Tag Archives: Fat Tyre Festival

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Running Around Melrose: Fog, Roos, and Mountain Views

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Town

In a Dickensian fog I creep along the rocky road out of the Kookaburra Creek Retreat. I’m accompanied by a pair of roos bounding along the fence line. My headlights cut through the mist, even though it’s nine in the morning. It’s fifteen minutes into Melrose.

Mount Remarkable hangs over the tiny township, and is monolithic, majestic, defiant. It’s why we and the settlement are here. There’s watery sun and a cathedral of wintry blue sky. I’m here to run around the hamlet.

In the gums guarding the school the air’s alive with shrieking cockatoos. Suddenly, some fly off, zooming and swooping in formation, white smudges on the azure atmosphere.

A teacher strolls by, his satchel swinging with Friday jauntiness. He could be the principal. We offer each other a chirpy, ‘Morning.’

Outside the Over the Edge bike café stands a hoop of cyclists, drink bottles in hand, guts curving their black lycra. They’re in discussion.

On the Mount Remarkable pub veranda, a blackboard declares the brisket burger and chips are a special for Fat Tyre Festival visitors ($24). Seems a decent deal but I reckon we’re fully booked.

The streets of Melrose are broad and serene, and I have them to myself save for a nodding tradie in Jaffa orange. Heading south, Jacka Brothers Brewery swims into impressive view, a four-story basilica of historic brick. We’re pencilled in for Claire’s birthday on Sunday. She loves her breweries as much as I love a knitting museum.

Completing a circuit, I’m back on Horrocks Highway and peek in a bric-à-brac shop named Joe’s Corner. In the front window sits a Little Golden Book about Taylor Swift.

Ambling along, the North Star pub hoardings proclaim that it opened in the mid-1850s. Facing the mountain there’s a modern deck with gas heaters. Later today, we might find ourselves beneath the blue flames.

Every where’s dangerously dry and it’s utterly still as late autumn here can be. All is glorious and enlivening. Back at the car I’m puffing but eager to climb Mount Remarkable this afternoon. There’s much psychological benefit in being proximate to massive things for they bring wholesome perspective and dissolve some of your worries – at least momentarily.

Port Augusta parkrun

Another foggy dawn in the Southern Flinders Ranges and edging onto the highway I pass a whizzing line of cyclists, their lights piercing the snow-white air. I continue through Wilmington and then Horrocks Pass with its bitumen snaking beneath the rocky cliffs.

On the other side of the range the blue-brown earth slopes down to the sea. The sun is now up, with massive wind turbines and the landscape reminding me of Mykonos, all dusty and baked. I descend to Highway 1, a road I know well from my decade on the West Coast.

Fumbling in the predawn dark of Judith’s Hut (our accommodation) I forgot my pre-parkrun banana, so I get one from the Port Augusta Woolworths and pay the 74 cents on our credit card.

During briefing it’s glacial with the temperature frozen at 3.8 degrees but I later learn it felt like zero by the Joy Baluch Bridge (one of the Iron Triangle’s plainest speakers). All of today’s parkrun volunteers are female, but none cuss like Joy.

At 8am sixty-one parkrunners begin shuffling south alongside the gulf past Wharflands Plaza, the silent mangroves and rail yards. It’s pancake flat and calm and perfect for running. The landscape is an arresting hybrid of desert and the post-industrial with indeterminate sheds and mangled iron alongside the quiet sea.

The Yacht Club appears on its fetching point and then I spot the Men’s Shed and wondering about plural and singular nouns ask myself: what if there’s only one bloke? Does it regress numerically and socially to being a Man Cave?

As I’m still shaking COVID, I splutter and stagger on the return leg, towards the end.

Crossing the line in thirteenth spot, my hands remain icy. I chat with the chap who came twelfth. He’s also staying in Melrose and camping with mates who’re in town for the Fat Tyre Festival. He doesn’t ride so is just aboard for the giggles.

I drive to a café in town, for a medicinal cappuccino. I fear I may lose my fingers.

The Southern Flinders Rail Trail

I run part of this on the King’s Birthday Monday. Today’s my 408th consecutive day of running. No, thanks Chuck.

Just north of Goyder’s Line, the trail hugs the highway and has scrub to the west. I see nobody, not even a curious kangaroo. Jogging along I dwell on our weekend and am grateful for the mix of exploring and relaxing at our accommodation.

During the early afternoons we’ve read and then sat near the firepit underneath the heaven’s dark blanket, and her peppery stars. A mile from the main road, sometimes the thunder of trucks has rumbled into the surrounding hills.

We’ll be home just after lunch, and I’m keen to go to the Glenelg game against (the cock of the) North.

Melrose, you’ve been magnificent.

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Conquer Mount Remarkable, collapse in the North Star Pub

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Farewelling our car at the North Star pub, we march off past the tennis courts and dissect the caravan park with all those swarming bikes.

Claire and I confess later to each other that we both instantly and secretly anticipated our return in several hours and couldn’t wait to plonk ourselves down in the pub. Is this wrong, we asked ourselves? No, we agree, it is not.

The sign at the trail head suggests four hours return for the 13.5k, ascending on the North trail and descending along the South. With some experience in traipsing about, we declare brazenly that we’ll be back in three. Fonzie couldn’t say it, but we can: we were wrong, and the official hiking information was correctamundo.

Trudging off with a vague sense of excitement but also looming doom, our hike quickly became demanding with wide sweeps of scree falls and narrow paths from which a tumble would send one cartwheeling down the slope a hundred feet. That’d be a messy opening to our weekend.

However, we enjoy views over the neat town and east to dehydrated Booleroo Centre (no Word, not Bolero).

After an hour, Claire proposes a mandarin stop to rejuvenate us. We later have a lollipop intermission and to the dismay of my wife mine’s gone in less than a minute. I nibble at lollipops like a rabbit.

As we see yet another long stretch of path ahead, dispiriting moments occur. These weren’t helped by signposts marking the distance to go with my inner voice – or maybe it was my spoken one – saying things like, ‘How the actual fuck can it still be three kilometers to the top?’ Tantrums were close, I think.

We arrive at the summit. We rest a moment and take photos, wanting evidence of this for any legal action.

There’s a sturdy historical monument. It notes that Edward John Eyre announced, ‘I name this Mount Remarkable’ to which I’m confident his colleague replied, ‘Mate, I’m guessing you’ve not been to the Himalayas? El Capitan in Yosemite? Or as American band Toto will sing in a century or so, Kilimanjaro (which) rises like Olympus above the Serengeti?’ Still, good on you, EJE.

Beginning our descent of 7.5 kilometres at 3.45pm, we reward ourselves with scroggin, which I scoop into my noggin. Thank you, Claire although I prefer the chocolate over the fruity bits.

We’re booked for the early dining session (5.30pm sharp) in the North Star pub. But we’re now in our very own reality TV show, competing against a cruel countdown clock. Will our heroes make it to the pub on time? Will they run out of scroggin? Will the guttural yelps of an industrial-sized sulk (me) wail out across the twilight?

To lighten our exertions, Claire sings a few kids camping songs and I say to her, ‘You should’ve hosted Play School.’ And, of course, I’m right, for she combines many showbiz talents and a fetching on-screen presence (as is already known). It’s a lovely interlude.

During the final two kilometres, our knees and hips and backs become personified and they’re not at all happy with us.

In the rising gloom and scrubby murk, I ring the pub to let them know we’ll be late. Louise says that’ll be fine. We later learn from the innkeeper, the abrupt and matronly, Jude/Rhonda/Gladys (Glad) that this is not the case.

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Following our four-hour exercise episode, we swap our running shoes for boots (I have a sensible and incurable fear of sneans) and with unprecedented relief, lean on the front door.

It’s immediately engaging with a long bar, roaring fire, and rustic décor. Wool bales draped from the ceiling. Lots of iron. Floorboards, not sticky carpet. Bursting with folk from the Fat Tyre Festival. Are they cyclists or are they bikers? Invariably with beanies atop their crania, there’s a communal buzz. By the door someone’s selling raffle tickets.

We’re at table 2 and have never been so excited by the unpretentious, restorative joy of chairs. Easing into one is a Buddhist moment. For our knees, hips and (lower) backs we take hors d’oeuvres of anti-inflammatories and painkillers.

Refreshments. Pale Ale for self and Claire requests a sauvignon blanc, which is served in a 1970’s wine glass- the kind you might’ve received as a bonus with a (K-Tel) fondue set.

We evaluate our Mount Remarkable experience and finally, here’s the joy: the retrospective fun, the shared enterprise and how (as Clint Eastwood says) we’ve kept out the old man and old woman, at least for another day. Did I mention how after fifteen taxing kilometers we’re enjoying the chairs? Profoundly?

Having placed our order of chickpea curry and a burger with the aforementioned Jude/Rhonda/Gladys (Glad) she made it clear we need to vacate our table by 7pm, for the next session of diners. The subtext is gruff (like the ascent of Mount Remarkable) but the food’s good.

It’s been an afternoon.