Munda Biddi Meandering

Words & Photos: Jane Shearer

I’ll admit it, we underestimated Australia, and in turn the Munda Biddi Trail. Our underestimation was two-fold. First, we underestimated the beauty of the forested landscape. I worried about cycling long stretches of red dust. Instead, we discovered a series of national parks with huge eucalyptus, winding single track and on the south coast, white-sand beaches decorated with granite rock domes.

Here's what I thought the Munda Biddi would be like.

And here’s what much of the Munda Biddi was actually like.

Second, fresh from bikepacking the steep and rugged mountains of Georgia, we thought "How hard can bikepacking in Oz be?" - the place is mostly flat after all. The Munda Biddi turned out to include 1000 m or more of climbing everyday. None of the climbs were particularly high, given our maximum elevation on the trip was 400 m. And none of the climbs were particularly difficult, given we walked less than 200 m over the entire ride. However, the climbs were many and continuous - as opposed to Georgia where we would do one big climb in a day and then cruise downhill. In addition, 80% of the Munda Biddi is unpaved with 30% single track, so we spent more hours riding each day than we had anticipated.

The Munda Biddi bikepacking route is a well-established one, approximately paralleling the long-travelled Bibbulman hiking route between Perth and Albany in Western Australia. It's around 1100 km of cycling – if you start from the airport in Perth and pedal to the northern terminus to commence the ride. We chose to cycle in October, because it promised to be wildflower season (it was), the winter rains should have finished (they had), it wouldn’t be too hot (it wasn’t – as we shook our thin-gloved hands into action while exiting Donnelly River, I found it was just 2 degrees Celsius), and there wouldn’t be too many people (there weren’t – on a number of days we saw no-one else cycling the trail).

Chris in a tingle tree.

The Munda Biddi is free to cycle and has a number of free camping sites along the trail which have sleeping platforms, water tanks, a long drop and large covered area with tables and bench seats. We were super-impressed by these sites - spaced around 70 km apart, except where there is an intervening town witheasy alternative camping. DOC could take a leaf out of WA’s book – everything is made from wood or metal, the only hinges are on the dunny door and there are no windows as the sleeping area is open at both ends. The set-up is super simple and cheap to maintain.

You bring your camping gear and sleep on the long wooden platforms or in the nearby camping spots. If there are bugs, you can put your tent inner up on the wooden platform or bring a mosquito net. Many cyclists hadn’t bothered to bring tents, just sleeping mats. There were very few biting bugs in October although I do have to mention the flies. A trip to Western Australia would not be complete without them. Australian flies are sneaky – they buzz around your face as you climb uphill, then you think you have escaped them as you zoom downhill. However, they’ve actually been hitching a ride on your back and reappear around your face as soon as you slow down.

Logistics are very easy on the Munda Biddi as there are only a couple of days you don’t find a town somewhere along the route. We’d buy food for dinner, breakfast and lunch for a day at a time and, if the town was in the right location, stock up with a large second breakfast. Mostly we slept at the campsites but we also stayed in a couple of campgrounds and a couple of motels. You can do the entire trip paying minimal amounts for accommodation.

No Australian trip is complete without a photo of roos at a campsite.

We both ride Bombtrack Beyond +2s with carbon forks, 2.8 inch tyres (tubeless) and SRAM Eagle drive trains. Our bikes were perfect for the trip. They floated across the infamous ‘pea gravel’ into which many of the bikes we saw sank. They made light work of the steeper sections of track up which many Australians walked, given their bikes were geared for flat roads. We used our standard bikepacking set-up with 3 litre bags on the forks, full frame bags, Porcelain Rocket Mr Fusion frames on the rear with 11 litre dry bags, two Revelate Feedbags on the front, a Magtank and Jerrycan on the top tube and a lightweight backpack as our front roll bag. I upped the stakes on excess gear this trip – as well as my laptop (carried in a Paper Roads Hungry Ranger on my front roll), I strapped my 1 kg travel guitar on top so I could do my daily practice. Who needs clothes?

We totally recommend the Munda Biddi as a beautiful bikepacking destination not that far from New Zealand. You can do it at your own pace – there are few areas where you have to go further than 40 km to reach either the next campsite or town. People were extremely friendly – to the point we wanted them to be less friendly because every conversation about us, our bikes, or New Zealand tended to be 30 minutes long and we needed to keep cycling. What more could you want?

Check out Jane's GAUMARJOS GEORGIA yarn on the Ground Effect Blog about bike touring through Georgia.