Made Possible By

November 17, 2015

Dead Reckoning: Syd to Mel Normcore Bicycle Tour Day 05

Tumut to Wolgal Hut

SECTION N^o1 Day 05 Stats & Intro

START - STOP: Tumut - Wolgal Hut

DISTANCE: 60.8 mi.

ELEVATION GAIN: 9308 ft.

RIDING TIME: 7:42:07

TIME AWAKE SPENT IN PURSUIT OF THE TRIP, ROUGHLY: 9:00:00

POINTS OF INTEREST / OBJECTIVES: Visit Tumut Ranger Station and enjoy the artifacts and taxidermied animals. Ride the Snowy Mountain Highway. Lunch and stock provisions at Talbingo. Visit Yarrangobilly. Sleep at Wolgal Hut.

CUE SHEET: KML File Download

WEATHER: Hot and sunny with a light fragrance of roadside carcass.

MAJOR SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
A macabre specter shadowed us as we rode from Tumut to Wolgal Hut. The day started with a cantankerous chef who looked like death warmed over. From there we rode along a highway littered with carcasses. The heat boiled our blood. The climb broke our backs. Even the cool, welcoming creek had an air of danger. And at the end of the day we found ourselves in a haunted hut so unsettling that we, legitimate grown-ups, wouldn’t even get out of our beds at night to take a leak.

8:07am: Lachlan and Kyle wake up and mosey back to the hotel restaurant for the much-advertised and promoted breakfast.
8:08am: The lights are off as are the sterno trays. Breakfast has a ‘closed’ vibe, like a Wee Jasper closed vibe.
8:12am: Lachlan and Kyle run into the hotel’s owner in the parking lot.
8:12am: Hotel owner, “You lot going to have breakfast?’
8:12am: Us, “Restaurant is closed, looks like none of us are going to have breakfast.”
8:12am: Hotel owner, “:(“
8:12am: Hotel owner, “To tell you the truth boys I’m trying to sell this place, have a couple buyers on the line, should be out from under it in two weeks. Longest two weeks of your life boys. This cook, he’s good, but a handful, I’ll get him up, check back in the restaurant around 9.”
8:13am: Us, “Okay, you don’t have to, but thanks.”
8:13am: Hotel Owner, “It’s my pleasure boys, my pleasure.”
9:00am: We show up for breakfast. The cook, who warmed to us the night before, even gifted us with a surprise dessert plate of sliced mangos, has reverted back to what we can only assume is his cold and cantankerous everyday self.
9:15am: Breakfast shows up. Eggs, potatoes, and four kinds of meats: ham, breakfast sausage, bacon, and what appears to be a cooked Slim Jim. Nobody snapped into it.
9:37am: The hotel owner comes to talk with us once again, “Okay guys, where you from? The States, you all sound like you’re from the States.”
9:37am: Lachlan, “I’m from here, from Port Macquarie.”
9:37am: Hotel Owner, “Oh yeah, then why do you have a American accent?”
9:37am: FOR THE RECORD, Lachlan definitely does not have an American accent.
9:37am: Lachlan, “I don’t.”
9:37am: Hotel Owner, “Well you fooled me.”
10:17am: We’re assembled in the parking lot and ready to start riding when the hotel owner approaches.
10:17am: “I’ve got a daughter around your age, any of you married?”
10:17am: Ummmmmmmmmm…
10:18am: We take a group photo with the hotel owner and start riding.
10:30am: Before we can officially hit the road we need to check in with Simon, he’s the ranger in charge of Wolgal Hut. He gives us the rundown on hut protocol.
10:35am: There is discussion about hiring Simon to drop food at the hut for us, since he says he’s headed up that way. This would save us from having to pack a ton of food up the climb.
10:36am: Simon is unsure he’ll be headed past the hut. We must pack our food.
11:20am: The first carcass of the day is spotted on the side of the road. It turns out we will see our Australian Megafauna today; unfortunately we’ll only get to experience them in a post-car/truck/ute collision state.
11:21am: The Snowy River Highway is a Death Highway.
11:23am: Turns out that Australia is hot in the summer. Also, it turns out that if you don’t start riding until 11:00am you wind up riding through the hottest part of the day. We were taught this lesson daily but somehow it never seemed to sink in.
11:45am: Lachlan had this little portable speaker with him and today’s memorable jam was Aussie legend John Williamson’s Hey True Blue.
12:15pm: We reach Talbingo, the last place to provision before climbing up to Wolgal Hut. The climb starts just outside Talbingo, and from the town you can hear trucks engine braking their way down the hill. Also it’s really hot.
12:55pm: We’ve added weight to our bodies via lunch and weight to our bikes via dinner. This little break has also really allowed the temperature to spike. Just in time for the climb!
12:56pm: Daniel is particularly inventive with his storage and transport solutions, turning his SWAT bibs into full blown spandex cargo shorts.
1:45pm: We hit Black Perry Lookout. A couple from Atlanta rolls up in an RV. They are not friendly. The climb to this point was steep and hot. Daniel rests his forehead on the railing of the lookout, because it’s made of metal and party in the shade. Things are feeling a bit rocky.
1:50pm: The road begins to level out a bit.
4:17pm: We arrive at the Yarrangobilly Caves turn off. Lachlan’s pretty sure that poisonous Rock Fish don’t swim in creeks this high up, but he’s not positive. Fortunately, despite being nearly impossible to see, you’ll know if you step on one because their sting is excruciating.
4:18pm: We risk it and cool our feet and legs in the creek. It’s a wonderful feeling.
5:45pm: Wolgal Hut!!! We’ve made it.
6:30pm: Hot showers, snacks, and a gas fire. The temperature has definitely dropped.
6:31pm to 10pm ish: We make dinner, lounge around, tell jokes.
10:00pm to Z:ZZpm: This hut is haunted.

FROM THE YONDER JOURNAL STORE

Too Easy Tee

$30.00

In Australia they have a saying, Too Easy. What’s Too Easy you might ask? Well, in the land down under just about everything. It’s a universal rejoinder, acknowledgement, and affirmation. Ordering a coffee, Too Easy. Riding your scooter to the pie shop, Too Easy. Chilling against a wall, Too Easy. Everything in OZ is TOO EASY.

BUY HERE!

SECTION N^o2 Yonder Journo's Dingo Lingo

Communication is a KEY component to an effective and efficient investigation of a culture. In order to 1) understand what people are saying, 2) fit in, 3) keep your foot out of your mouth¹¹You won’t make the mistake of telling your wife you’re looking forward to sharing a coupla sluzzas with friends after dinner because you assumed a sluzza was a mixed ice drink not unlike a blended margarita., and 4) demonstrate respect via a willingness and excitement to learn, Yonder Journal collaborated with a team of Australian Linguists and Cultural Anthropologists to create an interactive glossary module of common expressions. Especially those which we’d be likely to hear and/or use in the context of a Normcore Bicycle Tour in the Australian In-and-Outback.

MIDDY : a small bottle of beer (285ml/~10oz), typically enjoyed, due its diminutive size and thus lower alcohol content, in the middle of the day, with lunch.

FAIR DINKUM : genuine, true, tru dat, word.

SECTION N^o3 Tumut

The hotel owner is the woman in the shades. We have NO idea who the other woman is. Kevin and Kyle have on their best party shirts!

Oh, we figured it out. That other woman is a wax statue just erected there in the parking lot. We all gathered around her to take pictures.

Pssssst, it's a ranger station.

Foreshadowing the condition of most animals we would see today.

That look when you don't trust anyone, ever.

Lachlan, "Why am I here?"

Kyle, "I'm having phantom ice cream headaches."

SECTION N^o4 Bingo!!! You've arrived at Talbingo

This is the start of the climb. You know how pictures often flatten an image, making it hard to get a sense of incline? Well the road did that to our eyeballs for a while. Notice how there's an incline? Like you really get a sense that there's a big hill there? Riiiiiight, now you're getting it, now this little caption rant should be making sense.

CLOSED.

Specialized Recons

1. Black and fashionable. The lace up system is really great, allowing for micro adjustment as your feet bloat in the heat of the day and the weight of those tuna cans becomes more and more noticeable.

Long Grain Rice

1. In blind taste test 9 out of 10 consumers were able to tell, just by mouth feel, that long grain rice is definitely longer than short grain rice. 8 out of 10 consumers associate higher nutritional value with the longer grains. The Dead Reckoning Syd 2 Mel crew noted that until it was poured into a pot for cooking, the rice looked, felt, and weighed like a bag of sand.

Nescafé

1. Little coffee crystals that liquify when they hit boiling water. Even science doesn’t know how this happens. Turns out Nescafé was one of those great scientific accidents like penicillin or the combustion engine. We don’t know why it works, we just know THAT it works.

Corn Medley

1. It's corn doing a hodgepodge of all its greatest hits.

Tabasco (Habanero)

1. This was such a surprise find for us! Traditionally Australians are not big on hot spice. So to find this little gem in a nearly-deserted town at the base of the Snowy Mountains was a real treat. Why was it there? Perhaps the purchasing manager bought it as a gag gift, or maybe unbeknownst to us, Talbingo is a hotbed of American tourism? In reality there is probably no clear or reasonable answer, you just accept it as a gift of fortune and move on.

Onion

1. Named after the famous satirical newspaper, onions will make you cry—but if prepared correctly they can also make you smile. Just like a good joke.

Coconut Milk

1. Unlike a wild coconut, this can of coconut milk is actual physically possible to open. I don’t know about you, but my imagination is incapable of imagining the Rube Goldberg machine capable of opening a coconut.

Tuna

1. Laden with valuable protein, these dumbbells of fish meat added notable weight to our packs. But their life-giving sustenance more than made up for their weight.

Thins

1. Potato chips dipped in saltwater and left to dry. After a long day of riding wherein your body has done its best to rid itself of vital salts, these little babies are a great way to replenish what you’ve lost. Also, they are LIGHTWEIGHT AF!

Ramen

1. Just add boiling water and the soup in these styrofoam canisters grows and expands just like dinosaurs. What's interesting is that although the final product is not shaped like a chicken, it tastes like a chicken. As opposed to an expandable dinosaur which, for all intents and purposes, looks exactly like a dinosaur but tastes like a petrochemical accident. I guess you get looks or taste. You can’t have both.

Ripples Cookies

1. Daniel bought these and we all bemoaned the decision: “Extra weight,” “Don’t need that crap in my body,” “Sugar is death.” But you know what? When we finally made it to Wolgal Hut, these hot little babies were the first to be devoured. Turns out sugar is life.

Yonder Journal Presents: A Glimpse of Rural Suburbia.

Koalas are supposed to live here. They don't. As far as we can tell, Australia's eucalyptus trees are collectively an abandoned Koala Bear City. There are all these great trees, with all these great leaves for Koala Bears to chew on and get stoned off. Yet the KBs are nowhere to be found. Seriously what GIVES?!?!

Mile 239

SECTION N^o5 Yarrangobilly

Basically Lachlan is an Omar Sharif-esque cycling Sheik come to survey and conquer the Snowy Mountains. Kevin and Kyle are festooned in the livery of the Sheik's most trusted porters.

Mile 249

This is what Australians call "rockfish baiting".

A I R N E T

SECTION N^o6 Rolling Through Australia's Great Dividing Range

SECTION N^o7 Wolgal Hut
Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning

Mile 267

You can't deny it, there is definitely something very horror-movie about this image.

If you haven't seen a haunted moon before, now you have.

Haunted soda water, haunted beans, haunted salt, haunted tea, haunted vinegar, haunted coffee makers, haunted shelves, haunted wood paneling, haunted ziplock bags, haunted counter tops, haunted picture, haunted picture frame, haunted matting, haunted glass, haunted countertops, haunted crockery.

Haunted warning sign (x3), haunted measuring cups, haunted spatula, haunted ladle, haunted egg beater, haunted whisk, haunted strainer, haunted weird red rubber bag, haunted water.

Hey—Kevin Franks can make a fine coconut curry. And by the way, the tuna, rice, onions, coconut milk, and Jim Beam are not haunted. We brought them to the hut with us. At least we don't think they were haunted. The haunting rules are a bit unclear at this point. If, once an object passes through the threshold of the haunted location in question does it immediately become haunted itself or does it take a haunting, a paranormal activity, for the objects to be imbued with their haunted-ness? If you know the answer, please send an email to < ahref="[email protected]">[email protected]

SECTION N^o8 Trip Tricks: Day 05

Thinking about visiting the Snowy Mountains? Want to get in the Australian high country? Curious to see local artifacts and taxidermied examples of regional animals? It’s all here! Taxidermy, artifacts and visitor support. Hey, we got you!

“If you’re renting a hut in the Tumut ranger district, this is the place to visit. You don’t have a choice, this is THE place to visit. But just because they’re insistent you stop by doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy the experience. To ease the pain they have a museum and all sorts of gifts for you to buy, like wind chimes, posters, postcards, and caps. The stuff is great! Come for the rental and stay for the gifts.”—Kyle von Hoetzendorff

“I got fired from the Tumut Ranger station a couple years ago for exploring the internet on my own time. It was my OWN time and on my own time I should be free to express myself, and that includes expressing myself through my online search choices. These people are puritanical fascists, I wouldn’t recommend going there, no matter how nice the hut you’re looking to rent may be”—Lance Hume

If you’re bound for the Snowy Mountains we’re the last town on this side of the range worth a damn. We’ve got food, beverages, fishing supplies, even DVDs for rent. Is there any reason to shop anywhere else? We didn’t think so either.

“The turnoff to Talbingo is at the very bottom of a very steep section of the Snowy Mountain Highway. We could see what we were in for. It wasn’t happening without supplies. Were we judicious? Did we keep in mind that whatever we bought we were going to have to lug up this hill to Wolgal Hut? No. We bought whiskey, canned tuna, coconut milk, rice, cookies, and a bunch of other foodstuffs. I blame it on the excellent merchandising strategy of the Talbingo Supermarket; this combined with their surprisingly deep selection of items led us to possibly over-buy. However our dinner was fantastic.”—Kyle von Hoetzendorff

“The wife and I head to Talbingo for every holiday and of course we do all of our shopping at this market, it’s the only one! Not that it would matter, if you’re thinking about opening another market in this town you better think twice!”—Mike Dudley

You might be headed to the Yarrangobilly hot springs and caves. Well don’t get ahead of yourself! Stop here for a spot of relaxation and tranquility before heading up the jeep track. You might even want to dip your toes into the water.

“Our crew was getting pretty hot by the time we hit the Yarrangobilly Alpine Parking Lot. We had just ridden our bikes up the hill from Tumut. Fortunately there’s a tidy little creek running through the place, some well-kept grass, and a few picnic tables spread around for us passers-through to utilize. There were also some pre-established car camping spots if you are so inclined. We dipped our toes in the water and chilled for a bit. If you need to chill for a bit and you’re in the area, by all means you should chill here.”—Kyle von Hoetzendorff

“I stayed the evening in the Yarrangobilly Alpine Parking Lot while caravaning through the Snowies. Had a great sleep.”—Maddy Clowes

“I’d go back.”—Lionel Peters

Address: Tabletop Mountain Fire Trail, Kosciuszko National Park NSW 2642, Australia | Phone Number: +61 2 6947 7025 | Hours of Operation: By reservation only! | Email: [email protected] | Price: $$ | Key Words: Rustic, Luxurious, Haunted

Wolgal Hut in historic Kiandra offers comfy lodge accommodation with nearby walking, skiing and fishing in Kosciuszko National Park. It maybe (probably) is haunted, but folks, that only adds to the experience.

“We arrived to Wolgal Hut at dusk, a blood red sunset setting the sky on fire. Was this a sign? A group of us had just ridden up from Tumut on our bicycles. The hut is well appointed: clean sheets, cooking utensils, hot water, and even a gas fireplace. We didn’t expect this level of luxury! It was very nice. The only caveat is that it’s haunted. Three out of the four people in our group experienced night terrors that specifically revolved around the hut. Like, there was a paranormal moment when all the lights flicked on after we had all got to bed. Still, none of us died, so maybe this is more of an amusement-haunting rather than a violent haunting?”—Kyle von Hoetzendorff

“I stayed the evening in the Yarrangobilly Alpine Parking Lot while caravaning through the Snowies. Had a great sleep.”—Maddy Clowes/span>

SECTION N^o9 Day 05 Route

Day 05: Tumut to Wogal Hut

Dead Reckoning: Syd to Mel Normcore Bicycle Tour Day 05

SECTION No1 Day 05 Stats & Intro

SECTION No2 Yonder Journo's Dingo Lingo

SECTION No3 Tumut

SECTION No4 Bingo!!! You've arrived at Talbingo

SECTION No5 Yarrangobilly

SECTION No6 Rolling Through Australia's Great Dividing Range

SECTION No7 Wolgal Hut Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning

SECTION No8 Trip Tricks: Day 05

SECTION No9 Day 05 Route