Day 18 was a different day. Our scheduled finishing point for yesterday was Moss Vale, however after tacking on extra kilometres each day for the last week or so, we’d gradually managed to be 17kms ahead of schedule. Today, instead of trying to do extra kms or “earn credit”, we were looking to cash it in for a change-by actually finishing at our scheduled end point rather than keep running past it by 17kms again. This would make today a short day, however we weren’t too sure how long it would take us to descend Macquarie Pass.
After getting ready as usual Ruby took us from the caravan park in Moss Vale to our end point from yesterday-the bakery in Robertson. Ben grabbed a quick meat pie for breakfast and we trotted up the quant main road of Robertson until we reached a potato which was big. They call it the Big Potato. Pure genius. Jacki snapped a photo with us and the 3 metre high potato and we continued on our way, passing the only other attraction in Robertson-a pie shop that’s famous. They call it the Famous Robertson Pie Shop…smart people, these Robertson residents. Joel grabbed pie for brekkie and I grabbed two and we continued on past the town until we saw something we hadn’t seen for a long time…Ben with his phone tucked away in his pocket. But we looked past this rare sight and saw something else just as foreign-the ocean. It was a special moment, as we hadn’t seen it in all our travels through rural Victoria and NSW. It made us feel like we were closer to home, finally being able to see the coast. And it was an even more spectacular view being right on the edge of the high escarpment.
Just before 9am we met Sam and Edge at the top of Macquarie Pass-7km worth of winding roads, switchbacks and hairpin turns with some sections having next to no room on either side-you look up a cliff face on your left and down a cliff face on your right and sometimes the road isn’t wide enough to fit two passing cars. Often times large trucks have to do 3-point turns (or more point turns as we witnessed first hand) on the hairpins they are so tight. We assessed the situation and thought we had it covered-Ruby was waiting for us at the bottom, Sam and Jacki would drive Sam’s car down and check on us twice-as there was only two spots wide enough for a car to pull over, and Edge would run down with the boys, shouting directions and acting like he was in charge.
From start to finish, it was exhilarating. We’d bolt down the middle of the road in single file on the sections where we could see more than 30 metres in front of us until one of us saw a car or truck in from in front or behind. Once this happened we’d all jump off the side of the road where we’d wait until the traffic had cleared and then bolt down it again. If there was no room on the side of the road-which was often-instead of jumping down a dirty cliff face, we’d have to give a sheepish wave to the oncoming car and move to the other side or wait for the car to swerve us. A little bit like the awkward moment when walking towards someone down a footpath and both sidestepping the same way to get past each other…except this time it’s with a car. It all sounds quite dangerous, but it was just another day in the office for three runners with two mean beards between them. To be honest, aside from some of the nice towns we passed, Macquarie Pass was my favourite section of the run…and much nicer and more stimulating than the tedious Hume. Passing waterfalls and 50 metre high trees forming a thick canopy above us was a real nice change as well.
We finally saw solid ground and Ruby at the bottom of the pass and realised we’d made it. It had only taken us an hour! This daunting section was most of the reason why we’d worked so hard to be ahead of schedule, however it was easier than we thought and much more fun-I wanted to get a lift back up the top and do it again!
We continued along the “normal” roads and passed cows and horses in the paddocks on either side of us when Sam’s mum Di (Mrs Edge) and niece Jada visited. Just beyond Albion Park we came across a something really random-not one, but four scooters-fittingly, three blue ones and one pink one. Joel, Ben, Jacki and I looked at each other and couldn’t work it out-it was as if they were meant to be for us and meant to be ridden. So we did. Not to gain any distance of course, but just in circles and doing tricks (Joel called his radical trick the whippersnapper). After a few minutes of mucking around (and realising that we all suck at scootering and nearly injuring ourselves) we left them for someone else to do whippersnappers on and jogged on to end the short day just past Albion Park, around 3km (rather than 17km) beyond our scheduled finish point. It was just after midday.
It was strange to end so early in the day but it was a welcome change. We headed back to Sam’s place at Shellharbour to spend the afternoon and have a beautiful home-made feast from Di, where all of Sam’s family were (Hayley, Lewis, Jada, Nate, Matt, Gemma, and Georgia) as well as good friends Meagan and Thommo came around-they all obviously knew about Di’s magical cooking skills. We’d stayed here for dinner on our Ulladulla run nearly two years ago and still to this day Ben talks about that “biggest feast ever”.
Over the last two and a half weeks we’d met and been in contact with some pretty amazing people in the adventure world…crossing paths with Len & Chris, doing their own Sydney to Melbourne run, meeting Justin Jones who had crossed the Tasman in a kayak, speaking on the phone with Glen Gorrick & Mal Butterfield, two awesome blokes who have done Melb-Syd before and hooked us up along the way with various things, and last night Joel got a text from Deb De Williams who wished us well. Just last year Deb ran around Australia for the McGrath Foundation, amazing stuff! It’s still a surreal feeling talking to these inspirational people and having them tell us that we’re the ones being inspirational...for the minute anyway-they’ve all got bigger adventure plans themselves, just like us. One of these “inspirational person” we’d all looked up to was Tom Denniss, who ran Melbourne to Sydney (albeit slightly differently) in 2009. I saw Tom at his finish line at Sylvania and was motivated to do something similar. To cut a long story short, Joel, Ben and I had a spa together (nothing suss) with a few beers and conceived the Ulladulla run idea, with next to no run experience under our belt, largely after seeing Tom complete his run. Tom rang me this afternoon to have a chat about our run, swap stories and tell us to keep going basically. Was another great moment to receive a “well wishes” call from the man who was the catalyst to our long distance running “careers” and inadvertently and very indirectly gave Ben manky-foot-it is.
Only three more days to go of this crazy adventure, and I don’t really want it to end.
Cheers,
Nick
The Big Potato. The name says it all
Sam warning the cars of the three fearless and handsome runners
Navigating the pass
At the bottom. Haha bottom
Cow
The boys bustin' a moooove
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