Recce Trip Day 3, Coleraine to Melbourne

This sort of map was transferred to my phone for navigation.

Wind blew my bike over near Mount Napier.

Mount Napier road out of Hamilton

T was windy and wet riding through the Macarthur wind farm.

 

This is near the top of the big hill out of Coleraine, by far the biggest hill of the day.

(Continued from Here )

The last day of my Rrecce trip to Coleraine was the trip back to Coleraine. I was hemming and hawing about whether to ride back to Ararat, or even whether to ride through Merino to get to Warrnambool and take the train from there. In the end I decided to go via a bike friendly route to Warrnambool and catch the train. I researched the route with my Chromebook laptop and didn't use any gps guidance, just marked my intended route in my map book, and photographed the various maps using my phone. When I was riding I just referred to my phone pictures which was easy. It was sometimes wild, wet and windy weather, but the wind was northwesterly and basically a tailwind the whole way - about 120k I think. 

The small town of Hawksdale was on my route. Its main shop is a post office and milk bar and I replenished supplies there - mainly with something to drink as my bottle was empty. 

I got into Warrnambool with about 2 hours before the train left, and was happy  to sit around and read and wait. This last train to Melbourne for the evening was busy but not crowded. I switched trains in Melbourne and arrived home about 9:30

Recce trip Day 2 Coleraine

View from Douglas Road, North of Coleraine

Coleraine Op Shop and Secondhand book shop are tremendous and benefit the Coleraine Hospital

Riding routes north of Coleraine

At the Silvester Oval

The kitchen is behind these roller shutters.

Kitchen with fridges, freezers and gas cooktops.

The main clubroom is upstairs from the kitchen and has excellent views and atmosphere. It would be the main sleeping room during the Challenge.

The gym - good for bike storage, and showers and bathrooms are in the same building.

This was the last training session before the local club competition began on April 11. Lots of footballers and netballers out!

(Continued from here)

Of the 3 days of my Coleraine trip, only one was actually in Coleraine, with the rest spent travelling. 

There were only a few reconnoitering activities for the 2026 OzHPV Challenge, the first a ride out to Gritjurk, over the Douglas Road hill and back to Coleraine via the Coleraine - Balmoral Road. The idea is to have a few social rides during the OzHPV challenge and this route looked good. It was good! Douglas Road is quite steep and a challenging ride, but I walked it without any issues. There is a plane at the top with a few farms, before the road descends. The ride took about 2 hours - there look to be other similar rides slightly to the west on roads such as Zig Zag Road, Coleraine Edenhope Road and Balochile Road.

Back in Coleraine, I visited the Op Shop and bookshop, did some grocery shopping and had lunch at a Caf. In the afternoon I rested, did some blogging in the quiet hotel, then meandered up to the Silvester football oval for an appointment with Ashley, the football club secretary.

Ashley showed me over the premises, and we agreed on a 3 night, 2 day hire price for the oval for the OzHPV challenge. He was delighted to have the great facilities used by other clubs during the football off-season. 

Back at the pub, my last duty for the day was an OzHPV committee meeting which I attended via Zoom on my Chromebook computer. It went well and I was able to report on the day's ride and clubhouse visit. After an excellent pub meal at my accommodation (National Smokehouse Hotel) I went to bed ready for an early start the next day.

 

 

 

 

Recce trip Day 1 Melbourne to Coleraine

 (Continued from here)

The train trip to Ararat wasn't completely straightforward. On the day I travelled in April 2026, public transport in Victoria was free due to fuel shortages and the Middle East war this was great! But soon after the train departed it was announced that only the front 3 carriages would go to Ararat, and I was at the back of the train. Unfortunately the train was split in the middle and I couldn't get through to the front from the back except at platforms - this meant a bit of carriage and plaform hopping with bike halves until I was settled in the front of the train. 

I got to Ararat about 10:30, reassembled the bike,  and was soon on my way. Hamilton is about 30k from Coleraine, and my route went through there, and Hamilton was signposted from central Ararat. So navigation was easy and as bonuses the weather and wind were good and it was slightly downhill!

I stopped briefly at the tiny town of Willaura and  had smoko (sandwiches made at home) with a grey nomad who had taken up residence in a barbecue rotunda. He travelled between country race meetings and had been to Coleraine. From there I rode to Glenthompson and the bigger, slightly more trafficked Glenelg Highway. 

My second decent stop was at Dunkeld. This is a slightly upmarket town, at least partly due to the upmarket Gourmet stop, The Royal Mail Hotel . There was a provedore but I couldn't find an IGA for food and ended up returning to the Mobil service station to eat (salted fried dim sims - yum) and get supplies on board (Oak chocolate milks poured into the drink bottle and biscuits) for the rest of the trip.

I didn't stop in Hamilton but kept going through to Coleraine by which time (about 7pm) it was completely dark. Thankfully I had good lights including a Flock taillight on my helmet and I was used to night riding.

Thankfully also the Coleraine pub where I was staying was open and welcoming. It was slightly depopulated though, due to the pool tournament up the road at the other Coleraine pub!

After a shower I tucked into the bed about 8ish and was soon asleep. 

 

 

 

Recce trip prequel

Bike with heavy load carrying tailbox.

 

Old lightweight tailbox

Corflute about 4 years old and showing much......

dirt and signs of wear.

Stripped down plywood seat frame

Some new stickers!

Plywood frame before refurb.

Initial coreflute construction was....

moved inside when it got dark and rainy. This is creasing the coreflute so that it bends only at fold lines.

Off we go!

 

Hi

For a while I have been trying to improve the general image of my bikes, and that has included overhauling several tailboxes. Over the same time, I have been finalising a home made, front wheel drive, moving bottom bracket bike. The bike has been going well with a heavy, load carrying tailbox, and I wanted to swap to the faster lighter version which is on Thingiverse.   I was initially slow in overhauling the lightweight tailbox.

But once I had overcome a fear of the very big Bunnings near us and bought replacement coreflute, I fairly quickly made the bottom part of the tailbox back, and cleaned up and revarnished the timber. Then for a few weeks it sat there, until I booked up a trip to Coleraine for ongoing organisation of this year's OzHPV challenge (woohoo it has its own webpage! ) With a few days to go, I decided to do the trip by train and bike but wanted aero wheels and the faster, refurbed tailbox on the bike. The changes would add a few kph to the speed and subtract a few kg from the weight. 

I only had a day and an evening (the Tuesday after Easter) to fit the new tailbox corflute lower, and make and fit a new corflute upper and back, as well as pack for a 3 day bike trip and swap the wheels. I hadn't bike toured for a while, so had to hunt around for the spare tubes and things I needed. To finish off the tailbox, I installed a water bottle mount (ok, its part of a 2l milk bottle which holds another 2l milk bottle), made a catch for the lid, and installed timber reinforcement at the top of the seat frame.  Eventually I got to bed at 1 am, and was up at 6am the next day to catch an 8:15am train to Ararat, one of the nearest stations to Coleraine but still about 140k from Coleraine.

In the morning I made 4 rounds of sandwiches which stood me in good stead, ate my usual muesli breakfast and rode in to Southern Cross Station. There was plenty of time to catch the train and I was off to Ararat and Coleraine. 

Tailbox interior with water bottle holder, spare tubes, pump, light and....

new reinforcing timber at top of seat frame

The boot lid is a bit wider at the back which helps with luggage strorage and was.....

made possible by changing the rear section of the tailbox to a triangle shape.

Boot lid catch - quite proud of this!

 

Bike on the road

Last of my Wooden Recumbent Frames

In its 2017 Heyday

Unique steerer assembly

After the.....

Initial rescue from outside

This sticker came from my time as an engineer at an electric motor manufacturer

Graham with the lock.

Aged timber frame

 

Sorting frame kit pieces.

About 10 years ago I completed an industrial design master's degree at Monash University. As part of this, I made several plywood wooden leaning trikes. And after my master's I wasn't satisfied with the seat design and made one more version for a timber design competition and Fringe Furniture 31.  I kept that trike intact but it was stored outside. About a year ago I tried to rescue it but I found the glue in the frame had let go and the frame was extremely wobbly. I cleaned it up, took it inside and there it stayed until a few months ago I got motivated to move it on. 

My friend Graham (he is a carpenter who works on wooden boats) agreed to take it, and before delivering it to him, I packaged up the bike and a complete NC routed kit for making a timber frame for this style of bike. 

A few days ago, M and I delivered the bike and Graham was very pleased. It turns out we just did a swap, Graham makes timber locks from scrap timber and he gave me that in exchange for the bike. 

I'll stay in touch with Graham and will hopefully see a version of this wooden bike on the road again. The learning from these frames helped me design better timber tailboxes which I still design and use. I doubt that I'll ever make another one of these, but you can, as the entire design is on Thingiverse here.

Regards Steve Nurse