The Horn of the Buffalo — Theia Pictures

Mt Buffalo is a bastion of granite that stands apart from the surrounding mountains of the Victorian Alps.

Pat Kirkby rolling across the tarmac on the Buffalo Plateau.

It was day 10 of our trip from Hobart to Canberra. We had the luxury of staying in the home of a person we didn’t know and who wasn’t there to host us, but gave us their welcome nevertheless, through the connection of a mutual friend. We simply rocked up to this house in Porepunkah, found the keys in the described spot, and made ourselves at home. There is something to be said for being able to wash smelly clothes and smelly armpits with hot water. It’s only when we are deprived of certain luxuries that we fully recognise how glorious they are! There was a huge level of trust on behalf of the owner of this abode to give two smelly cycle tourers free reign of his home, and we showed our appreciation by leaving the place precisely how we found it, plus left a bottle of wine, a block of chocolate and a little thank you note expressing our gratitude.

So many shapes and stories in this granite.

We had to stop at the Porepunkah Pantry before tackling the climb up to Mt Buffalo. I had made it my personal mission to identify the best sausage roll along our route through the high country towns and here was yet another opportunity. At some point during our trip I made a joke to Pat that we should call our ride ‘Tour de Sausage Roll’. Of course, Pat abstained and I don’t think he had a single sausage roll the whole trip, preferring his trustworthy carrots dipped into hummus. I would say the Porepunkah Pantry sausage roll was second best only to the sausage roll I ate in Mt Beauty, at a cute little café whose name I cannot quite remember. And so the question of the best sausage roll of the Victorian High Country may remain shrouded in mystery, similarly to the origin of all the big cat sightings in that part of the country…

We hit the ascent at around 11AM, and there were quite a few middle aged men in lycra who overtook us on their roadbikes. It seemed that we have arrived to the bike riding capital of Australia, with Bright only a few kms down the road. The distance of the climb up to the Chalet was 20km in total, and it was a very steady 5% gradient the whole way. This meant that we gained about 50m in elevation for every kilometre that we rode. We had left our panniers with all our overnight gear at our unknown friend’s place in Porepunkah, so we cruised up this hill in about 2.5 hours. The gradient never really picked up, and I think we only pulled over once to have a very quick snack stop. The sun was out and we were feeling good when we topped out the hill and rolled in to the chalet and the main tourist area.

Perched on the top of the granite cliffs, we could feel the updraft that so many flyers utilise here, the valley of the Owen River splayed out before us. The launch platform for the hang gliders was a terrifying ramp to nowhere, and we could barely imagine the guts required to launch off that thing into thin air! While we ate our lunch there were school groups milling about, waiting their turn for abseiling, and in particular one old geezer who called us mad multiple times and said he was puffed after walking 100m from his motorbike to the lookout. We restrained from making a reply but thought that some exercise and lack of smoking may be of some benefit to this gentleman.

Our objective for the day was to ride all the way to the end of the road and climb the high point of the Buffalo range, called the Horn. I came to call it with some affection, ‘The Horn of the Buffalo’. The road from the chalet weaves across the alpine plateau, dodging a lake, and giant granite boulders, to climb up to a high pass near the Cathedral, and passing this high point in the road, we popped around the corner and there it was, the Horn of the Buffalo, revealed from one moment to the next in its full glory; a conical peak, rising well above the plateau surrounding it, and with a distinct white boulder forming its very summit. Seeing the Horn up close for the first time made me pull over, stop and stare for a couple of minutes. The skyward thrust of this peak drew the eye like a moth is drawn to the flame, elevating the spirit of the beholder in an upward spiral.

We staggered up to the summit after parking our bikes at the end of the road, and took in the view that lay around us. From the Cross Cut Saw to Mt Hotham, the Victorian Alps lay surrounding us. The burnt plateau of the Buffalo directly below our feet, and the sun high up in the blue, blue sky. Giant granite boulders scattered across the golden plateau, remnants of glaciers and ice ages, distant memories passed.

On our descent we pulled in to check out a giant floating boulder called the Leviathan. Pat and I disagreed on the pronunciation of it, but we agreed that it was a place of some spiritual significance. Being an overhanging rock shelter, the energy permeating the place had an undeniable human presence, stretching back for aeons. We took turns to lie beneath the floating block weighing thousands of tonnes on a wavy rock that we felt people must have slept on for thousands of years.

Later a friend of mine who lives in Bright sent me a paper written on the Aboriginal people of the Mt Buffalo area (“Mogullumbidj: First people of Mount Buffalo by Jacqui Durrant’). Apparently the Mount Buffalo area gave place to ‘sages of the rocks’, in other words hermits, who relied on gifts from visiting tribes to survive. These stone ‘druids’ would come up with sacred dances and songs, which they would pass on to their visiting peers. It is worth noting that Mt Buffalo is the sole location of the Sallow Wattle (Acacia phlebophylla), which contains high levels of the psychedelic drug DMT (dimethyltryptamine).

The descent from the chalet to Porepunkah was a dream ride. The descent is unbroken for 20km and the road surface good, with the severity of the corners clearly indicated by speed recommendation signs. After what seemed like going downhill at high speed for a long time through forest, the view opened up and I was surprised to see that I was still very high above the valley and so had most of the descent to go still. And it went on and on, corner after corner, as we glided effortlessly back down the hill, and unrolled all the potential gravitational energy that we had stored up on our way up during the climb.

It was the greatest ride either of us had ever done, to ride from Porepunkah up to the Horn of the Buffalo and back in a day. And through this ride, we had formed a close connection with the landscape, and the history embedded in it.