Victoria’s High Country: all things Bright and beautiful
Ups and downs in the Victorian High Country.
My legs are pumping and my bicycle is flying up the Mount Buffalo Road, along one of Victoria’s highest peaks. Well, not flying exactly, but I’m certainly whizzing more than wheezing and definitely not wheeling my bike, which is what I’d usually be doing on a hill such as this. My tour guide, Laura Rigby, who regularly cycles 60km for lunch, is left in my wake. Granted, she’s using nothing other than muscle and determination, and I’m on a shiny new ebike, but for the first time, I’m actually enjoying the ride.
Electric bikes are revolutionising the recreational cycling world and it’s easy to see why. Also known as pedelec, they feature a small, quiet battery-powered motor that kicks in when the rider pedals. It’s not automatic, but at the flick of a switch my bike delivers extra oomph right when I need it. When the going gets steep, a decent effort is still required, but it’s taking me places I never would have dreamed of pedalling on a guided cycling tour in the foothills of the Victorian Alps.
I power up the steep and winding driveway of Mt Buffalo Olives and as I gaze out at the view while waiting for Rigby to catch up, I recall a conversation with an acquaintance I bumped into while having dinner the night before at Reed & Co, a gin distillery that serves up delicious food in Bright. Like me, and just about everybody else in the bar, he’s in the high country for a weekend of cycling, but he’s not impressed when I tell him my plans. “Ebikes are an abomination,” he declares, before lamenting the obesity crisis and suggesting we should all be doing more exercise, not less.
But I am being far more active than I otherwise would, because as someone who has always considered cycling to be a bit like boiled choko — something to avoid at all costs — normally I’d be in a car. And I’m so paranoid the battery might run out before I really need it, I engage it only when we get to the big hills; most of the time I’m working as hard as everyone else.
To my surprise, I don’t need it very often because most of our tour is on rail trails: dedicated sealed (or gravel) cycling and walking paths built on abandoned railway lines that have had the sleepers and tracks removed. We might be in the mountains, but the beauty of these trails is that those old locomotives weren’t great at hauling heavy loads up hills, so they are pretty flat, or at least gently inclined. They are also traffic free, and on this sunny Saturday morning there’s a steady stream of families and couples on the path, smiling and swapping comments about the weather as they pedal past. Hardly anyone is wearing Lycra and many of the bicycles sport pretty baskets on the handlebars because the trail goes past some of the best farmgate stalls and cellar doors in the country. Think olives, berries, apples, cheese, pumpkin seeds, chestnuts, walnuts and lots of wine.
A dedicated cyclist, Rigby recently relocated to the Victorian high country from NSW because, she says, “it’s the best place to cycle in Australia”. She proceeded to launch Follow My Wheel, the first guided produce cycling tours in the Bright area. The itinerary changes according to what is in season, but highlights of our four-hour, 16km tour are the breathtaking views (and that’s not just because it’s a long uphill ride to reach them) at Mt Buffalo Olives and a private tasting with the winemaker at Mayford Wines (usually open to the public only one weekend a year) before finishing off with a bottle of vino and a picnic lunch of produce from some of the farms we didn’t visit.
Rigby runs several tours, but this one is exclusive to guests staying at the Kilnhouses, three beautifully designed houses she manages on an Angus cattle stud owned by Clare and Jim Delany. The accommodation was inspired by the old tobacco kilns and sheds that dot the landscape. Today, most of the countryside around Bright and Porepunkah is clad with rows of grapes and hops, but a half-century ago the main crop was tobacco.
I’m staying in the Sorting Shed, but there’s nothing shed-like about it. Upstairs is a lounge and den, both with wood-burning heaters, and a kitchen equipped with everything you might need, including a half-dozen canisters of various loose-leaf teas, perfect for sipping while curled up in the window seat gazing at grazing cattle and the granite dome of Mount Buffalo. There are two patios, each with mountain views, and should the weather turn inclement there are two TVs, a well-stocked library of DVDs, picture books and magazines, and an upright piano on which I could belt out a tune if I knew how to play.
Downstairs is a sauna as well as a laundry and three bedrooms, and I dither for 10 minutes deciding which room to sleep in, comparing the views. There are no neighbours or streetlights, so no need to pull the blinds at night, although I do end up being eyeballed by a cow first thing in the morning. In the garage are two bikes of the non-pedal-assist kind.
That evening I head into Bright, by taxi not bike, for tacos and margaritas at The Yard, the alfresco offshoot of Bright restaurant Elm Dining. The next day I take the long way home, detouring in the opposite direction towards Mount Beauty so I can settle in for a long lunch at Templar Lodge in Tawonga, a relatively new restaurant by Emma Hadley in an old Masonic hall. That’s the other great thing about cycling the high country; there’s no shortage of good ways to replenish the calories you’ve burnt off on the bike, with or without pedal assist.
More to the story
There are more than 200km of off-road riding trails in the Victorian High Country. The Murray to Mountains Rail Trail is more than 100km and links Wangaratta to Bright, with detours to Beechworth and Milawa. The Great Victorian Rail Trail, the longest continuous rail trail in Australia, is 134km from Tallarook through Yea to Mansfield. The 44km High Country Rail Trail goes from Wodonga (near Albury) to Old Tallangatta along the shoreline of Lake Hume. For those who like to pedal harder and are happy road riding, the Seven Peaks Challenge includes Dinner Plain, Falls Creek, Mount Hotham, Lake Mountain, Mount Buffalo, Mount Baw Baw and Mount Buller.
In the know
The Kilnhouses are at Porepunkah, 320km northeast of Melbourne and about 3½ hours’ drive via the M31. Accommodation at the Sorting Shed from $400 a night a couple, $450 on weekends. Follow My Wheel Kilnhouse Cycling tours are $150 an adult; $100 extra to upgrade to hybrid or electric bike.
Lee Atkinson was a guest of Alpine Shire Council and the Kilnhouses.
