Finally, it was time to ride, leaving behind most of what constitutes a normal life: The job, the house, the car but not the bicycle. We edged our fully laden touring bicycles out through the front gate.

It’s difficult to leave a big city on a bicycle, but we pushed on through Sunday morning along broken disconnected shared paths that meander randomly across the nursery suburbs which skirt the northwestern edge of town.

Secondary roads and back streets took us to the edge of civilization and beyond. Settling into a new rhythm, life becomes smaller and more compact. Simplicity rules. Camping in a camp kitchen at Heathcote and a rough shelter in a dodgy campground at Elmore becomes a welcome refuge from the boiling heat or the torrential rain.

In brightly colored clothing we meld with the green, grey, and yellowing landscape supported by a kaleidoscope of vividly colored birds. Crimson, pink, black white, purple, and turquoise. They sing too, providing a constant soundtrack to our day.

Climbing through the range country I thought of the First Nations, Jarra people who mined the greenstone at nearby Lancefield for axe heads, as we passed huge foreboding granite monoliths.

We saw one car in two hours as we zig-zagged the Barnadown Road. The remnant bushland of ironbark and messmate trees bear the markings of both the Dja Dja Wrung Aboriginal people and those of the early colonial settlers while kangaroos and wallabies stood like sentinels eying our passing suspiciously.

At Rochester, we pay our respects to  Sir Hubert Opperman, “Oppy” the spiritual father of Australian Cycling.

In the evening the bush is alive with terrifying sounds; copulating Koalas and brush-tailed possums. I’m never quite sure if they’re making love or trying to kill one another!

Tomorrow we leave our home State of Victoria crossing the Murray River into New South Wales.