April 4 - to Ebor

Today was the first day after the rest day and it was a good one.  Originally the day was to be 109 kilometers with over 2,000 meters of climbing.  But our hosts made the decision to cut out the off-road section that looped through a national park.  That made the day a 79 kilometer day with 1,600 meters of climbing.  Thank goodness they did...  more on this in a bit.

The day started with the fall chill in the air again.  A little crisp as we set out.  But it was manageable.  The road was a bit of rolling hills through grassland at first.

As the day went on we climbed up to the top of the Great Dividing Range.  The topography and landscape dramatically changed.  It went from grassland to deep forest.  

We had our lunch stop just along the Dingo Fence.  What is the Dingo Fence you ask?!  It is a dog proof fence that runs for thousands of kilometers dividing the east from the west along the Great Dividing Range.  It is to keep the wild dogs from invading the grazing lands of the sheep and cattle.  It was originally constructed in the 1890's.  It has been maintained ever since.

    This is the Dingo Fence with a "cattle guard" on the main road.  This cattle guard has a wider gap between steel rails to keep the wild dogs from crossing.

The wild dogs will pack up and take down a full grown cow.

Towards the end of the day we detoured to see the falls at Ebor.  The road we rode today is known as the Waterfall Highway.  It was a beautiful set of falls.

After the falls we met up at a pub for our transportation.  What we did today was ride to Ebor then shuttle bus back to Armidale for the night.  In the morning we will then bus back to the end place for today's ride to commence the day.  There really is very little in Ebor and this worked so much better.

Now back to the story of the national park with which I started this posting.  The ride to the national park was to be a roughly 30k round trip on gravel with a good deal of climbing.  But the benefit of the ride was to be stunning views that you could see for miles and miles.  But as I said earlier, we decided to forego this ride.  We did take the bus through the national park and up to the lookout.  This is what we saw:

    The lookout point was shrouded in clouds and you couldn't see 100 meters.  Thank goodness we didn't cycle 30k on gravel, up hills to see nothing.  Good call by our hosts...  😄