GULF TO GULF
30 days to ride across Australia's remote outback between Port Augusta, Birdsville and Karumba.
NEXT RIDES:
RIDE: 16 May to 14 June 2024
(with transfers: 15 May to 17 Jun)
RIDE: 15 May to 13 June 2025
(with transfers: 14 May to 16 Jun)
Transfers are from Adelaide and on to Cairns.
Join one of Australia's great bike challenges, tracing a trail Gulf-to-Gulf across the heart of our amazing continent.
These ancient lands reflect the heritage of Australia's First Peoples who lived out there admirably well - and the courage, tragedies and successes of European explorers like the famed but unfortunate Burke and Wills - and the settlers who forged their existence in what was, for them, a land of unforgiving remoteness.
The ride has 4 stages, each about a week:
Week One explores the majestic Flinders Ranges, riding from Port Augusta 430km to reach the desert railhead of Marree in 6 days (7th day is rest).
Week Two traverses the legendary Birdsville Track, 520km of gravel in 8 days including a rest day at Mungerannie.
Week Three rolls 700km across Queensland's vast Channel Country to Mt Isa in 7 days. Rest days are before and after in Birdsville and Mt Isa.
Week Four rides 570km in 6 days through the Gulf Country to Cloncurry, Normanton and Karumba (followed by an end-of-ride rest day).
The most recent rides took place in May-June and June-July 2022 with 20-24 riders. Ages ranged from 30s to 70s with the median age in the early-60s.
Outbike's first G2G event was in 2005.
To express interest, seek further information or register
Contact OUTBIKE: Email outbike.rides@gmail.com or message/call Ralph 0406 440418
For 2024 please email first to check availability. In Dec 2023 we are around our maximum number for 2024.
Download 2025 registration / ride information and event waiver:
THE RIDE IN BRIEF
Riders transfer from Adelaide on our bus on the day prior.
In 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2016, 2019 and 2022, riders set forth from SA's Port Augusta to ride 2240kms to eventually reach Karumba, Queensland - crossing the continent on the way.
In 2022, we doubled, adding an extra ride south.
For 2024, we're going to run one event, riding from Port Augusta on 16 May.
For 2025, we plan the same, riding from Port Augusta on 15 May.
Maximum 25 riders (minimum 15). We will 'overbook' to 27-28 riders to allow for withdrawals.
Staff of 3 to 4 plus helpers to give a high level of service together with 3 or 4 support vehicles.
You need to be ready to cycle days of 80km on dirt roads (dirt is about 600km, most of this is the Birdsville Track) of varying surfaces! On the sealed roads (altogether 1600km), the longest days are 100-120km. About 400km has been sealed since 2005.
The ride is 30 days including 4 rest days. Transfers and a Karumba rest day makes it all 34 days. We include 33 nights camping (11 at bush sites), daily hearty breakfasts, lunches on ride days, dinners on remote camping nights plus Wilpena and Angorichina (local pubs the rest at own cost), extensive rider support and transfers on our bus from Adelaide and afterwards to Cairns.
Participation per rider in 2024 (and 2025) is $8000.
We've talked on the rides about ideas for faster and slower versions of this event to suit different rider abilities - but the 30 days seems to work well for a range of abilities and gives us some flexibility for weather events that we can't predict.
In 2016, 60mm of rain hit Birdsville after we arrived and isolated us for 4 days. We were glad to be in town though and not trapped on the track! Back on the road, some 100km days became 150km or even 200km and many riders still made it the whole way.
In 2019, floodwaters from summer monsoon rains in NW Qld closed the upper part of the Birdsville Track (4 days of the ride) from Feb to Jun. It didn't reopen in time for us so we bused back from Mungerannie to Lyndhurst and detoured, driving via the Strzelecki Track and Innamincka to Birdsville. This slow, rough and dusty bus trip took 5 days (over 1000km) but the ride was back on schedule.
In 2022 the Birdsville Track had been closed but opened in time as the Northbound ride approached. Then upon leaving Birdsville, new floodwater closed the bridge behind us same day, not to reopen until a week into the Southbound ride.
More detailed information is downloadable along with the registration form and waiver.
ABC INTERVIEW NEARLY HALF-WAY
"It's something I’ve dreamt about for many years, actually I never thought I’d be on the Birdsville track, and here I am on a bicycle, and we’re only about 80 kilometres from Birdsville now, and its been absolutely marvellous, its been difficult, hard, the flies have made it worse of course, and the sand and the dust".
Helmut Gebels speaking to ABC Radio, Birdsville Track Inside Route, May 2005
THE G2G NORTH RIDE - read day by day
View images from past G2G events