Day 16: Gympie to John's Place

Stayed at Zela's place and slept in an actual bed! Wow!

She dropped me back at the gallery at about 7:45... I woke about 5:30am when it started to get light and the truck noises began, then about 6:30 wandered out and had a look at the garden and bird life. An hour or so later Zela and Greg got out of bed and started their day. I had packaged breakfast cereal for the first time in ages, then got officially shown the garden again before we took off into town.

Interesting discovery for the morning was meeting Dion and Sue who've bought an off-net house rather than built it. They have PV electricity, compoting toilet and tank water,plus a vege garden. Plus mild guilt because they just live there rather than having done a heap of work to build it. But I'm impressed because it demonstrates that you don't have to be a green geek whizzkid to do this stuff, just someone who's capable of reading electrolyte levels in a battery... it's not rocket science.

People started arriving just before 8am and we departed about 9am.

Evan and I decided to just sit on the Bruce Highway all the way so that we get wide shoulders and fewer hills all the way. Val and co decide to take the back roads where there will be less traffic but probably more hills and no shoulders. So we rode 30-odd kilometres to Cooroy and got into town about 2 at a guess. By the time Ev had hit the laundromat and I found the gallery with Robyn in it someone had contacted John and SMS'd directions around the place so we knew where to go from Cooroy.

John is a guy who rode up to the Peace Convergence and found us there, offering accomodation and contacts down this way. He's a cyclist who lives in a wonderful house out in some bush about 5km from town. It's so great - a big block with mature trees around it and a nice big house in a clearing in the middle. So quiet and peaceful. Well, until 7 hippies arrived :)