Stephen Blyth's Blog

A shortage of basics like bread, cereal and milk means I’m eating breakfast out for the second day running. I’m sitting here at Mule in Sydney Road listing to Radiohead, Verve and some other britpop bands. The whoosh of the espresso machine interrupts madly. There has been heavy rain over night so the gutters are [...]

All the way up to Confest at Gulpa Creek, near Echuca on the Murray River, we expected to see a line of slow moving Combi vans and housebuses. But there was no sign of either a queue nor many hippy vehicles. Rattly, mobile wrecks were outnumbered by new Holdens, suburban assault vehicles (SAVs) and the [...]

It seemed appropriate to get a lead on microbreweries in Victoria in a town with a rich gold mining past. Amidst the brochures for microlight rides, gold panning, ski hire and other alpine activities was an innocuous postcard sized book with a beer bottle on it. “Craft beer” said the label. Within the slim volume [...]

It was pretty desolate on the Razorback Ridge, an undulating route up to the summit of Feathertop, Victoria’s second highest peak. The dominant vegetation is short, contorted and barren snow gums. In winter the trees are ravaged by frost and snow, while dry summers make the woodlands vulnerable to fire. There were signs of recent [...]

I’ve made a few bookings for my month of being on the road. Still room to move, but my trip will look something like this: cycle touring in rural Victoria up until Sunday 9 May fly to Darwin on Monday 10 May visit Kakadu National Park and other parks travel by road 1500km to Alice [...]

It was an early start to catch the 9.20am Albury train to Avenel, about 120km north of Melbourne. On a Sunday too. Every weekend the Melbourne Bicycle Touring Club organise rides in and around Melbourne, and today’s trip was a 65km ride along Hughes Creek in the Goulburn River catchment. There were nineteen riders, of [...]