The Munda Biddi Trail, Western Australia

The Munda Biddi Trail is a 1,100-kilometre mountain bike ride from the coast at Albany to Mundaring, high in the hills outside of Perth. It’s off-road in the main, promising adventure and strange beauty. We set off from Melbourne one fine morning, excited about the road trip across the Nullarbor and the ride into unknown territory.

Prelude: A road journey from Melbourne to Albany

A car, a caravan, four people and a tent. We drive north for a day, through silo towns & across rolling plains of sun-bleached stubble. Tumbleweeds caught in wire fences, wild melons rampant by the roadside. Seven hundred kilometres clear of the city by sunset. Light glinting off trees and silos. Parrots flashing green, red and orange. Kangaroos, skittish. The river, dark and silent.

Westward then, with the downhill flow of the river. Pelicans, black swans and great flocks of ducks on the move. A string of citrus orchards, vineyards and migrant-settled river towns. Renmark has a population of less than 10,000. Its places of worship include a Greek Orthodox Church, a Sikh temple, an Islamic Mosque, a Christian Life Centre and a Jehovah’s Witness hall.

A steampunk boat emerges out of the early morning mist like a mirage. Bonfires burn in bare paddocks. The smoke-softened sky is full of weather.

We leave the river and drive into a storm, the brooding southern Flinders Ranges on one side of the road, dry grazing country smouldering on the other. The rain comes and falls in squalls all afternoon. Somewhere west of Port Augusta we find an oyster farmer still in his shed and later that evening, as rain buffets the van, we sit inside and feast on Streaky Bay oysters and champagne.

Red dirt, big sky country. White dunes glittering off in the distance. The head of the Great Australian Bight. Rainbow tinted clouds, turquoise water, towering sea cliffs. No land mass closer south than Antarctica. Too early in the season for the great incoming of southern right whales to the sheltered bays of the Bight.

On the Nullarbor it is mild enough to sit out and dine under the stars, dingoes howling out on the plain, small desert creatures coming in from the darkness.

We cross into Western Australia with Albany in our sights, full of anticipation of the ride ahead of us on the Munda Biddi Trail. 

The Mundi Biddi Part 1: Albany to Collie

Albany to Walpole

Kangaroo paws, tea tree and fluorescent orange bottlebrush. Warmth in the air and a thunderstorm building. As we near Cape Howe the damp air carries the scent of the sea. At the end of our first day on the Trail, two of our team of four riders have enough spirit left to cycle an additional fifteen kilometres to secure a bottle of WA wine to enjoy with dinner. 

The riding is intense and varied: exhilarating single tracks through glistening, glowing forests; arduous long, steep red-dirt hills; sand that you sink into; gently undulating tracks; towering karris and red and yellow tingle trees; crossing narrow bridges and fast-flowing rivers with occasional breathtaking views to the distant sea. The sweet relief of arriving at a forest shelter in the late afternoon and making a warm cocoon for ourselves before darkness falls. 

Near the river estuary, the air is heady with the scent of salt and seaweed. Pelicans, cormorants and spoonbills abound. In the bush, there’s peppermint and dust on the breeze. Flocks of yellow ringneck parrots, dusky olive parrots and white geese fill the sky. 

Clear blue skies. Kangaroos and wallabies cut across in front of us and an emu easily outpaces us. A couple of nights ago the moon rose full and golden. Nothing stirred in the warm, still darkness. 

In the Valley of the Giants, we visit the Tree Top Walk and enjoy a gentle meander through the tree canopy after a tough ride up the mountain. We linger over the museum’s exhibits, indulge in a machine-dispensed cappuccino in the warmth of the gift shop and photograph each other driving a cardboard car through a giant tingle tree. 

Bodies spent as we near Walpole, but all riders in good spirits. After five days and 250 kilometres of cycling, we enjoy an ‘on-two-feet’ day, washing our sand splattered gear and servicing our trusty steeds. After the morning’s rain squalls, the sun shines and the flowering hakea trees are festooned with western rosellas. There’s little to do in Walpole apart from idle wandering; a perfect place for a rest day.

Walpole to Manjimup

Out from Walpole, we ride for a couple of days through fire-blackened forests, the smoke from the February bushfires still pungent and the world silent. The charcoal trees, the bright green regrowth and the small rounded flowers on top of the kingea plants make for a stark, strange beauty. Deep in the heart of the forest, where the eye of the firestorm raged, even the lagoons are black. A wild black pig startles us as it comes galloping out of the burnt scrub. The going is tough at times as we haul laden bicycles over and around trees felled by the fire.

Exhilarating single track riding, through she-oak forests and flowering heathlands, a blur of green and orange and white as we fly past, an orchestra of small songbirds the soundtrack to our ride. 

A night in a shelter, black and still and deep. Frogs call from the river. The next morning, red-tailed black cockatoos in flight and a large flock of white-tailed, black cockatoos feeding high up in the marri trees. 

Riding the hills with more grace now. Energy enough after a 45-kilometre ride to scramble the ladder 57 metres up to the top of the Gloucester Tree for a breathtaking view of the southern forests.

At the Quinninup caravan park we find ourselves in a world populated by gnomes and barbie dolls transformed into blackened forest angels, goats lying on picnic tables, western grey kangaroos lazing about, birds everywhere. The manager is on sick leave and the park is in the hands of caretakers Ruth and Ron, simple, salt-of-the-earth nomads. Ruth has a small easel set up and is painting a series of landscapes based on the photos on a deck of souvenir playing cards. We feel like we’ve stepped onto the film set of a wildly offbeat travelogue.

Cold nights and crisp, clear mornings. In the old mill towns, the night air is acrid with smoke from the fires burning in every house and hotel. Timber fellers sometimes block our way and we have to divert to bitumen roads and an hour or so of fast, smooth-riding.

Another five days of cycling, another rest day, this time in Manjimup. We reprovision, hunt for black truffles and steady ourselves for the more challenging sections of the trail that lay ahead.

Manjimup to Collie

Sun rising through fog, white geese in a green field, pickers bringing in the harvest, vines on the turn. The air fragrant with ripening apples.

A night in Donnelly River, an old timber mill town. Its disused steam-driven mill is falling in on itself. The town is now largely uninhabited except for a caretaker and roaming bands of emus and western grey kangaroos. In Jarrahwood, a strange child stands half-hidden in a lilly-pilly tree, watching us intently. At a nearby outdoor museum, there is a photo of a team of women, four sisters, who were champion timber cutters and another of barefooted women in tennis frocks playing on a court made of jarrah sleepers.

Sunlit days. Wattles, grevilleas and banksias in flower. The red-tailed black cockatoo now our totem bird. The night sky a marvel of stars, constellations and planets.

Crisscrossing the Bibbulmun long-distance walking trail, though it has been days since we saw a walker. Rough terrain and challenging cycling on gnarly tracks, especially those rutted by illicit dirt bike riders. Later in the day, smoke from prescribed burns turns the setting sun molten orange. 

Singletrack riding through the delightful Crooked Brook Forest, the serious red dirt hills of the Ferguson Valley and then a downhill run into a lovely bush shelter deep in the forests of Wellington National Park. A still, brooding evening; the calm before the storm. The wind comes first, then at 3 am the wild rain. We ride all the next morning in challenging conditions. A damaged chain reduces one bicycle to a single gear. We battle gusting side winds, branches coming down from the trees overhead and relentless rain.

We are relieved to arrive at the once-grand Federal Hotel in Collie and soon find ourselves in front of an open fire with a bowl of hot soup and a glass of red. A slow Sunday in Collie, a depressed coal-mining town with perhaps just enough spirit to create a brighter future for itself.

We’ve experienced some very physical riding the last five days. Fast single tracks with sharp switchbacks on rough terrain that are challenging and satisfying, as long as you keep your wits about you and hold your nerve. 

With 750 kilometres ridden and 350 km still to ride, we press the pause button on the Munda Biddi Trail, the longest mountain bike ride in the world. One of our team is injured so tomorrow we’ll cycle 40 kilometres in a westerly direction, board the train to Perth and overwinter off the trail.

The Mundi Biddi Part 2: Collie to Mundaring

Five months after pressing the pause button on the Munda Biddi Trail, three of us return to ride the remaining 350 kilometres, from Collie to Mundaring, north-east of Perth. The Maori mob who run the Federal Hotel in Collie remember us and greet us warmly; ah, the bicycle riders are back.

An aesthete rider we meet on the trail says it’s a very good time of the year to be riding. The spring storms have almost passed, the temperature is in the mid-20s, the wildflowers are out, and there are no march flies. The only downside is that the thunderstorms have woken up the snakes. As indeed they have. Early one morning we almost ride over a yellow-bellied tiger snake, flattened out and unprepared to give any ground whatsoever.

Some sections of the track are arduous; steep, broken, rocky tracks with ball-bearing like pea gravel an additional hazard. Other sections are a delight. Cycling on smooth surfaced, gently undulating tracks with ease enough to take in the beauty of the forest and the myriad of wildflowers; scarlet red regal kangaroo paws, yellow spiralled hakeas, iridescent orange star flowers and deep purple fringe lilies. Kangaroos and emus cross the track in front of us and red-tailed black cockatoos applaud raucously as we ride by. 

On the track out of Dwellingup, we meet another cyclist, 72-year-old Jim, riding south to Albany and towing a trailer behind his bicycle. I’m riding the Munda Biddi for the second time, he said, riding it while I still can. Ringneck parrots a blur of green as they fly in front of us, the infamous arduous climb in and out of Serpentine Dam, the beer at the Jarrahdale Hotel afterwards hard-earned and relished.

At night we largely have the shelters to ourselves. Green haze, birdsong, tranquil evenings. We spend one magical night at Dandalup Shelter, high up on the escarpment with a view clear through to the sea. A garden of granite outcrops, grass trees spiking with flowers, slender gumtrees; a pale, almost full moon; in the darkness, the calling of owls. On our last night, we share Carinyah Shelter with the very affable Grant and enjoy an evening of companionable conversation and the slow settling of the day.

After seven continuous days of cycling, we arrive at the Munda Biddi Trail’s end. Bodies weary, spirits soaring. Pleased to have undertaken the ride (novice mountain bicycle riders that we are), pleased to have ridden the last tough section from Collie to Mundaring without injury or catastrophe, pleased above all to have put ourselves in the way of such wild beauty.

If you enjoyed riding with us on the Munda Biddi, you might also like Riding the Mawson Trail, the Great Victorian Bike Ride: Grampians to Geelong or walking the Cape to Cape Track also in Western Australia.