Hello Melbourne!

Day 16 Jindivick to Dandenong.

Jindivick this morning was cold. There was fog in the valley below us, and frost on the ground as we left Ruth and Paul’s and headed down into Melbourne, from the country to the peri-urbs, the outer burbs and then established, no longer outer suburbs of Doveton and Dandenong. 74km and a world away.

I was struck as we were crossing busy roads, navigating traffic around Fountain Gate Shopping Centre,  waiting at traffic lights as platoons of cars turned right in front of us at just how noisy and chaotic it was. The strong blustery northerly wind didn’t help! did I really want to be back here I asked myself? I’ve really enjoyed by 16 days on the road. I’m feeling really well, physically and mentally. And now I’m back in the big smoke.

We made good time. Downhill to Longwarry and then mostly flat, through the hamlets of Bunyip, Garfield and Tynong, then a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake at ‘the Goon Eatery in Nar-nar-goon. It was not long out of Nar-nar-goon on Bald Hills Road that I thought to take a photo of the hay bales we were passing, because there’s not going to be much farmland left…

And then there we were. Entering the light industrial zone of Pakenham, past car yards, mechanics and animal food suppliers and that was the end of Gippsland, which we had been riding through for the last ten days. 

From there on it was sprawling suburbia all the way, as we rode back through the decades of the urban fringe, the new estates still being built in Pakenham and Officer, the houses of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s in Berwick and Narre Warren and have landed for the night with Rhonda Garad,  our Greens Councillor for Greater Dandenong Council in a 1960’s house in Dandenong. 

The first houses that we saw entering Pakenham!

Melbourne is too big. Much too sprawly. It would make so much more sense to have had strict urban growth boundaries, to have done a much better job at urban consolidation, to build up regional centres and provide excellent public transport services and bike networks to connect them all together. But the property developers didn’t like that. They have made a motza over decades of turning what was once farmland into suburbia and a shifting urban growth boundary that has allowed it to occur. 

As we rode the 20 km from Longwarry to  Nar Nar Goon parallel with the train line I was struck by how poor the bike infrastructure was, and how a shared path connecting the hamlets and train stations along the way would give more people the option of riding a bike from one to the other, keeping fit, needing one less car in a household and reduce the demand for car parking at the stations. It’s not rocket science!

To give credit where it’s due though, it was good to be riding through new housing estates of Pakenham and Officer on separated shared pathways - there have been some changes for the better in recent times.

But then there is bike infrastructure such as the Hallam by-pass trail, along the Monash Freeway. It’s tucked between the sound wall and back fences. This is just the sort of bike path that we cyclists are meant to feel grateful for because we are getting it alongside a new freeway that is costing a billion times as much. There was no sign post at the beginning, the landscaping was either overgrown or non existent, and there is no way you’d want to use the path after dark. These sorts of paths have a use, but they are a poor substitute for urban design and development that actually puts healthy active people-centred transport at its centre.

So, one last day to go, heading off from Dandenong station tomorrow morning to ride the 45 km to Footscray, accompanied by an enthusiastic  support crew. The Tibetan community are providing lunch for us along the way - I feel so blessed to have their support and the support of so many others throughout my ride. Tibetans have been so oppressed and persecuted by the Chinese government, their families and friends who remain in Tibet subject to cultural genocide including children being removed from their families and sent to Chinese language boarding schools. And yet they have so much love to share, and so much to give . 

I am also so aware as I have ridden over the last two and a half weeks that the genocide in Gaza has continued, that children and good honest strong and true men and women have been slaughtered, just because they are Palestinian. And that our Government cannot even bring itself to sanction any of the Israeli government war cabinet who are directing the slaughter, our two way military trade continues and we are refusing visas to thousands of Palestinian refugees.

There’s so much more to be done in the world. I arrive home from Canberra tomorrow and am committed, as just a member of the community now,  to keep doing what I can to help achieve justice