It is nearly three decades since I had my first taste of a mass ride across our sun-blushed land, when I joined a colourful cavalcade of 800 neon-clad cyclists slithering across South Australia, in 1996.
As a youngish, hot-headed “adventurer”, that 560km trip, from Mount Gambier to Adelaide, counterintuitively run by Bicycle Victoria, was largely an excuse to party hard with a host of characters including my oldest mate Hugh, champion cycling socialite John, the all-singing all-dancing Risistor sisters, Victor, the ride Lothario, and Melbourne ecdysiast Penny Lane.
From the flat South Australian coast, through the Coorong, where the mighty Murray river meets the sea, past prime wine growing terroir and around the back of Mount Lofty in the Adelaide Hills – a four-hour crawl uphill in 34c heat – this was as exacting as it was ravishing.
It took me (and my knees) a full twenty years to recover, by which time I’d had two daughters and contrived to separate from their mother, and Bicycle Victoria had changed its name to the more utilitarian Bicycle Network.
By 2016, though, I was ready to reunite with Hugh, still enviably slim and fit, for another long-distance pedal, the Great Victorian Bike Ride, travelling 527km from the Grampians to Geelong and traversing the Great Ocean Road.
More gourmet than go-go, with accommodation in a stand-up tent, pre-erected for me, in the mass campgrounds, and memorable meals along the way at Epicurean epicentres like the Royal Mail in Dunkeld, this ride still entailed some unconscionable grinding, notably around the Otways, where the hills kept giving and giving some more.
Yet, riding with 4200 others, over eight days, and teaming up again with cycling butterfly John, was easily the most sociable thing I’d done in years, ending with inappropriate dancing to a cheesy eighties tribute band in the event’s giant mess tent, at Queenscliff. Filled with endorphins and a sense of accomplishment, this ride went a long way toward my getting over my separation.
Back again for more of the Great Victorian Bike Ride
Fast forward to late 2024 and I am an ageing single Dad to two teenage girls, with an ever-burning lust for adventure.
I’m still cycling too, pounding 50+ clicks per week along the Fernleigh Track, a repurposed railway line in my hometown Newcastle, to the Central Coast and back, and have just completed the momentous Alps 2 Ocean trail, in New Zealand, with Hugh, annoyingly as trim as ever. It is, in short, time for another Great Victorian Bike Ride, only with the added test, for this increasingly dedicated introvert, of going it alone, without my wingman Hugh.
So it is that I find myself in Wodonga, on a late November day on which the temperature is nudging 38c, for the Great Vic’s 40th anniversary ride. It is set to run from here, just the “wrong” side of Albury on the New South Wales border, for 501km, to Healesville, north of Melbourne.
Strangely, it is not the heat, nor the distance I need to ride, as I’ve opted to cover only the first 315kms over five days, that presents the biggest challenge. It’s the size and scale of the ride, with 2700 lycra-adorned cyclists, hundreds of support staff and tents, semitrailers and bathroom trucks spread across the campground as far as the eyes can squint.
The statistics behind this ride are overwhelming: a battalion of 230 volunteers and 100 Bicycle Network personnel are on hand to ensure the Great Vic goes smoothly, performing a variety of roles from catering to route management to erecting and dismantling tents in campsites’ “easy sleep” sections, for entitled cyclists like me. Over the course of the ride, the support team will shift 55,000kgs of luggage between sites daily, serve a total of 67,300 meals and pour 500 litres of beer and wine for thirsty riders nightly.
At first, I am a little lost, and having finally located my tent, have a nanna nap, before being woken by the chirps of groups of cyclists outside. It feels forever since my 1990s party animal era and the curmudgeon in me is grateful I’ve only signed up for five days of this ride’s compulsory conviviality. This will all be over by Wednesday, in Mansfield, I reassure myself.
It’s then that I spot him through the tent flap, old mate John, the Great Vic’s Mr Congeniality, and in Hugh’s absence, the perfect extrovert foil. Bounding up to him, I nearly knock him over with a bear-hug but miraculously, John is pleased to see me too, and we are soon reminiscing about past rides, over beers in the nearest pub.
Returning to camp, I’m ready to brave joining the queue for dinner. Once served, I sit down to lamb souvlaki and veggies, followed by a chocolate brownie, at a table shared with a Perth mother and daughter, and Ross, a Melburnian chum of John’s, cycling to celebrate his 65th birthday. Conversation doesn’t exactly flow but it’s a start.
After a good night’s sleep in my comparatively luxurious “village” tent, I’m ready to wolf down breakfast and get into the first day’s 72km ride to Myrtleford. Thankfully, this first day is much cooler, with the route rolling through farmland and a host of mellifluously named rural villages. First, heading south, are Bandiana and Baranduda, then a pause for coffee in leafy Yaccadandandah, a lot more appealing than its rough English translation, “one boulder on top of another at the junction of two creeks”, might suggest.
Finally, after three hours, but still well before 11am, I reach the designated lunch stop, at Mudgegonga, close to a rock shelter where there are over 400 Aboriginal paintings and stencils, to find portaloos, bike mechanics and volunteers distributing chicken Caesar salads.
It is now just 13 kilometres to Myrtleford and nearly all downhill, allowing me to get close to my speed limit and feel the wind in what is left of my hair. I reach the campground just before an afternoon downpour.
As I dawdle inside my tent listening to the rain, I wonder what I’ll do with this idle Sunday afternoon. I’m simply not ready to commit to the tai chi and laughing yoga being laid on for the visiting legion of thick-calved, chocolate-hogs, in Myrtleford piazza.
Where is John when I need him?
A strong sense of camaraderie
Reluctantly, I take the shuttle bus into town and settle into the Myrtleford Hotel, where a strange thing happens. I fall into easeful banter with both locals and several cheery cyclists.
It seems even a recluse can pass the time of day on the Great Vic, but hey, if you can’t find somebody like-minded on a ride like this then you’ve likely taken a vow of silence. Over 40 years, 200,000 cyclists have signed up for these events. Over the next few days, I keep running into people I’ve met earlier in the ride, often exchange greetings with them like long lost chums.
Granted, the eccentric wicker carrier, a repurposed bedside table drawer, fastened to the front of my bike, does make me uncomfortably recognisable among the throng. I learn to respond gracefully to greetings like “hey there, basket man” and “you forgot your shopping” from passing cyclists.
Among those I swap pleasantries with are Bonnie McBeath, with four-year old daughter Olivia, munching a Vegemite sandwich, secured to the back of her bike, Harry Sheldon, who has done every ride since 1984, and an 85-year-old, who often leaves me for dust.
It is a very wet night for the Great Victorian Bike Ride in Myrtleford and the cyclists who’ve brought their own shelter have the last laugh, as many of the hired “luxury” tents develop serious leaks, causing a mass evacuation of campers to an onsite basketball stadium. Knowing I only have one more night under canvas, having pre-booked hotel accommodation at our next two stops, I tough it out, with a bowl and cup catching the plumpest drips.
Next morning, I’m up unreasonably early and soon hurtling along flat country roads toward Wangaratta, 54 kms away, reaching the gourmet food region of Milawa before 9am. Shockingly eschewing the chance of a wine tasting at Brown Brothers, I forge on to Wang, as locals call it, where we’ll spend our next two nights.
Arriving at the Quest Hotel near the city’s cathedral, I put on my best “please pity me” face and am kindly given the first available room. Which I proceed to turn into my beautiful laundromat, washing all my cycling knicks and bibs and festooning them from every available hanging place. I also accidentally melt the in-room hair dryer while trying to recover my sodden shoes.
Donning the explorer’s hat
Over the next two days, in wildly varying weather, that veers from hot blue skies to bouts of torrential rain, I amble stiffly around this lovely riverside city, in Victoria’s High Country.
Among my discoveries here are a beach named Sydney, beside the Ovens river, the excellent regional Art Gallery and two buzzy local restaurants. I have a fluffy crispy chicken Bao bun lunch outside one, Pre Vue, beside the river, and pressgang ride socialite John into dinner at another, Luca. The latter is a Melbourne-standard Italian dishing up deliriously tasty pastas like ragu pappardelle and prawn tagliolini with squid ink, as well as a pizza with truffle and whipped ricotta.
Our third day’s ride sounds like a straightforward 60km loop out of Wangaratta but opting to start before sparrow’s fart entails dealing with farcically heavy rain. As we climb into the Warby ranges, close to Ned Kelly’s final hideout at Glenrowan, all I can see through the deluge is the backsides of other cyclists, lumbering uphill, ahead of me. Reaching the top of Warby Hill, after a long wet ascent, I accost another middle aged man to request reciprocal photographs, “otherwise our kids will never believe we did this.”
The grunt of uphill is quickly replaced by the childish grin of a 10km downhill, speeding down empty country lanes. Back in my hotel room, it’s like Groundhog Day, with all the same lycra undergoing the wash-dry cycle again.
Going long, at the last
The following day is anything but repetitive, with one of the longest challenges in Great Victorian bike ride history, over 113 kilometres to cover to Mansfield. While it sounds daunting, I make my customary early start and vow to pace myself, pausing regularly at designated rest stops and knocking off milestones along the way.
During this ride, I grow increasingly instilled with bonhomie, beginning to enjoy interactions with both new and more familiar faces, pedalling along the route. The threatened thunderstorm is holding off and the cycling along long straight rural roads through grazing land is uplifting.
I’m having fun, damn it! Yet it’s a whole different breed of enjoyment to the 1990s party ride or the 2016 gourmet trip. It’s something more satisfying, with a longer shelf life.
I pass the halfway point in less than three hours and still feeling fresh, barely dwell at the Tatong lunch stop. It’s only when I reach the shores of Lake Nilhacootie, after 87km, that I allow myself a 20-minute breather.
The sun is out, both literally and metaphorically, when I draw up to a big yellow sign proclaiming “Congratulations, you’ve now ridden 100 kilometres today” and I’m beaming like a solar flare.
By the time I’ve collected my luggage and made my way to my final night’s accommodation, the Delatite Hotel in Mansfield, I’ve completed the longest day-ride of my life, 121.79km, according to the Strava app on my phone. Since the app also tells me I’ve powered through 2411 calories today, I guiltlessly load up on chocolate that afternoon, and later rendezvous with John for a slap-up Mexican dinner, at Honcho.
While the Great Victorian Bike Ride royally knackered, I’m also elated and find my mood matched here by spicy delights like chilli popcorn and “Disco chicken” and I even out prattle John.
Returning to my room, with its Ned Kelly wall hanging above my bed, it’s as if I’ve found my “gang” on this ride and had a “breakout” of sorts from years of self-confinement.
As I doze off, with dopamine still pinging around my body, I’m sure I can hear the epiphanous songs of angels.
It turns out, however, that it’s just the sound of the pub choir serenading the punters in the bar downstairs.
The writer was a guest of Bicycle Network and had assistance from Visit Victoria
More info on the 2025 TAC Great Victorian Bike Ride
The 2025 TAC Great Victorian Bike Ride is a five-day event with an emphasis on a more relaxed experience. Running from November 24-28, the ride begins in Mortlake and ends in Camperdown, including the chance to ride the spectacular Great Ocean Road. The ride runs for a total of 314km (or 364km with longer option on day four) or an average 74km per day.
“The new TAC Great Victorian Bike Ride will have five incredible riding days, three welcoming towns and loop rides on two of the days,” says Alison McCormack, CEO of Bicycle Network, “it features 300km of Great Ocean Road coastlines, cliffs and winding country roads – this is what bucket-list biking is all about.”
The Essentials
The five-day ride is $1,250 for adults, $950 for under 18s, and includes meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), a camping spot in the heart of each town, luggage transfers, comprehensive on-route support and daily entertainment. Upgrade options include “Village tents” (in pre-erected tents with two air mattresses in a designated zone) for $420 for the ride duration. Bicycle Network members get 10% off all prices.
