Tewantin Mystery

It had been an awesome 3 days in Coolum. Even though I had completed a Parkrun, bike ride and hike I felt strangely refreshed. I said my goodbyes as well as a hopeful "see you in two years" and set of towards Tewantin only a short half day cycle along the coast. I had worked out what item of clothing I was missing so didn't feel to bad that another cyclist had to carry it for a day. It was only a headscarf but I had bought it 4 years ago on a previous tour so it did have some nostalgic value. At around 25 miles with plenty of time to spare I took a dip in the Noosa River then made some food and listened to a podcast. It was Joe Rogan's conversation with the boss of Twitter. Pretty interesting and slightly worrying as well. I hadn't long finished the book 1984 and I'm a bit concerned that Orwell may have been onto something but just got the date wrong. Twitter is just to toxic for me. I arrived at my hosts house and was given the tour. I would be sleeping in the house and the other cyclist when they made it would have the shed that had been converted into sleeping quarters for visiting cyclists. Around 6pm the cyclist arrived. She was Emilie from Canada. Quebec to be precise. Despite what I earlier thought she hadn't been stalking me. It was all coincidence. She was cycling roughly the same kind of distances as me and pretty much the same route once she got just south of Brisbane so it made sense that we would be sending requests out to the same hosts. She gave me a friendly "at last I meet you" greeting and passed me my missing headscarf. We sat down with our host Jennie and chatted about our tours while we waited for her husband Wayne to arrive. Emilie had started her tour in Perth in March 2018 then cycled across the Nulaboor plains (Desert) for 3 months when she made it to Melbourne. She then went over to Tasmania to work until December when she returned to Melbourne and set off North to Sydney then Brisbane. Her tour will finally end back in Perth after completing the whole loop of the country. I enjoy cycling but a loop of Australia is way to off the chart to contemplate. Once you go North of Brisbane towards Maryborough then there are beautiful places like Mackay, The Whitsunday Islands, Townsville and Cairns but it is the distances between these that make it so testing. Days of nothing but highway and sugar cane fields with any road to the coast taking a full day out and a full day back just to rejoin the highway. Beyond Cairns and then West off the coast towards Mt Isa, Darwin and the Northern Territory everything becomes even more remote. It will be interesting watching her complete this trip. I have full confidence she will do it but I'm not sure it's something that would go on my bucket list, especially on my own. I like my own company quite a bit but days on end of no one else and I would probably tell myself to GFY.