted surfers, I popped into the store nearby. I stopped for coffee in Seal Rocks (flat white, no sugar). My goal was to reach Forster before lunch, get my broken spoke replaced, and live happily ever after.
I rose before dawn, ignoring the scent of bacon, and rode out of camp. There are emotional parallels to be found on the road, too. Similarly, when balance and curiosity pair up with that equally extraordinary invention known as the bicycle, they together express the same transcendental freedoms embodied by the free-spinning wheel and articulated in English with labels like “cycle touring” and “bikepacking”. (To understand the genius of this mechanical principle more deeply, grab some cone spanners and overhaul your front hub, or at least watch someone do it on YouTube.) Wikipedia informs us that bearings of this kind have been recovered from Roman shipwrecks dating back over 2,000 years. It is here, in the space between two atoms of polished steel, that can be found the transition between human and machine. What makes this possible is the wheel – or, more specifically, the assembly consisting of axle shaft and rotational ball bearing.
Yet you continue rolling forward anyway, propelled by your own momentum. When you stop pedalling and freewheel, you have ceased to exert any discernible effort. Of all the metaphors that capture the essence of bicycle travel, perhaps freewheeling is the most appropriate.
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