Hello. Yes, it’s me again back with another domestic Brisbane bicycle adventure. As you probably know, there’s an old saying about being stuck up a particular creek without a paddle and as you may or may not know Brisbane has several large, noteworthy creeks running through it and its surrounds. Best of all though is that, unlike the creek in the old saying, Brisbane’s creeks are actually rather good and one glowing example is Bulimba Creek which runs through Brisbane’s south side and eventually empties into the Brisbane River. Better still, is that virtually the entire length of Bulimba Creek is shouldered by the Bulimba Creek Bikeway which is also one of Brisbane’s longest and most interesting bikeways and that’s where my latest domestic adventure took place after some linking up via more bikeways and a rather nice ferry ride.
Since my last post when large swathes of the country were literally on fire, the weather has gone to the other extreme and dumped a ton of rain on us. And while this is definitely great news (well, not all great news), it still isn’t enough to break the perpetual drought we’re in. Not that any of that seemed to phase the people who are supposed to be leading the country because they’re, you know, incompetent, selfish pinheads who have their heads buried in the sand.
The rain did, however, make my ramble up the Bulimba Creek bikeway a lot cooler and more pleasant. And so, the first leg of my journey included ambling up the Kedron Brook bikeway and then heading up Widdop St at Toombul toward Racecourse Road at Ascot which would take me onto Brett’s Wharf where a CityCat ferry awaited (they have bike racks on those, you know) to take me and my Crossrip up the Brisbane River and around the bend to Bulimba.
From there, I navigated my way past rows of swanky European cars and people in swanky outfits along Oxford Street (Oxford St is one of Brisbane’s epicentres of swank) and onto Lytton Rd and Creek Rd where I eventually ended up at the Murrarie Recreation Ground which features one of Brisbane’s best criterium tracks (yes, we have more than one) and the start of the Bulimba Creek Bikeway.
Once on the other side of the Murrarie Recreation Grounds, I ducked under Wynnum Rd, popped out the other side and disappeared between the creek and the back of an industrial area. Not a vary glamorous start to the bikeway but soon the industrial area gave way to dense bushland on either side of the concrete path and things started to feel a lot more natural. I meandered through large fields and past playgrounds before re-joining the creek at the first of many canoe/kayak launch sites where I stopped to chat to a couple of paddlers who had stopped to rest after making it back upstream in the swollen creek.
Bridges and forks in the bikeway carried me through varying scenery from fields to suburban estates, more canoe/kayak launch sites and bushland which seemed miles from anywhere even though civilization was just through the trees most of the time.
Soon, I passed by the back of the Carindale Shopping Centre where I crossed a small floodway.
Under a big underpass and then the concrete bikeway disappeared again into some very dense bushland. Dropping off sharply on one side of the bikeway, the creek could be seen below while, on the other side, a steep bushrock cliff towered above me. I rolled down a fast descent and over another spillway to cross the creek and climbed up the opposite side. I was now almost at Wishart which would be the turning point of my journey. I stopped at a local bakery for lunch and a drink before beginning to retrace my journey home.
And because I left late in the morning, I arrived home in the late afternoon tired and mud-splattered having pedalled about 80km for the day and beating another downpour by just a couple of minutes.
Again, the Trek Crossrip was the perfect bike for this trip providing the perfect balance between speed and efficiency vs ruggedness and comfort which you wouldn’t get from either a dedicated road bike or mountain bike. And while the Crossrip is no longer available in Australia, there are plenty of other well priced bikes available in a similar style and specification if you happened to be looking for something like it.
That’s it for today. Ride safe and see you out there sometime.