Ultimate Real Riders Trip Around Australia

Below is a brief summary of a cycling trip around Australia written by couple Peter and Barbara Guppy who rode their Giant Sedona bicycles on a 17,000km journey around our country. Have a read about their amazing journey and check out some of the photos taken. Their personal blog of the trip can be found here!

Why would a couple of 60 plus year olds decide to pack up their house, lease it out for a year, sell their cars and pedal off on a couple of Giant Sedona bikes with the aim of riding around Australia?

Well Peter and Barbara after a couple of health scares did just that even though Barbara had hardly ridden a bike until six months before leaving. They rode out of Moruya with pannier bags and with Peter pulling a Bob trailer (Barbara also ended up with a Bob Trailer from Darwin) with all the equipment they thought they would need for a year’s travels.

The gear they took was a three man tent, sleeping bags and mats as well as a Trangia stove and all the other necessities needed to spend some six hundred nights in their tent over the next (as it turned out) about two and a half years.

The couple headed South from the South Coast of New South Wales so that they could have summer in Tasmania and then headed north to Mount Isa and then to Darwin where they spent eight months at a wholesale nursery. After this they headed to Broome and down the coast of Western Australia before heading East across the Nullarbor Plain to Adelaide.

A lot of the nights were spent camping on the side of the road in some great quiet spots and others in rest areas with other Grey Nomads. They would often start a stretch with up to 40 litres of water and food for up to ten days on the bike. This was particularly between Darwin and Perth where they also posted food parcels ahead of themselves.

There are too many highlights of the trip to write about but the best part of the trip was probably the people we met and in particularly the help with food and water and especially the fresh fruit given to us on some of those long sections across the top and down the west coast. We all hear about the bad people but we know they are few and far between and in some 17,000 kilometres we met less than a handful of people we would not want to share a meal with.

We never had a problem with our Giant Sedonas but we did have them serviced every five thousand kilometres. We did put thicker spokes in our rear wheels and used Schwalbe Marathon tyres from Darwin and only had one puncture in the last 10,000 kilometres and two broken spokes throughout the whole trip. We also used the seats that came with the bikes and it only took a few weeks for our rear sides to harden up.

Towards the end of the Nullarbor Barbara started to get tendonitis in the ankle which she had broken some four years before hand and so in reaching Adelaide they called it a day and are now the proud owners of a 4WD and are continuing their journey in five star comforts.