Flashpacking in Victoria's High Country

Words and photos: Adam Macbeth

We would be travelling as light as possible and linking up some great, chill trail riding. Daisy and I had spent pretty much the entirety of last summer exploring the more remote riding of the Victorian High Country and we’d spent a lot of time camping, and a lot of time in the car. And so the opposite was proposed. Link some stuff up using the train, stay in accommodation and have a hot shower, and let somebody else take care of our meals. 

Fortunately, the Victorian V-Line train system that services regional Victoria is pretty accommodating of bikes, and it wasn’t long before we’d hatched our plan. We'd catch the train from Melbourne to Chiltern in Victoria’s stunning North East, head out to Yackandandah and Beechworth, ride some great trails, drink some good coffee and beers and wander back to Wangaratta. You could access these areas via train from Sydney but, unlike V-Line, the New South Wales Countrylink system will ask you to box your bike, so it may be worth heading down for a more extended trip than a night or two. 

Want to go bigger? Read out bikepacking in New Zealand.

We’ve gotten really good at packing very light for full-blown bikepacking, and stripping our gear right down for this kind of supported trip really was a lot of fun. Until we started the packing I thought we’d for sure need to add some kind of decent on-bike storage, like a proper saddle bag, but when you don’t need to carry sleeping or cooking gear you can really get away with not much. In the end, with just a small amount of extra ride and casual clothing, some spares and some snacks, Daisy and I were able to condense our gear to my thirty two litre Osprey backpack and a small looking but seemingly very spacious Skin Grows Back handlebar bag. Nice. Being able to travel this light makes it more than possible to tackle this kind of ride on whatever bike you have – duallie, hardtail, even a capable gravel bike – without the need for specialist gear. Although specialist gear is pretty nice!

What Did We Take?

Pair of merino boxers each
Casual shirt and shorts
Down jacket
Small toiletries
Dynaplugs and small hand pump
Multitool and chain links
Wallets and phones
Spare pair of socks eachSnacks

A few hours on the V-Line on Saturday morning and Daisy and I were off at the quaint Chiltern station and rolling the 35-ish kilometres toward Yackandandah. The rolling, soft gravel roads of Mount Pilot National Park soon lead us to the junction of the main road to Wodonga, and joined the newly completed Beechworth-Yackandandah rail trail. Now, if you’ve been on a longer ride with me before, you’ll know I’m not a big fan of a rail trail. Even to link up other areas of good riding I generally find rail trails will bore me to tears within minutes. And so I was VERY pleasantly surprised to find that the newly created stuff near Yackandandah has really broken that rail trail mould. This made us both smile, as there’d be a lot of rail trail link up this weekend. 

From the Yackandandah North rest area all the way in to Yack the rail trail descends, more steeply than the three percent that trains are only supposed to be able to handle, and it’s certainly no boring, straight line. Perhaps as this section of trail was left unused so long, and trees were able to become established on parts of the trail itself, the trail weaves and winds it’s way amongst the forest until it spits you out in the Yackandandah valley with huge vistas across rolling farmland and the proper Alpine beyond. Not a bad way to arrive at lunch. 

Before heading to the renowned Yack Tracks, we stopped in town briefly to fill up on water, eat a pie and a caramel slice from Gumtree Pies and sit in the sun admiring how freakin’cute Yackandandah is. Yack also now has a small but very good bike shop that’s open Saturday for last minute stuff or just to wander around and have a chat to some super friendly locals. 

A small section of what I assume is locals-made singletrack leads from town up to the Yack Tracks and offers a glimpse of what’s in store once you arrive. It’s a gentle climb up to the trail park itself but, like most of this area, offers great views and a bustle of birds and insects, especially in early spring. 

It was our first time at the Yack Tracks and word on the grapevine was ‘flow.’ After a couple of laps of the green Shack Loop to get our eye in we ventured out onto the longer Diggers Loop. 18.5km of fun, flowy, intermediate blue trail that climbs over 400m and offers a ripper descent back to the trailhead and it’s babbling little river. Signs of gold rush era works are everywhere and, while we didn’t see any signage as such, it’s probably wise to not stray too far from the trail. Nothing wrecks a weekend like having to get rescued from a mine shaft!

There’s over 80km of singletrack in the Yack Tracks network and realistically you could spend a few days here learning your way around. We only had the weekend though and as the afternoon was getting on we decided to head to our accommodation in Beechworth. Much earlier, knowing it was a couple of hours of rail trail, I wasn’t looking forward to this commute. But after the small taste of rail trail earlier we were both in great spirits and headed back up the hill. 

For some reason in this direction the trail seems way less steep and the green of the surrounding hills seems embraces your path. From where we had initially joined the new section of rail trail it heads west past wineries and small town of Wooragee before climbing over a small pass and dumping you pretty much exactly at the Beechworth bike park. Here the trail passes through a couple of amazing, very deep cuttings and what is clearly the most popular section for the rail trail committed out there. Is it technical and ‘fun’ in the way many of us have come to exclusively enjoy riding our bikes? Definitely not. But linking together the kind of riding you love with what feels like a genuine adventure is it’s own unique experience and something I recommend everyone to try. 

We parked up for the night at Beechworth Motor Inn, a small and bike friendly accommodation provider on the edge of town just a short bike ride or walk to dinner. It’s worth considering that, like much of regional Victoria, Beechworth has a growing issue with affordable accommodation for it’s residents. We try as much as possible to stay at motels and pubs in these areas and hope that some of the housing currently laying mostly dormant as AirBnBs can be freed up for locals. 

Beechworth is a great place for eating and drinking and, as long as you make a booking, you can be spoiled for choice. We went hard and had one of the best meals ever at the Ox and Hound bistro but there are a few pubs in town all offering meals, as well as the must-visit Bridge Road Brewery. 

Day two started with coffee and croissants at Tiny café (seriously this place is great) before heading out for a morning at the Beechworth bike park. A little rougher and more technical than the riding at Yack, the Beechworth trails are obviously a source of pride for the local riding community. There’s less volume of trail at Beechworth but everything is extremely well made, and well maintained, and the fun factor is super high. Whereas Yackandandah was totally fine and fun on hardtails, Beechworth is probably rocky enough that a full suspension bike would be my first choice next time around.

A couple of hours of looseness and laughs and it was time to start thinking about the train we had to catch. We stopped by Tanswells Hotel on the main drag for a sneaky beverage in the early afternoon sun and then started making our way to Wangaratta. It’s easy to forget, with so many views of mountains, that Beechworth is actually pretty high. While our afternoon roll was more on the ‘traditional’ style of rail trail (not super fun) it’s pretty much all down hill from Beechworth and is far from the roads, really immersing you in the farmland of the Indigo valley. 

I did hear afterwards that there’s a local's singletrack that runs from Beechworth almost all the way to El Dorado and will one hundred percent be checking this out next time. 

With our bikes we jumped back on the V-Line for a couple of hours to Melbourne and that’s a weekend! Flashpacking is fun! If you’re dreaming of a relaxed weekend of rolling around, seeing some sights, having good chats, eating some food and checking out some fun riding in between then the Beechworth and Yackandandah area is a gold mine – pun intended.