The Cycling Adventurer

   Bicycle Touring

Introduction   

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TRIP REPORTS

Tour de Tamar 2001  |  M Road 2002  |  Launceston to Hobart 2002  |  Air Walk Tour 2001

Tasmania's East Coast 2001  |  Back to Oatlands 2001  |  Perth-Adelaide 1997

TOURING TIPS

Packing Lists |  Tips on Visiting Australia

How this bike touring lark started

Cycle-touring is my all-time favourite "thing". I think my enthusiasm had its genesis way back in my pre-teens when I often put up an old pup tent of my father's in the front or backyard and wondered what it would be like to camp out in the real wilderness.

It was about the time that I graduated from riding a tricyle around the yard to learning ride a neighbour's bicycle, a very large girl's version with huge 28" wheels. Well, back then, to a little tacker like me, it seemed like a large bike with huge wheels. The small amount of time I was able to snatch on the bike was spent going around the cul de sac where we lived, so I remained safe... at least in my parents' eyes.

I tuned my little transistor radio in bed, under the covers, on a Sunday morning, to listen to stories of an English doctor and his adventures in Tanganyika, the mainland region of Tanzania. My favourite book, "Where the Golden Eagles Soar", was about the adventures of young lads in the wilds of England.

My parents owned a seaside holiday house not very far from Hobart, at Primrose Sands. Despite my parents' fears about me wandering the neighbourhood around home looking for adventure, they seemed blasé about me wandering around Primrose Sands on the gravel roads, along the shoreline, through the bush, and on the water in inflatable and timber dinghies.

I had great fun doing all this, but not on a bicycle. My parents thought bicycles were too dangerous. If I didn't know any better, they saw bikes as the work of the devil. I can only imagine now how far I could have gone if I had had a bike. One other thing strikes me now when I look back — Primrose Sands seemed so far from home when I was a kid; now I would think nothing of cycling there and back as a day trip.

I did get an opportunity to ride a bike after I gained my driver's licence. My parents were off on one of their regular trips overseas, and I had to leave their car back at the airport for when they returned. My father had bought a 10-speed road-racer bike with a great dream of riding it to keep fit. He didn't.

Anyway, I stuffed in the back of the family station wagon, parked the vehicle at the airport as instructed, then rode home on the bike. In jeans. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience. The bike was put away in the shed when I got home, and for all I know, is still there under the other junk my parents collected over the years.

Getting a driver's licence did indulge me one thing. I practised my driving skills on many day trips with my father to trout fishing lakes in Tasmania's Central Highlands. Out of all those trips, he caught one fish. I caught none. I couldn't have cared less. I was outdoors. I particularly recall the crunch of snow underfoot as we wound our way down to the water's edge on winter's days.

I was a field hockey player up to my early twenties when a back injury and my journalism career halted that activity. But journalism also presented its outdoor opportunities. After completing my cadetship with The Mercury newspaper in Hobart, I went to Queenstown on Tasmania's West Coast as the paper's representative for just over two years. I became a leader with the 1st Queenstown Scout Troop, which meant camp-outs, and lots of bushwork on the group's 25-hectare campsite north of the town near Melba Flats.

The West Coast is rugged, due mainly to the wet weather that has enabled the rainforests to take back the mine workings and tiny townships scattered throughout the area 70 or more years beforehand. I spent many hours walking and driving tracks to explore for man-made and natural treasures.

Not many turned up, but the remnants of the old Abt railway between Queenstown and the port of Strahan were always a source of fascination. The line was decomissioned and pulled up in the early 1960s. I always imagined back in the 1970s what it would be like if it was rebuilt as a tourist attraction. Twenty-five years later, it was rebuilt. I was pleased.

I think I always had an empathy with the men of the bush who not only worked very hard and survived in conditions that many people today would regard as atrocious, untenable or torturous, but built magnificent engineering structures from the simplest but most prolific resource available to them — timber from the rainforest trees.

One other event captured my imagination while I lived in Queenstown. I made frequent journeys back to Hobart to visit family. On one trip, I came across a couple on the side of the road overlooking Surprise Valley on Mt Arrowsmith. He was dressed in khaki shorts and shirt, had a beard and broad-brimmed hat, and looked very relaxed. Leaned up against the railing were two fully laden touring bikes. I thought then that they were engaged in a wonderful adventure. That image has remained with me for over 25 years.

I had long-term interests in motor sport, and that led me to build a rally car and go... where else, but the bush and forest roads and tracks around Tasmania. I wasn't particularly good at it — I did finish fourth in a State rally championship round once, but that was only because there were five surviving cars at the finish.

While I enjoyed the mechanical challenge of building two cars, the thing that most excited me was getting out there into the bush. My thrills eventually were based more on packing up tents, tables, chairs, stoves and clothing, heading off and setting up checkpoints or controls for the night. They certainly were a darned sight cheaper than owning and driving a rally car!

Around this time I began to appreciate the night-time solitude of the remote forests. Having said that, my most vivid memory of this era was manning a singlehanded control on the junction of the access road to the Hartz Mountains National Park, south of Hobart. Light snow fell, and there was no wind. The forest had that silence that only seems to occur with a light snowfall. I turned up loud a recording of Vangelis' "Antarctica" album! It was an moment of quintessential and delightful solitude for me.

I really didn't know what I was going to do with my life at that point. I still don't 15 years later. Anyway, I had returned to Tasmania jobless from 2½ years in Far North Queensland. My time in Queensland was my first living away from Tasmania, and the soujourn showed me just what a beautiful temperate place my home island is. Irrespective of where I am in the world, my heart will always be in Tasmania.

Before leaving for Queensland, I bought a new Graecross mountain bike. I enjoyed it, but not as fully as I should have. I was a heavy smoker, and the physical effort seemed... excessive... for the return on enjoyment. In addition to that, the woman I was living with thought my riding style was ridiculously funny.

Nevertheless, my crowning achievement was riding from my then-home in Cremorne, south-east of Hobart, to my workplace in Moonah, north of Hobart. I was exhausted after the effort. I almost came a major cropper on a driveway crossing on to a footpath, when the rear wheel ran along the ledge at right-angles to my direction of travel; I just got my foot down in time. The experience was interesting, but I quickly returned to using motor cars as transport.

After my return from Queensland, I had a three-year stint with the motor sport event, Targa Tasmania. Then I moved to Perth, Western Australia, for another 2½ years. That was where cycling and outdoor activities finally dovetailed together.

On 1 February 1997, I suffered a heart attack while sailing in a race on the Swan River in Perth. You can read about that here. I felt as though I was dying, even though it was only a mild attack. The cause was never accurately identified, but the Royal Perth Hospital consultant surgeon said smoking and stress (from a failed romance and uncertainty about employment) were the likely contributors. He said I was extremely lucky because I had sustained trivial heart muscle damage. I didn't feel like it at the time.

My employment situation seemed to sort itself out for a while, and while working at The West Australian newspaper as a sports sub-editor, my car, a horrible Holden Camira station wagon, started to cost me more than it was worth. The head was basically shot; it finally dropped a valve and seized the engine.

By this time, parking in the Perth city centre had become a real problem each afternoon (I was working an evening shift). I took to commuting by bus rather than think about buying another car. But the route from my home in Como, on the south bank of the Swan River, was circuitous and boring. The solution? It eventually became obvious: Sell the car and buy a bicycle!

I was still rehabilitating myself from the heart attack, mainly by walking a lot. Long story short (because it's all in the journal on my Perth-to-Adelaide crossing), I bought a bike, and started riding. Everywhere.

In cycling, I found a freedom that, as a car driver, I didn't know existed. No parking problems, ability to go places motor vehicles couldn't, interaction with other people, travelling on ferries and bringing my wheeled transport with me... Basically, I had discovered a new independence, both transport-wise and financially.

Oh yes, the real revelation was the financial benefit. No longer did I have to sweat the registration, the insurances, the fuel, the oil, the repairs, the parking, people reporting me to the environmental authorities for excessive smoke emissions (yes, that really did happen because of the cylinder head problems). I had broken free at last, and the feeling was wonderful.

When it became obvious that my contract with The West Australian would not be renewed (the sports editor gave all the impressions of being an alcoholic, and the editorial echelons and I didn't have much respect for each other), I decided to return to Tasmania, and chose my bike as my means of transport.

So was born my love of cycle touring... and long-distance touring at that. The trip provided me with my first 100-mile century in a day, many experiences I look back on fondly, and physical and mechanical challenges that would be mere blips today.

I also have not owned a car since that day in July 1997 when a wrecking yard bought the decrepit Camira for $600 and a tow-truck to dragged it away. I ride whenever I can. If I can't or don't feel like cycling, I catch buses, coaches, trains, planes, ferries, borrow someone else's car... or walk. I might even borrow or hire a motor vehicle from time to time. But bikes are my usual mode of transport. I've even used a bike with a trailer I built to move most of my chattels to a storage unit about three kilometres away prior to leaving on my latest adventure in July 2005. Fortunately, the route was reasonably flat!

As you can see, I am not a lifetime cyclist. But I started in 1997 with a blank sheet, so to speak, and I have tried and tested many things because I have ridden so much. Each time I tried something different, it seemed the old hands were right after all, whether about the style of bike, cycling accessories, clothing, lighting, tents, or comfortable camping.

As a randonneur, I can relate to the idea that if you want to know anything about cycling comfort and the serviceability of equipment, ask a dinky-di long-distance cyclist. He or she probably has been through the mill and will have a very good and logical answer to your question.

I have tried to relate some of my experiences — mistakes and successes — on this website. Feel free to use the Contact Me links if you have any questions you think I might be able to answer, or if you have any suggestions on things that should be included on this site. I might be somewhere that has poor internet communications, but I should be able to get back to you eventually.

Ultimately, I hope my experiences will fire your own enthusiasm, and I might meet you cycle-touring somewhere in the world.

        
            Where my adventures started, on
             my tricycle in the backyard.

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