Brompton touring – Melbourne to Canberra

Mike Textor

A winter journey by Brompton folding bike — 25 days, about 1,000 km, stitched together from trains, quiet backroads, and a lot of map-checking. I’ve found this style of travel works best for me: slow enough to take in the landscape, simple enough to manage alone, and flexible enough to change with the weather.

Route & Wayfinding

The trip began with a short ride to Kingston railway station, a train to Sydney, and an overnight sleeper to Melbourne’s CBD. From there, I followed bike paths through the suburbs to Craigieburn before joining a network of quiet country roads shadowing the rail line: Seymour, Euroa, Wangaratta, Howlong, Culcairn, Henty, Mangoplah, Wagga, then onwards through Wantabadgery, Gundagai, Jugiong, Harden, Yass, across to Gundaroo and finally into Canberra.

I prefer to avoid the Hume and Olympic Highways, so I stitched the route together with farm service tracks (often gravel) and lesser-used sealed roads. For me, these roads offer more than just safety — they bring quiet, tree-lined stretches, glimpses of wildlife, and a calm you don’t find beside busy highways.

Navigation meant plenty of close-up map reading, often at 1:12,500 scale or finer, to link small roads or dry-weather tracks. I’ve come to rely on openstreetmap.org for this kind of riding, loaded onto OSMAND+ on my phone (also works well with Garmin GPS units) — it’s been far more reliable than other mapping tools for these back routes.

The Bike & Gear

My bike was a Brompton C Explore (6-speed, steel frame, racks, mudguards, 16×1.35-inch tyres). I swapped the standard 50-tooth chainring for a 30-tooth one. I’ve learned that lower gearing helps a lot when climbing with a loaded bike.

I keep my packing simple: around 10–12 kg dry weight with tools for basic repairs, a spare tyre and tubes, winter camping kit (tent, sleeping bag, stove, food for 36 hours), and the usual electronics phone, GPS, PLB, power bank. Everything fits in a Brompton T Bag and rear rack bag (~35 litres total).

I’ve used this same setup on several other trips, Bendigo via Jerilderie (~1,600 km), Sydney to Melbourne, Adelaide to Canberra, and Canberra to Eden via the Boboyan Road, most of them in winter, so it’s a system that suits me well.

Accommodation & Rhythm

Most weeks settled into a rhythm: three nights in motels, three in caravan parks (with hot showers), and one night camping in the scrub, tucked just off the road depending on daylight, weather, or how far I’d managed that day.

This pattern keeps the trip affordable and flexible. I like knowing I can stretch the distance if I need to or stop short if the weather turns. It’s less about a fixed plan and more about moving steadily forward, one quiet road at a time. I managed to avoid the Hume and Olympic Highways completely by some extensive zig-zagging using service roads for farms (usually gravel) and smaller sealed roads where, for cars and trucks, there was usually a shorter or faster alternate route from A to B.  These roads have few cars, plentiful well-established trees and wildlife and picturesque landscapes, horizons, and, importantly, it’s quiet and peaceful.

Navigation required extensive use of electronic maps, often at ~ 1:12500 scale (or finer)  to identify the smaller roads and how to “connect the dots” – e.g. finding a “dry weather only” track connected two small gravel roads.

All maps are available via openstreetmap.org and can be used on many Android apps without an internet connection (I used OSMAND+). The same maps can be downloaded to Garmin GPS units, and are more accurate than Google Maps.

See The Journey!