Riding the Munda Biddi Trail Western Australia

by Ross Marriner

The Munda Biddi is an off road track specifically catering for mountain bikers. At present it runs from Mundering (17 km from Perth) to Collie. It follows old rail trails, forest tracks and single track along the ranges heading south. Compared to Darwin it is very hilly, spectacular scenery and the weather is cold to very cold (even in October).The Munda Biddi will eventually be a 900 km ride ending at Albany. We have made the trip to Perth each October for the last 2 yeas to ride different sections of the trail each time completing around 280 Km over 5-6 days. This might not sound like a big daily average - but remember those hills - they make a huge difference and they are BIG!!! The track is well mapped out and is sign posted very clearly all the way.

You are in big tree country -
some of the jumps are better ridden around - or over???

 

The trip requires some careful planning to make sure that everything runs smoothly but with the aid of the net much can be researched and planned out before you leave Darwin. We packed our bikes in Qantas bike boxes slightly (bigger than the ones bikes come in). On arrival in Perth we caught a shuttle bus (bikes cost an extra $10) to our hotel 100m from the main mall in Perth. We had booked a triple room so had plenty of time to unpack and build our bikes ready for the next day. The hotel stored the bike box for the return trip. We were picked up the next day by Daktari Safaris who took us to Dwellingup for the start of our trip. We arrived in this sleepy timber town by mid-morning so spent the afternoon on a 25 km marked single track north of the town. It was good to do this without panniers and the extra weight that we would be carrying for 5 days.

Camping in the hut. It got very cold and wet
(1400mls rain/annum)
Some sections were muddy!!!
 

The next day we began our trip by loading all of our gear (camping gear, food and clothes for 5 days) into waterproof panniers and hit the trail by 7 30. We rode about 4-5 hours each day with the track changing from muddy to pea gravel (very slippery) to sections of deep sand. We really enjoyed the down hills but at times struggled up some of the steeper uphill sections due to the extra weight of the panniers. There are some sections that you need to walk as you can only pedal uphill for so long - make sure you have a very low geared granny gear - it will get used heaps. Our average speed for the trip hovered around 10km/hr and on most sections we 'cruised' at 14 km/hr - did you know that when you walk and push a loaded bike uphill you can still manage 4km/hr. My top speed was over 40km and with panniers on this was a bit hairy and led me to missing one of the marked turnoffs. The trip is not a race, and care should be taken as most of the trail is a fair distance from emergency help and there is limited mobile coverage.

We passed through open farm country.
Through forest that had been burnt out and starting
to recover.

On this trip we did not have to do much camping as I had planned the trip around cabin or motel accommodation. Last year we used the cabins on the trail every night and found them to be well set up and comfortable. They are placed every 40-45km on the track which is about right for a days ride - start early and you can finish for the day by mid afternoon with time at the end of the day to relax and prepare for the next day.

The Munda Biddi trail foundation has a very good (but dated) website that has heaps of information about all things to do with the trail. It is good to see that the WA government is fully supporting this project that allows and encourages mountain biking in many of its parks and water catchment areas.

October is wildflower time.
Walking one of the many BIG hills.

If you did not want to camp out you could go from town to town (up to 100 km apart) but you would need to be fit and have enough emergency back up in case you needed to camp out. You could hire a car/van and do day trips along different sections of the track. There are some excellent mountain biking venues in the South West of WA and around Perth that make a very good mountain biking holiday. On this trip we left the trail at Collie and headed to the coast to Bunburry and then caught the train back to Perth. The train trip was excellent, smooth, quiet, (with a bar) and dropped us back in the centre of Perth a couple of blocks from our accommodation. We had done a fair amount of work getting bikes and 50 + body's ready for this trip, and buying suitable equipment to use on dual suspension mountain bikes. I hope to write a future article outlining the things that worked well and not so well.

Huts are well set up with water tanks,
tables & sleeping areas.
Panniers and rack on a dually - they worked very well.



















Some sections are very steep -
well signposted trail.
Riding in the wet.
Resting on a BIG uphill.

















In more open countryside -
not too overloaded(10-15 kg).
A welcome stop - The Dwellingup Pub.