Melbourne to Sydney via Mungo National Park January 2022
Monday 24th January 2022. 1530hrs I am at the only property visible from the road between Mildura and Mungo National Park (at the intersection of Arumpo Road and Petro Mail Road). There is a second property 23km further up the road (and 22km away from Mungo Main campground), which I found after looking on Google Maps.
I met the person who lives here the previous day (Strava link) when I came out for a casual 120km ride on my rest day. He told me his life had been far from easy, with a cancer diagnosis and now living in an abandoned house. I wrote on Strava:
" I stopped in today to see my mate from yesterday. He was out, so I filled up my water bottles and gave his dog a quick pat. As I am walking back to the bike I see this one square metre of grass he's growing, I guess for the dog.
I cried.
As I rode off, it really hit me, for everything I have (including with me), the bike, the gear, the opportunity to do this, I have even less. I don't even have a dog to come home to, I've got a giant stuffed Wolf. I reckon I cried for the best part of an hour thinking about that until the heat, the flies and sand resumed their place as my focus."
You can see the grass in the photo, the dog is in the cage. Mildura is an outlier of an oasis compared to the harsh desert to the north, west and south. I couldn't wait to leave. Mildura to Mungo National Park (Strava link).
15 days, 2,100km and one worn-out rear tyre. Melbourne to Sydney the hard way - via Mungo National Park in summer.
Melbourne to Sydney is one of the busiest domestic flight routes in the world. Before the pandemic, there were multiple flights most hours of the day. Buses run up and down the highway, and there’s even a train service, not that you'll find many people recommending this option. Melbourne to Sydney is a classic touring route in Australia, not least because half the population lives in one of these two cities. You either start from home or finish there.
I'd been thinking about riding to Melbourne as my first bikepacking trip. As various waves of COVID washed across Australia in 2020 and 2021, this became impossible with border closures. I had looked at a route either down the coast or through the snowy mountains. On a whim in late 2021, I decided to fly to Melbourne and ride back via Mungo National Park.
Why Mungo? I'd read about the national park and had planned to visit at some point. Riding there seemed a good idea, even though I had to ride in the opposite direction to going home to get to Mungo. This seemed a minor detail at the time but turned out to be a pivotal decision for this trip and my life.
Part I Melbourne to Horsham | Part II Horsham to Mildura | Part III Mildura to Hillston
The full route is shown in Ride with GPS below. Odd days are shown in blue, and even days in red. Zoom out and you quickly realise how little of Australia I saw on this ride.
The adage there are two people is true. The first are those who do something like this and say - done. The second is the small group of people saying, I'm just getting started.
I'm in the second group.
I Melbourne to Horsham
Dry plains, seemingly endless daylight hours and shivering in my tent in the middle of summer. Southern Victoria (off the main roads) is an underappreciated part of Australia to ride. You're rarely far from a town, but often have the road entirely to yourself.
II Horsham to Mildura
Feral bees, hot afternoons and riding into the wind all day. The western edge of Victoria is unlike the rest of the state, with desert national parks, hot and sparsely populated. This was to provide a taste of what was to come over the border.
III Mildura to Hillston
The road conditions were difficult on a heavily loaded (40kg) gravel bike with 37mm tyres. The weather added an extra dimension. I was expecting hot and dry. Instead, I had hot and humid. The daily maximums were 35-37C.
Throughout the day the humidity would build as the sky darkened only to dissipate by the evening, as did the wind. I had a decent headwind throughout this section and most of the trip. Just what you want. The afternoons were often scorching and hard.