Get on your bike and head to Geelong for a day of decadence, adventure and beauty by the bay – all for less than $100.
Geelong is a city skyrocketing in popularity much thanks to its relaxed lifestyle, burgeoning hospitality scene, community-minded attitude, proximity to the Bellarine Peninsula and Barwon Heads, as well as only being a short drive on the freeway from Melbourne.
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With so much to see and do, it can be difficult to narrow down where to spend your time. Members also save on a range of attractions and experiences in Geelong, making choices even harder.
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Thankfully, making your way through everything Geelong has to offer doesn’t need to blow the budget. It’s possible to have a day out in the city by the bay for less than $100, with so many affordable, and sometimes free, things to do.
The cost of your train ticket will be between $12-16 one way from Southern Cross Station, so allow $32 to include your return ticket.
Once you’re on your set of wheels, the benefit of using arevo to make your way around Geelong via bicycle is that the app has a comprehensive biking route system made in consultation with avid bicycle riders.
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The app offers cyclists a chance to avoid main roads and choose scenic routes, all while still getting you to your destination in the most efficient way possible.
This piece of paradise has been an integral part of Geelong’s economic and social fabric for more than 150 years, offering breathtaking views, some amazing local cafes and boutique stores, as well as hours of fun walking through the beaches, jetties and gardens.
The Geelong Bay Walk allows you to easily ride between different bayside areas along the foreshore and experience several of Geelong’s park attractions, including Limeburners Point and Rippleside Park - which is much more cyclist-friendly in the earlier hours of the day, and as the evening winds down due to reduced crowds.
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The Geelong Botanic Gardens has an amazing plant collection from all around the world, offering smells and colours to stimulate your senses as you relax in the lawns in one of Geelong’s best kept secrets.
After you’ve had some lunch, head deeper into the Botanic Gardens and relax on one of the many lawns and individual gardens within, like the Conifer Lawn, Oak Lawn, Flag Lawn and Walnut Lawn.
About a 20-minute bicycle ride along the harbour past Eastern Beach and Deakin University is Geelong Vintage Market, where you’ll find a mixture of collectables, different wares, and retro items for sale.
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You could spend your whole day here and still not get through the entire market, but after a few hours, you’ll be ready to wind down the day at Little Creatures Brewery.
Head back towards Eastern Beach and towards Barwon Valley Golf Club for about 25 minutes via bicycle to Little Creatures Brewery where you can see the day out with an early dinner before heading back to Melbourne.
With a generous menu, the Little Creatures Brewery has something for everyone. As one of Victoria’s most successful and recognised beer brands, there is locally brewed pale ale, XPA and IPA on offer to enjoy with dinner or take home.
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From here, it’s a 12-minute bicycle ride back to Geelong Station where you’ll jump back on the V/Line and head back to Southern Cross Station, Melbourne.
By now, you will have spent just over $80, excluding the cost of a rental bike if you require one. Use your remaining budget to enjoy more of Geelong’s growing list of attractions like MoPA: Museum of Play and Art, or Eastern Beach Reserve, next time you’re in the city by the bay.
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I'm three days into a bike ride across one of Australia's most iconic touring routes and almost 90 kilometres into my cycling day.
On a spectacular road such as this one, a bicycle opens up the views and the experience. Pedalling west from Geelong, I'm all but poised over the drop into the sea and I can stop wherever and whenever I like to soak in the scenery. It's the freest form of road tripping I know.
It's a similar story on roads and tracks across the country – there's no view or immersion like that from behind the handlebars of a bike.
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Two decades ago, I cycled around Australia's entirety – a 20, 000-kilometres lap – and in the intervening years, things have only continued to get better for cyclists. But these days you don't necessarily need to go to such extremes, unless, of course, your heart desires.
Rail trails and mountain bike networks have proliferated across the country and, as bike sales showed during the pandemic, there's a fast-growing number of people on two wheels.
Today in Australia, there's a ride and a style of bike travel to suit any cyclist and here's a step-by-step guide, based in part on my new book,
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All bikes are not created equal. The bike you want for a ride across the Great Ocean Road is a universe away from the bike you'll need to pedal a mountain-bike trail.
The options are manifold – road bike, touring bike, mountain bike, hybrid bike, e-bike, gravel bike, recumbent bike, tandem bike – and there's a surprising number of considerations around even just choosing which bike best suits a ride.
As the name suggests, touring bikes are the best all-rounders, built with long cycle tours in mind. At a glance, they resemble road bikes, with drop handlebars to give your hands multiple positions.
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They have wider rims and tyres than road bikes, along with eyelets in the frame for attaching racks for panniers, and more spokes in the wheels to provide extra strength under loaded weights.
Road bikes offer the quickest way from A to B – at least on sealed surfaces – but have less capacity for carrying gear, so are often unsuitable for long tours.
Hybrid bikes slot into the middle ground between road bikes and mountain bikes – their tyres are wider than road bikes, but narrower than mountain bikes. They're an excellent choice if you're riding on roads or rail trails, and you want a bike you can comfortably tootle about on back at home.
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The moment you plan to leave the sealed stuff, a mountain bike comes into its own. The four-wheel drives of the bike world, their wide tyres, suspension and upright riding position are built for rough travel.
A more recent upstart on the dirt is the gravel bike, shaped like a road bike but with the heart of a mountain bike. They're great for unsealed roads and long-distance off-road rides.
E-bikes are the new black in cycle travel with these power-assisted bikes accounting for around five per cent of all bikes sales in Australia (and a whopping 50 per cent in the likes of the Netherlands). They cross genres – road e-bikes through to mountain e-bikes – and ease the pedalling burden. You still have to work for your kilometres, but it's more like casual labour than full-time employment.
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If you're setting out on a multi-day bike ride, the next bit of business is deciding how you're going to carry your gear. Contemporary wisdom favours two set-ups: panniers and bikepacking.
Panniers are bags that hang from racks over the wheels of your bike – typically, two panniers at the rear or, if you're needing more gear, two at the rear and two at the front. An extra handlebar bag is good for carrying valuables and small items you want to access as you ride.
A slicker way of transporting your gear is what's known as bikepacking, which does away with panniers and instead uses a number of smaller bags puzzled around the bike – a saddle bag hanging from beneath the seat, a longer roll of gear hanging from the handlebars, a triangular bag snug into the bike frame, and perhaps bags secured to the front forks.
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It trims your packing and makes the bike more compact, and it's the ideal set-up for off-road rides, narrowing the bike and limiting the drag and movement of gear.
Australia has plenty of multi-day rides that can be undertaken without the need to stuff panniers or bags full of camping and cooking gear, staying instead each night in towns and accommodation.
In researching Ultimate Cycling Trips Australia, I pedalled through the likes of the Southern Highlands, Sunshine Coast and Great Ocean Road with just a change of clothes and a few bike spares in a saddle bag.
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Even a four-day section (Manjimup to Northcliffe) of Western Australia's remote, 1000-kilometre off-road Munda Biddi Trail can be civilised each night with hotels and wine and whisky bars.
Options across Australia range from road rides to rail trails, mountain bike blasts to extended off-road tours. Road rides are the traditional form of touring though the relative dearth of minor roads across much of Australia has always limited the appeal of long road tours.
That said, some of the country's most beautiful roads and regions make for excellent riding, including Tasmania's east coast, the Great Ocean Road and NSW's Southern Highlands.
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Rail trails have replaced roads as the routes of choice for many cyclists. Following the course of disused railways, these rides promise flat(tish) riding, typically between towns. Queensland has the country's longest rail trail, and South Australia has a thirsty selection of rail trails through