Last week, riding home from the beach, I saw a strange sight on Currumbin Creek. It floated on two hulls. They were the type of hulls that a catamaran uses, only smaller. Yellow, buoyant and atop sat a man on a bicycle.
He pedalled and the craft moved. He turned the handlebars and the hulls slowly changed direction. I pedalled to a vantage point on Thrower Bridge, jumped off my bike and hastily unclipped my pannier in search of my camera. Moments later he’d floated under the bridge. I crossed the creek and looked out from the underpass for a water-level view of this new contraption. Fascinated, I then rode home only to realise that my beach towel was missing.
Clipped to the outside of my pannier, I guessed the towel had dropped somewhere after opening my pannier on the bridge. I rode back, retracing my trail from home, and found my towel kindly placed by someone over the bridge railing.
With the towel secured, I was ready to ride home for breakfast but something took me in another direction – my curiosity about the bicycle boat. Curiosity keeps me learning and creating new experiences. Breakfast could wait.
By now, the bicycle boat was moored on the creek’s southern bank. The bicycle boatman stood nearby. It was time to talk.
Sean the bicycle boatman has imported the Hydrobike as a new venture. He has another six on their way from the USA and they’ll be available for hire on Currumbin Creek.
I enjoyed having a yarn about these floating bicycles. Memories of Lakeland Playland seeped in from the recesses of my mind from Bargara in the 1970s. Down the road from my childhood home, Moneys Creek flowed from the sugar cane fields into the Coral Sea. The creek was a haven for sandflies so a causeway was built creating a lagoon. In the early 1970s, this lagoon became home for a fun park called Lakeland Playland which hired miniature jet boats and paddle boats propelled by pedalling!
While those pedal boats were strictly for kids, this modern interpretation looks suitable for a variety of ages. Sean kindly invited me to try the modern day bicycle boat. After adjusting the seat height and a few instructions about steering, I was pedalling on water! Bicycle Ahoy!
Bicycle boat on Currumbin Creek. Propellor in upright position locks into the pedal.
Hatch at the front of the bicycle boat.
Test riding – that yellow and black colour combination is very familiar…
(If you’re interested in hiring the Hydobike on Currumbin Creek, head to the south bank at Thrower Bridge near the big fig tree.)
A new calendar year and there are new wheels in my garage.
Welcome to 2017. I hope your new year brings you good health, safe travels and enjoyable adventures. Mine has brought me new wheels.
Well they’re not actually new. They’re second-hand, pre-owned, loved by someone else, and now I’ve been given the opportunity to enjoy them.
So what’s small, folds and is made in London? A High Street hankerchief? A Twinings teabag? A Burberry scarf perhaps? Well yes, but not in my garage.
It’s a Brompton!
Brompton folding bicycles first made an appearance in this blog in 2016 when guest writer, Jen Cooper wrote about her and Noel’s decision to make the move from big bikes to little bikes. In the lead up to that article, Jen and I shared a ride on their Bromptons. This ride piqued my interest.
For my first fifteen minutes on Jen’s Brompton, the steering felt unusual and a little unstable but then, I stopped noticing any “twitchiness” and just loved riding along!
Like my Vivente Tourer, the Brompton bicycle frame is made from steel. I like the feeling of a steel frame bike. It was only while test riding my Vivente that I realised the soft flex that a steel frame brings compared to aluminium. It sold me. As did the terrific range of gears my Vivente gives me.
That’s where a Brompton differs. The one I’m riding has six gears which means hills are not its ‘thang’. But, the city is where the Brompton thrives. Folding bikes are versatile, agile and portable. This is their domain.
My city of the Gold Coast is a relatively small city with a population of just over half a million. It’s a young city made from small seaside towns and clusters of beach shacks that, over four decades, spread out to reach each other, growing into an urban strip that hugs the coastline for 57kms. It doesn’t have the age or size of older, bigger cities but it does have a lot of traffic. It has burgeoning bottlenecks that make me, and I hope a growing number of people, glad to be on a bike. And where Gold Coast trains, buses and trams don’t permit bikes, they will take a folding bicycle.
This means exploring my city by bicycle has opened into a whole new urban adventure.
Downtown Palm Beach
Meeting the Gold Coast locals
If you have an interest in knowing more about Brompton Bicycles, here are some links:
For three months, it had been just a concept, an idea, an aspiration: “I’m going to ride the GreatVic”. I knew very little about what this ride would be like. Yes, I’d read the Bicycle Network website which has heaps of useful information. It prepared me well. But it was information and still a concept; something ‘out there’ beyond where I was.
Now the ride is over and my GreatVic is real. I’ve ridden the miles, seen the sights, felt the strain and the jubilation; and now I know it. At least I know my experience of rolling with this bicycle ride through the landscape of south eastern Australia.
Everybody has a different experience. While I sit patiently on the bus while we stop at a service station on our way to the Grampians, someone else grizzles about the delay and posts their angst to Facebook. While I ride slowly through the landscape, others speed across the asphalt. Some leave camp early, others leave late. Some stop for photos, while others keep rolling. For some riders, the distances are a breeze. For some they’re hard work. I love climbing hills, but there are cyclists who approach the hills with great apprehension. Some revel in talking as they pedal. Others settle in for a quiet ride.
And every day is different.
Day One of the GreatVic Bike Ride saw about 3500 bike riders gather in Halls Gap in the magnificent Grampians National Park. Jane and I arrived by bus from Geelong. This was one of five GreatVic buses leaving from Geelong. Others travelled from Melbourne and Ballarat. Our bikes came on separate transport – all organised by the Bicycle Network. Our afternoon was filled with settling in to the festival site: registering, selecting a tent, unpacking our bikes, preparing our camp, collecting our GreatVic jerseys and learning how things happen for meals, showers and phone charging.
Day 1 at the Grampians: Are you sure this is our tent?
On Day Two, we rode 72km from Halls Gap to Dunkeld. A few long hills, plenty of gorgeous gum trees and views of dramatic escarpments. Morning temperatures were cold at 4 degrees Celsius (I wore a skull cap to start the ride). By the close of the day, we were walking around the Dunkeld camp in shorts and singlets under a blue sky evening. I felt happy that my GreatVic had begun.
Climbing through the Grampians on roads lined with beautiful gum trees and laced with dramatic escarpments.
Downhill run into a cool breeze in the Grampians on Day 2.
Day 3: The heat of the previous afternoon didn’t last. During the pre-dawn hours, chills kept running through me as I lay in my sleeping bag. I just couldn’t get warm and started to think I might be getting a cold. When it came time to rise, our tent had frost all over it. Minus 1 degree Celsius. No wonder I was cold!
Temperatures warmed up and staying hydrated was really important. Our 88kms from Dunkeld to Mortlake was mostly downhill riding and long straight roads lined with paddocks of sheep, wheat and dams full from recent rains. A light headwind, blue skies and plenty of rest stops. For reasons that I still don’t understand, I found this my most challenging day for the entire event. Was it the dry heat? Was it the scarcity of trees in the landscape? Was I simply adjusting to something completely new?
Leaving camp on Day 3 in Dunkeld after a frosty start.
Bicycles resting in rural Australia on GreatVic Day 3.
Day 3 Lunch spot
Day 4 on My GreatVic was a personal highlight. Fabulous weather. Spectacular scenery. Rural paddocks sprinkled with dairy cows or thoroughbred horses. Roads lined with clusters of wattle or families of gum trees. And we ended the day with salt air in our lungs. We’d met the Great Ocean Road by bicycle. Leaving the rural landscape behind us and being by the sea again was like coming home.
By the end of the day I’d ridden 98kms from Mortlake to our oceanside camp at The Twelve Apostles. Many talked about the difficult headwind we faced for the last 30kms that day along the Great Ocean Road but I felt so enlivened by the sea, that somehow it just didn’t matter. ‘My best day of riding ever,’ I announced and received some perplexed looks in reply. Everyone has a different experience.
Signs we are getting closer to the sea (Day 4)
By the sea again.
Spectacular coastline when we met the ocean on Day 4. (Plus my Strava statistics).
Day 5 of our GreatVic Bike Ride meant hills, hills, hills. For 95kms from The Twelve Apostles to Apollo Bay, the Great Ocean Road rolled up and down like great ocean swells. Lavers Hill – a 20km climb from 8m above sea level to 461m above sea level – is a demanding climb but my touring bike carried me up with confidence. I was more concerned about choosing my clothing for the ocean-driven windchill on the descents. Cold weather riding is unfamiliar territory for me and although I have the right type of clothing, deciding ‘what to where when’ was a dilemma I met a few times during the ride.
Hills may have featured on Day 5 but the scenery was spectacular. Limestone stacks surrounded by ocean. Amazing stands of gum trees, tree ferns and tiny roadside daisies, as we rode through the Otway National Park on our way to Apollo Bay.
Setting out on Day 5 along the dramatic coastline of The Twelve Apostles.
Limestone stacks known as The Twelve Apostles.
Arriving at Lavers Hill after a 20km climb.
Otway National Park and my riding statistics for Day 5.
Day 6 was our rest day in Apollo Bay. Deserved and enjoyed.
On Day 7, we left Apollo Bay, riding 81kms to Bellbrae along the Great Ocean Road. Between Skenes Creek and Lorne, the road was fully closed to vehicle traffic for our ride through. Numbers swelled with another 700 riders joining us for the final three days. It was a slow roll out of Apollo Bay. And again in Lorne after lunch, riders were sent out in waves for safety.
That morning was wet and grey with light squalls rushing in over the sea. By the afternoon, blue skies opened, sunlight coloured the ocean turquoise and a southerly tailwind carried us along. We pedalled around cliffs, down into watery inlets, past gum trees where koalas slept and beside the ocean in all its colours. The view from my handlebars was magnificent!
Light rain for the start of Day 7.
Gum tree lined roads on Day 7
The sky cleared and the ocean views were magnificent!
Turquoise waters of Bass Strait along the Great Ocean Road on Day 7.
Day 8 brought a shorter ride of 58kms from Bellbrae to Queenscliff on the Bellarine Peninsula. We watched big ground swell rolling into Bells Beach carrying surfers with it. The terrain was mostly flat land as we rode through the surf coast communities of Jan Juc, Torquay, Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove. Ocean views along the way.
The famous Bells Beach Surfing Reserve
Riding between coastal heath near Barwon Heads.
Day 9 was the final day. A 64km ride around the Bellarine Peninsula ending in Geelong. Warm temperatures, views of Port Phillip Bay, a few long steep hills, and a bubbling excitement carried us along.
Crossing the finish line after completing 559kms was an emotional moment that morphed into a lingering euphoria. It seeps out as I remember the places we pedalled, the people we met, the challenges we shared and I feel a deep sense of satisfaction with My GreatVic.
At the finish line!
(Finish line photo credit: Mediawise – thanks John!)
a bike for all seasons 