The Great Victorian Bike Ride 2021, the Grampians, and other ramblings.
/
Last year Bicycle Network asked me to write something about the route of the 2020 Great Victorian Bike Ride. I did, and then of course COVID-19 put an end to that. But I’m happy to report that it’s on again in 2021. Below is the original story, which is just as relevant to the Great Vic Bike Ride 2021, with some references that serve as an interesting time capsule of personal and public appraisal of the pandemic in its early stages.
Recently I was asked by Bicycle Network to write something about the Great Victorian Bike Ride. I was happy to oblige because for 2020, as well as exploring the Wimmera region and the Silo Art Trail, the Great Vic goes through the Grampians region in western Victoria. Not only does this mean great cycling, it means I don’t have to feign excitement because I’ve been to the Grampians and they’re really very good.
I’ve become particularly familiar with the eastern walls of the Grampians. I’ve approached it three times in the last couple of years. One time I was in a car with my mate Kimbo. We were going there for a week to walk, drink, and otherwise rouse a rabble. I knew how it would go, roughly. We’d make a lot of extremely juvenile jokes. We’d enjoy a lot of companionable silence. Perhaps, if things got dire, we’d talk about our feelings. Almost certainly, at some point while we were walking, we would spontaneously re-enact a scene from Lord of the Rings.
After cruising for hours through flat farm country, the Jezabels charging through the speakers, those eastern walls came into view, dark as ash. It was late and the sun was getting low behind them. The sun spilled over and lit up everything an improbable, almost bloody red. The very air was aflame. I haven’t seen anything quite like it. It could have happened anywhere, this freakish occurrence of light, but it happened here, for some reason.
The Grampians—or ‘Gariwerd’ in the local language—are large outcroppings of paleozoic sandstone and mudstone formed from millions of years of accumulated coastal sediment that has been compressed, baked, squashed into unusual shapes and uplifted into mountains by immense tectonic forces. Put another way, it’s a 400-million year old beach. A beach that now looks like a hulking, unknowably old cathedral that haunts the skyline for miles around. A place that for the last three calendar years has clocked over one million visitors.
Where the Grampians stand now is where the coastline used to be, all those eons ago. Back when the ancestors of all four-limbed land vertebrates began limping out of the ocean, this is one of the places they would have done it. So to visit the Grampians is also to get in touch with some of your oldest and most important relatives. There’s a palpable ancientness here.
One of the more popular places for those one million visitors to go is Mackenzie Falls in the Zumsteins area at the northern end of the Grampians. One day Kimbo and I parked the car there and set off on foot, and after five minutes we were at the upper viewing platform. Over a series of epic sandstone steps the river crashed down and down, so far down that the tourists at the bottom looked like ants crawling over some food you’d left out. Either side of the river, the gorge walls rose up sheer. The sudden sense of grandeur, the unusual proportions of the place bent my mind a little, stirred something in a dark, forgotten corner.
Mackenzie Falls is in fact Victoria’s largest waterfall, so there are quite a few steps to get to the bottom. The trail basically descends the side of the falls. You might catch a cool mist as you walk. Kimbo and I made our way down slowly, stopping a few times to take in the white spray and the thundering of the water. The falls were even more impressive from the bottom. We craned our necks and snapped a couple of pictures.
“Well I wasn’t expecting it to be this big,” I said.
Kimbo turned to me, hair beaded with mist, eyes suddenly alive.
“That’s what she said.”
Mackenzie Falls is less than a kilometre detour from Northern Grampians Road which, along with Mount Victory Road, runs between Horsham to the north and Halls Gap to the south. It’s one of the most scenic roads in the Grampians, and you’ll ride it on day four of the 2020 Great Victorian Bike Ride. From Horsham, it rises steadily into the mountain range, topping out at 700 metres, and as you climb you’ll be able to peer down the steep slopes into the Mackenzie River gorge, hundreds of metres down.
Kimbo and I drove Mount Victory and Northern Grampians Road one day to get to Horsham, where we picked up some sausages and wine. It’s narrow and winding, and I looked misty-eyed through the windscreen, picking out the lines I would take, imagining leaning the bike over, looking through the corners and swooshing through.
Another short detour I’d highly recommend is to Reed’s lookout and The Balconies. Also less than a kilometre from the road, these lookouts give panoramic views of the entire Victoria Valley, the Victoria Range, the Serra Range, the Mount Difficult Range and Lake Wartook. The Balconies in particular feature spectacular stone outcroppings and are one of the Grampians most photographed places.
On the way back to Halls Gap, even though I still looked longingly through the windscreen, I knew that if I was on my bike, all the cars we shared the road with would make things less enjoyable than they could be. One of the cool things about the Great Vic is the opportunity to ride some of the state’s iconic roads in safety, without being honked at or passed too close.
The descent into Halls Gap is the biggest of the 2020 Great Vic. You’ll drop 500 metres in 10 kilometres, and have the opportunity to go around many corners at high speed. Agh, the bliss. It’s a fast one, so be prepared to throw the anchors out. Or not, if you want to get a bit wild. Just don’t run into anyone.
Either way, make sure to grab a beer at Paper Scissor Rock Brewery in Halls Gap. Opening in April 2019, Scissor Paper Rock is one of Victoria’s newest craft breweries, and the only one, to my knowledge, that offers ‘normal beer’ (yes, that is the actual name of one of their beers). Of course I love sampling weird and wonderful brews, and appreciate the craft of the brewers, but sometimes after a long day, you just want to sit down and have a, well, normal beer! Well done guys.
The Great Vic has a rest day in Halls Gap, and of course you can spend it downing normal beer, walking around in tight shorts and other such things that cyclist-types like to do. But there is plenty else if you’ve got the energy.
From town you can walk up to a pointy bit of rock called The Pinnacle, where you can look down hundreds of metres of sheer cliffs back to Halls Gap, and over the ranges. And on the way back you can walk through a narrow, deep, and sheer-sided gorge called the Grand Canyon.
Don’t do what Kimbo did and trade shares while you’re walking. You might trip over or something. Plus, if this COVID business keeps up, there might be no shares, no share trading apps, no phones, no Kanton stir fry sauces, and we’ll be running around in leather codpieces like The Humungus from Mad Max 2. I look forward to the day.
On the way back to town Kimbo and I stopped by a little pool in the river and dipped our feet. The water gurgled quietly, and my feet went slowly numb in the cold. Wrens flitted out of the bush to drink, and the late sun slanted in. We sat in silence. Kimbo wasn’t trading shares anymore.
“Do you reckon...” he faltered, as if he was thinking deeply. “That Uber Eats would deliver a felafel here?”
There’s also a road cycling loop you can do from Halls Gap on your day off. It takes you down Silverband Road, a twisty, single-lane, one way descent that I did once on a mountain bike. It’s a unique little road that one. I’d recommend it.
Or if you’re feeling really energetic you could ride up to the highest point in the Grampians, Mount William. It’s a steady climb on a single lane bitumen road, topping out at over 1100 metres. You could also do this as a side trip the following day, as it branches off Grampians Road, which the 2020 Great Vic takes out of Halls Gap.
Kimbo and I walked to the Mt William summit one day when it was showery and blustery. At the top we found a spot out of the wind on the leeward side. Kimbo pulled out a couple of muesli bars. Far below, a confused patchwork of paddocks and bushland stretched away to the east. It was the same ground we had crossed to get here, when the air was the colour of blood. We chewed in contented silence. Kimbo gazed into the distance, as if he was seeing a vision.
“It’s been ten years since we finished school,” he said.
“Ten years of alcoholism and wasted potential,” I said. “And here I am sitting with you.”
“Yeah, well it goes both ways.”
As we sat, a shower blew across and a rainbow formed in the air in front of us.
After we finished our muesli bars we walked onto the Major Mitchell Plateau where it snowed for a short while. At a random spot on the trail, Kimbo began hunching over and walking with a gimpy gait, and screwing his face up in an orc-like scowl, and we spontaneously re-enacted a scene from Lord of the Rings.
The 2021 Great Victoria Bike Ride—Need to know
Begins 27th of November in Rainbow, and finishes on the 5th of December in Great Western
Ride options
9-day, 532km, Rainbow to Great Western
5-day, 320km, Rainbow to Halls Gap
3-day, 212km, Halls Gap to Great Western
For full details and to buy tickets visit the Bicycle Network website
This post was sponsored by Bicycle Network
