Going green on bike tour

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This was published 15 years ago

Going green on bike tour

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David Scott aims to leave a light carbon footprint as he cycles the rail trail between Wangaratta and Beechworth.

You leave the lightest ecological wheelmark when you are pedalling on the Murray to the Mountains Rail Trail. Much of the earth beneath your tyres was packed in the late 1800s so trains could link the gold-riddled towns of north-east Victoria.

The railway line was decommissioned two generations ago but is now whirring with life as cyclists take their mechanical steeds along the path of the iron horse.

Up to 45,000 riders take to the trail each year, with 8000 choosing the Easter weekend, says Clayton Neil, a cycle tourism officer for the three municipalities that administer the rail trail.

I tried the trail recently to see how light a carbon footprint the cycle tourist leaves.

It's a no-car weekend for father and son. We catch a Friday train from Melbourne to Wangaratta where 1984 Olympic gold medallist Dean Woods fits us out with bikes, panniers, helmets and repair kits.

We have a lively conversation about magpies - it's diving season and cyclists are fair game - so Woods lets on that a squirt from a water bottle can sometimes keep them at bay.

I'm anxious to get going because son Solomon is 10 and an unknown quantity as a long-haul bike rider. For this reason we skip the chance to stop for a refreshing ale at the Vine Hotel on the outskirts of Wangaratta, but I spend the next few minutes liking the fact that the rail trail has a pub so early in the journey.

We are meandering past Reedy Creek when Solly invokes his right to call a stop whenever he feels like it: a mound of dirt on the left looks like the Grand Canyon and he wants to conquer it and be photographed at the top.

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And so it goes. After 13 kilometres we reach Londrigan Station where Clayton Neil has agreed to check on our progress. He takes us on a splendid detour to Eldorado, where there sits a massive multi-storey dredge responsible for sucking, scooping and clawing 70,644 ounces of gold from Reedy Creek.

Back on the trail, we begin the steady climb towards Beechworth. This is a largely relentless incline through farm and bushland, with the occasional road bridge. Just as I'm wondering how to keep the lad entertained, a kookaburra flies across the track.

He's hard to miss. It's an elevated section and the bird has cruised over at eye height, a metre above the line. My companion has seen it, too.

"KOOKABURRA!" he yells, and breaks into "kookaburra sits on the electric wire, jumping up and down with his pants on fire".

It's one thing to see Victoria's beautiful high country by bike, another entirely to see it through the enthusiasms of a 10-year-old.

After leaving Melbourne at 8.30am we arrive on rented bicycles in Beechworth just after 6pm, ready for a rest and secretly hoping our rustic accommodation - named 1860 after the time of its creation - has a television so we can watch the football.

We are in luck - 1860 is luxury rustic so we can look forward to a beer-and-soft drink, dad-and-boy evening in front of the footy. First we have to take our jaws off the polished jarrah floor because the attention to detail makes 1860 gobsmackingly beautiful and a prime example of environmentally responsible building.

You walk in to see a huge old blacksmith's bellows, polished and recruited for use as a coffee table. This leads the eye to the slab-and-mortar walls and reclaimed bluegum dining table. Husband-and-wife owners Matt Pfahlert and Gina Bladon explain that the phrase "embodied energy" loomed large during the reconstruction of 1860, which was originally erected in Emerald and shifted to Taggerty in the 1980s.

Pfahlert had been working in the high country on a vocational program with at-risk young men when he first saw 1860 and when it became available in 2003 he jumped at the chance. The hut was dismantled and rebuilt as the centrepiece of unique Beechworth accommodation with minimal embodied energy at the philosophical core.

Slabs, floorboards, ceiling pine, corrugated iron and even bark were sourced from old stables, warehouses, pubs and farms around the north-east.

The environmental philosophy extends to use of green power by way of the grid, on-demand hot water, drying sheets on the clothes line whenever possible, using eucalyptus as a cleaner and installing a rainwater tank for the luxurious double-bath. Breakfast is a triumph of sustainability: jams from Stanley (eight kilometres away), apple juice from Beechworth, strawberries from Wooragee (four kilometres), bread from Whitfield (60 kilometres), hand-smoked bacon from Wodonga (35 kilometres) and eggs from Lake Hume (30 kilometres).

When we arrive, the owners leaves barbecue provisions for our evening meal. Eye fillet from Moyhu Wagyu, mustard from Milawa, salad grown in Everton and poached Wooragee strawberries.

I have a fleeting taste of some magnificent Beechworth honey ice-cream before the 10-year-old inhales it.

We sleep as contented men before tackling a full day in Beechworth.

My first stop is at Pennyweight Winery with a convenient entrance straight off the rail trail. Elizabeth and Stephen Morris began the vineyard in 1982 but the Morrises - yes, those Morrises - trace their winemaking pedigree back to 1860 and Rutherglen.

They have embraced the mysterious practices of biodynamics to grow their fruit and make their wine.

One of their sons, Fred Morris, shows me around the vineyard and points out the vetch, rye grass and clover growing between the rows of vines. The vegetation will be inverted with a mouldboard plough, pumping nutrients and moisture into the soil that feeds the vines.

The Morrises don't irrigate and Fred says it would not be possible to grow dry-land grapes with thirsty grass between the rows.

Biodynamic grape-growing, he says, is about having faith in a natural balance and it is this organic approach that the Morrises use in every aspect of their winemaking process. "It's a beautiful concept," Fred says.

I head back to 1860 to extricate Solly from his cartoons and we race up to the visitor centre to take the Ned Kelly tour.

Our guide, Adam Wynne-Jenkins, looks like Ned Kelly and tells me all the guides (the blokes, anyway) are growing beards to embrace the spirit of the republican bushranger.

We stroll the streets with Wynne-Jenkins and enjoy a cloudless spring morning, learning about Kelly's many Beechworth connections involving jails, courts, popular acclaim and well, more jails.

After the tour we spend the day in town, munching a Ned Kelly pie from Beechworth Bakery and plotting a trip to the cordial tasting at Murray Breweries.

We visit the Beechworth Honey Experience, with its inside-outside hive of bees and a range of sweet treats. Owners Steven and Jodie Goldsworthy represent four bee-keeping generations with links to Beechworth's golden years.

Solly hits the jackpot with a soft drink called Sparkling Honey Nectar, so I talk him into a visit to Bridge Road Brewers, where Ben Kraus has used local hops and chestnuts in his latest creation, Chestnut Lager. We chat about sustainability and Kraus says that a light carbon footprint can be as simple as local people drinking local beer in a local pub.

The brewery can roll a barrel into nearby client Tanswell's Commercial Hotel without turning over an engine.

Across the street, Dalcheri is a fashion store with natural fibres at its core. Owners Katrina Dale and daughter Sarah Cherie have stocked clothing made from non-synthetics such as hemp, bamboo, wool, possum and soy.

That night we eat at the Ox and Hound - it's local duck, local rabbit and a pinot noir from Cow Hill vineyard.

A thunderstorm transforms the evening and Solly counts lightning strikes before we pick our gap and head back to 1860.

The next morning I'm packing up for our departure, finding it impossible to motivate my young apprentice to do the same, when the youngster dives into the panniers to find some unnecessary item and scatters clothes everywhere. I contemplate an eco-friendly strangling (hessian, perhaps) in the fashion of our heroes, Homer and Bart, but err on the side of more responsible parenting.

We point our bikes towards Wangaratta and enjoy the most wonderful hour of freewheeling down the rail trail. We've arranged to meet Geoff Scott from Bus-A-Bike at Everton station to make sure we catch our train.

He asks if we enjoyed the trip. "Every moment."

David Scott travelled courtesy of Tourism Victoria.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

V/Line to Wangaratta: 136 196, www.vline.com.au.

Murray to the Mountains Rail Trail

See www.railtrail.com.au.

In Wangaratta:

Bike hire from Dean Woods Cycles, www.deanwoods.com.au or 5722 2033.

In Beechworth:

Accommodation at 1860, www.1860luxuryaccommodation.com, 5728 2027.

Ned Kelly Walking Tour: www.tinyurl.com/4rexk8 or 1300 366 321.

The Beechworth Honey Experience: www.beechworthhoney.com.au, 5728 1432

Bridge Road Brewers: www.bridgeroadbrewers.com.au, 5728 2703.

Dalcheri clothing: http://www.dalcheri.com.au, 5728 2711

Beechworth Bakery: www.beechworthbakery.com.au, 5728 1132

Pennyweight Winery: www.pennyweight.com.au, 5728 1747.

On the rail trail

Geoff Scott's Bus-A-Bike, 0409 806 458, geoffs@internode.on.net

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