DAY 18 Goulburn Governers Hill to Canberra 96kms. Av19kms ph. Awesome day.
I really enjoyed the ride across from Goulburn down the Hume then Federal Highway. We were camped at Governer’s Hill which is on the Sydney side, it was a 10km ride back out to the Hume. Was so beautiful riding through town and the residential areas out near the Big Merino, so many fantastic gardens chocka block full of roses! Made me want to put my hands in soil…. had a coffee stop on the edge of town and then hit the hume. I felt like I was flying, great conditions for cycling, good road most of the way, wind helpful, cloudy and gently raining for the first hour or so but eased off. I did plan on leaving earlier but visibility was poor til 8ish. Imade really good time and had ticked off 30kms by the time Amanda and Joe caught me up for my first tea break.
It was spectacular crusing along the edge of Lake George, paddocks of incredible feed, magnificent mobs of cattle, birds everywhere. Also as I was coming out of Goulburn there were so many wild flowers and ‘escaped’ domestic flowers. I saw freesias and roses happily growing along the side of the road!
I arrived in Canberra about 3.30ish to my nieces home in Campbell right near the War Memorial. We had a lovely roast chook dinner, followed by half of Joe’s birthday cake because Amanda flew back to Melbourne 6am Sunday morning.
It’s Joe’s 11th birthday today 8th November and we’ve just opened presents and am up to cooking him a yummy breaky; scrambled eggs and bacon- in bed.
I took Joe to the Go Kart track at Hume at lunch time and he and I had a ‘petrol head’ blast hooning around madly in two go karts for half an hour! It was ‘mad’…except I’ve got one thing to say to the builders of go karts, “Power Steering“! it’s like driving a brick! I have to say with every turn I made in the Kart I’m thinking I was gonna dislocate an elbow and how was I gonna ride my bike the rest of the way with one arm! Oops — but did that stop me! hhmm.
I bought Joe the new ‘electronic Australian version of Monopoly’ and I’ve already been thoroughly cleaned up by Joe on the first game over breaky. Hannah’s good friend Garnie Fuller introduced Joe to this game a few months ago and he’s been raving about it ever since. No paper money it’s all eftpost! The tokens are things like a gold pair of thongs, a ute, a koala etc. Later in the day we played with both Kate and Adam and after a couple of hours of consumer driven activity Kate absolutely flogged us by inheriting 12 million from free parking! We decided making lasagne for dinner was higher on the needs agenda than playing on so we all retired!
Veronica arrived late last night and we’re all about to swing into action and head off to Yass where we’ll be camping with one of the Yass Rotary Club members who has very generously offered us some space at his place.
Last night on 60 minutes Hannah’s Doctor Ass. Professor Grant MacCarthur was featured with a new break through clinical trial drug that is working really well with some patients.” It was called by the reporter “hope in a pill! This is very exciting and both heart breaking. For me and my family this has come too late to save Hannah. Only a few minutes after the show I received a text from a friend informing me of yet another young person who has died of melanoma. At the time that Hannah was at Peter Mac there was absolutely no clinical trial available that was suitable. The chemotheraphy she was receiving was our hope of slowing down the disease long enough for a ‘breakthrough’. The startling fact that Grant spoke about and that I’ve been shouting from the roof tops for four months is that every year in Australia 1500 people just like Hannah lose their lives to melanoma. This is the equivalant to our national road toll. We need more money and resources going into melanoma research to stem the loss of life. Esther in the first week of the ride said to me, “Mum do you realise that every kilometre your riding is one life lost to melanoma!” I think about this every day, every k, 1500 a year is 1500 to many.
