Day 5 - Horsham to Ararat

Early-ish start today after a late night of Chinese food and some beers, as we were off to see the local paper (The Wimmera Mail-Times) to get a photo and interview done. We will post the clipping once it gets sent to us.


Breakfast was at Jason's fav pie shop. Apparently they have the best pies in the world. Apparently but that isn't confirmed as yet.


Once we hit the road we expected it to be a typical day of riding although a shorter distance. It didn't take long for it to become interesting. Jason snagged what he thought was a cable laying on the road then realised it was a baby brown snake after it slithered away. That left both of us on edge thinking every piece of cable was a potential snake.

The Grampians National Park between Horsham and Stawell.

Our first stop for the day was at The Giant Koala at Dadswells Bridge. Basically its a massive cement Koala as you can see below. That said lunch wasn't bad. As usual Jason's eyes were to big for his stomach after he ordered what looked to be a 2 foot tall sandwich and a bowl of chips. 

The next leg to Stawell was a challenge. Once back on the road we were out of the shade of the trees and into a very hot sun. At one point Jason's trip computer recorded the temp to be 42 degrees, I could have said it felt like 50. The heat just drained the energy out of you. Once we stopped at Stawell the only thing we could think of was water and something cool, so we headed to the service station then onto McDonalds for a frozen coke. A little rant here..... Personally I wish service station attendants would pay more attention. If I'm dressed in cycling gear, looking like I've just ridden a fair few km's, then the likely hood of me having filled up a car as well as buying a Poweraid, water and Redbull is fairly slim. Funny thing is Jason got the same question in a servo outside Adelaide earlier in the week.

After cooling down and rehydrating it was off to Ararat, our final destination for the day. Unfortunately the heat hadn't died down which made the last 28km's difficult even with a stop at Great Western. We couldn't wait to get to the Acacia Caravan Park in Ararat and their pool. 

In the end we covered 96km's in about 5hr's which was our quickest so far. Not bad even in 40+ degree heat.