Great Victorian Bike Ride
The Age
Tuesday December 3, 1996
Day Three
Portland to Port Fairy
Distance: 76kms
Terrain: Flat-gently undulating
IT IS AN unbreakable law of the Western District that the worst gales always roar in from the west.
Always, that is, except yesterday. Instead, the winter winds and sheeting rain howled from the south-east - straight in the faces of 3500 cyclists battling along the coast from Portland to Port Fairy.
It was one of the worst weather days in the ride's 13-year history. Bleak, wet and long was the only way most riders could describe the third day. It was a day of endurance rather than enjoyment, of headwinds and horror rather than hedonism and holidays.
The dreams of hundreds of riders expecting a December break of sun, beaches and swimming, are fast being tempered. Now, merely a hot shower and a dry tent at the end of a day looks like paradise enough.
Despite the weather, stamina and dogged determination saw most of the cyclists make the sandhills of Port Fairy.
Under windblown pine trees near Portland, two women debated if they believed in God. It seemed appropriate. (Considering the weather, I decided I didn't). A little further on, a group of schoolboys had, deliberately, lost their teacher. It was clearly time for a health break - a long session of smoking forbidden cigarettes.
The enterprising folk of one property had decided to turn on coffee and hot scones for the early morning riders streaming past their gate. As cold rain trickled down necks and under jackets, they were inundated with takers. The only problem was the little wooden shed couldn't hold the huddled hordes seeking shelter.
The little bluestone Yambuk pub, just 20 kilometres short of Port Fairy, was doing a roaring trade. Beer and red wine was pouring over the bar as fast as the rain coming down outside - inside, the mood was steamy but content.
Wet but newly warmed cyclists downed Bundys and Cokes and tried to remember who they knew in Port Fairy where they could claim a piece of floor, rather than another night in a wet tent.
One enterprising group from Yarrawonga phoned mates in Port Fairy to order crayfish before their arrival. Another mob went further. With a near mutiny on their hands from dispirited riders, they rang the Port Fairy taxi from the Yambuk bar and hitched a lift into town.
But for most, the ride wound its way relentlessly onwards, until the water tower of the historic village of Port Fairy was in sight.
There, finally, the sun came out. Dome tents nestled in every nook of the sandhills, aching riders sprawled aching limbs on anything soft and dry, and clothes lines with wet, bright riding gear flapped from every tree and ridge-pole.
Everyone was too tired to discuss God or anything suitably serious.
Except that is, the weather. Will there be as bad a headwind for the daunting 96-kilometre ride to Port Campbell tomorrow? And will the rain ever stop?
Tomorrow: Port Fairy to Port Campbell along the start of the Great Ocean Road
© 1996 The Age