April 18, 2014 4:00pm

I awoke early, had a breakfast of granola and fruit and set off towards Violet Hill.  The name “hill” should have been a dead giveaway but I was distressed by the length and steep inclines of the country leading up to the campground. Once I found the turn off, there was still 10k of rough hilly gravel road leading to the campsite. I rode a total of 55k but it seemed more like 100k due to the hilly terrain.  I got to the campsite around 3:00pm and was surprised to see so many campers on a Friday before Easter.  I had expected to have the place to myself given its remote location. There is a ticket booth that offers camping tickets for $7.00 per night that need to be displayed on your parked vehicle. Of course I don’t have a vehicle so I may not need to pay…. we shall see. In any event, even at $7.00 per day this is a great deal for a camping spot with toilets on a lake. I am planning on staying at least two days to get through the holidays. Trying to camp around Sydney during the holidays would be next to impossible and I don’t need that kind of stress. According to my calculations there is less than 200k to Sydney and I don’t need to be there until the 11th of May. The trick is to find a landing spot close to Sydney to wait it out or perhaps bike to the south of Sydney along the coast. The national parks seem pretty reasonably priced around $7-$10 and the state parks are all $5 per night for camping.  With all the side trips I’ve been taking, I have cycled over 1000k since touching down in Brisbane.  The Egypt trip was traumatic and I am now experiencing a sort of post traumatic stress syndrome. It is difficult to relax. I am consciously telling myself to stay calm and not to worry.  Fifteen days from the Egyptian ordeal and I am still having fitful sleeps. I feel very sorry for those people who are stuck in that country and have to live every moment in fear of the government. Egypt is a land of poverty, depression and terror. For that matter, the entire middle east including Israel is a paranoid, racist, extremist area that should be avoided.  That’s my take on it and I’m sticking to it. I passed a kangaroo road kill this afternoon and took a picture with the GoPro camera. Also, I met a cycle tourist from France heading to Brisbane and we each took photos with our GoPros with our thumbs up because they do that sort of thing in France. 🙂