Cairns had been great and if I was one to stop and settle, it would be top of my list of places to live in Australia. These few days did nothing to change that thinking.





It was now less than a week before Christmas and I decided to avoid the coastal road to Brisbane. School holidays had started and traffic would be increasing, also it would be slow going through the towns on the way south.

I rode south to Innisfail and turned right to climb up to the tablelands and into some dark rain clouds. The road was windy and now wet so I took it very slowly as I was unaccustomed to wet and windy roads. For the first time in the trip I donned my wet weather gear and rode through mostly drizzle but a couple of strong showers. The temperature had dropped to the low twenties as I climbed the hill and gusts of wind made riding even more interesting.

Finally I was at the top and headed back through Ravenshoe and onto the Kennedy highway again. Before long I passed the turn-off to the west where I had emerged from six days ago but this time I continued south.

The remainder of the day was quite unspectacular. Cattle country. It was beautiful to be on a country road with treed paddocks that stretched away from the road either side for an eternity. A few cows, the odd cattle grid, but otherwise it was a nice road, with sections of new bitumen and increasingly less of the one-lane strips of bitumen.

I rode for hours, stopping for coffee, stopping for lunch, no towns, no traffic, just cattle country and the endless bitumen.

Then I came to a fork in the road!

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When you come to a fork in the road…take it!

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