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Siberian Sojourn
Words & Photos: Wolter Kuiper
As I approach my camping spot at Siberia Crossing, Strava goes blank. I’m a blue dot travelling across a tiny screen of thick fog. The temperature drops markedly as I approach the highest point of the ride, with just a gas pipeline and telecommunications cables for company, but they’ve been buried for a long time and are absolutely no help with my phone signal.
The people building this 96km train route from Bairnsdale to Orbost in Victoria, Australia, had no phone signal either in the early 1900s. Productivity might have been up, but it would have been bitterly cold as they plotted and built a gentle route for the steam engines to drag away logs from the coastal ranges. Besides bridges and embankments, there were drainage channels, level crossings and service tracks to construct.
Maybe the surveyors had some fun with naming things? Siberia Crossing Rd speaks for itself and someone might have hurt themselves at Hospital Creek but they must have lost interest by the time they came up with School Rd, Boarding House Lane and Railway Crossing Rd. The trains stopped crossing in 1987 and the first 10km to Nicholson became a rough-and-ready rail trail 11 years later.
Siberia Crossing Rd is another 38km away and very close to the middle of the East Gippsland Rail Trail. This high section near Lakes Entrance used to be a complete bog in winter, torn up by four-wheel-drives and great fun on my Jamis hardtail, but no permafrost. On one occasion I got back to my van in the Colquhoun State Forest soaked and well after dark on a moonless night, having misjudged the time it would take me to get back from Orbost through the mud.
This trip I’m fully prepared with my group set of Ground Effect gear but am surprisingly warm in my Subby, Hoody and Alasky, despite it being the middle of winter. The weather is surprisingly warm. These days the track is very smooth and civilized, thanks to the efforts of local volunteers and government grants but a local tells me they should run a paving machine the rest of the way to Bruthen to pull in the tourists.
Apparently, what I thought was a wombat subdivision might just be one adult building bolt holes. After the galah chorus at dawn, it’s pretty quiet at this time of year. Two women on e-bikes stop to tell me they halted their conversation at the sight of another cyclist. There’s very little happening on the 38km from Nowa Nowa to Orbost. I ride past the same guy on the way back after lunch. We’re both just grinding it out.
The East Gippsland Rail Trail, 300km as the crow flies east of Melbourne, weaves its way over 96km from Bairnsdale on the east bank of the Mitchell River to Orbost on the iconic Snowy River.