10 June 2026 – 22 kms – Mildura, VIC to Buronga, NSW
Barkindji, Latji Latji, Muthi Muthi Country
I don’t sleep well. The rain forecast is concerning. Not knowing if I’m going to be able to ride out to Lake Mungo or not weighs on the back of my mind. If it’s not safe to head out there, I won’t go. I will take risks, but not stupid ones.
Yet, wanting to visit there and ride my bike there was the spark for this whole trip. I’ve wanted to visit for nearly as long as I’ve lived in Oz (25 years). So it would be really disappointing if I have to bypass the national park.
I head over to Buronga – the tiny, but growing, town on the NSW side of the Murray River. The bridge over the river from Mildura is quite high. It was built in 1985, so its cyclist/pedestrian accommodation is just a pretty narrow footpath on the western side. Luckily, I don’t meet anyone else as I pedal over.
I’m just amazed the bridge doesn’t have any suicide fencing. All the bridges over the freeway in Albury have them and it’s a much shorter drop to the road than the river is here. I assume if you hit the water from this height that it would act a bit like pavement.
Buronga has a caravan park with cheap unpowered sites, a refurbished motel, a tiny bakery, a laundromat, an old takeaway shop that smells like old oil, a leather shop (think agriculture, not sex), a Holden museum, a primary school, a big roadhouse with a diner and a Subway, and a pretty new and large IGA that is amazing – it has a little cafe in it and an absolutely huge deli/premade food section. It’s one of the best IGAs I’ve ever been in. The most hilarious thing to me in town is a new housing development called “Grandview Estate”. It’s flat and has no view of the river.
Buronga also has a national parks office with locked doors and a sign on it discouraging you from ringing the doorbell. It says all bookings must be done online. Information is available online, too. Well, that’s great, but there is nothing online about riding your bike there, so I ring the doorbell.
Some poor, quiet bloke, who’s probably a biologist or something, and definitely not a customer service officer, comes to the counter.
I say, “Hi, I’m hoping you can help me with some road information. I’ve asked at the information centre and they couldn’t really help me. I’m wanting to ride my mountain bike out to Lake Mungo and wanting to know what the road conditions are like. I thought you might know a bit better since you’d have staff driving out there a lot.”
He says, ‘what sort of bike are you on? It’s a long way out there.”
I reply, ‘it’s a mountain bike with large tyres. I can ride 130 kms in a day. I’m very experienced. I do a lot of riding on 4WD tracks in the high country. I can carry 8-10 days of food with me at a time.” I point to it – you can see it out the door.
It is hard for me to sell myself. I’ve been called ‘a quiet achiever’ and ‘a silent go-getter’ by more than one former boss. I don’t want to sound up myself, but I am experienced. I’ve been riding bikes my whole life. I’ve been doing solo trips into the backcountry since I was 18. I don’t want this dude to underestimate me.
He says, “Oh, well you’d probably make it then.”
I reply, “Well, I’m wondering what ‘Open with caution – 4WD only’ really means. Is there like water over the road that’s knee-deep or thigh deep? Is it sticky mud? Because I can do river crossings up to thigh-deep if the bottom isn’t muddy.”
He says, “oh no, there’s nothing like that. It’s just the last 10 kms are through the old lake bed and there are big bogholes and standing water.”
I tell him that sounds manageable and that I’m prepared to take water for two days, in case I can’t make it out there in one. He asks if I carry camping gear. I tell him, yes, that I’m very self-sufficient.
He says he’ll go ask the ranger what she thinks. Well, the ranger is just on the other side of a window next to us that she can see out, but you can’t see in. I’m pretty sure she’s listened to the whole conversation.
Michelle, the ranger, comes out and is very helpful. She confirms that a lot more of the road is sealed now. It’s really only the last 10 kms that pose any issues. The council has not bothered to build up the road in the lake bed, so it gets boggy really easily. But there is a high road around those bits that I can take. The last 30 kms have corrugations and there’s those 10 kays of boggy stuff, but the rest is fine.
She thinks about it a bit more and says, ‘well, on a bike, you can probably zoom around some of those wet sections anyway. They don’t take up the whole road.”
She asks how far I can ride in a day. I say, “oh, that’s hard. It depends on the road surface and the wind and whether I get a puncture. But I’m very comfortable with riding 130 kms in a day if the wind isn’t terrible. I’ve ridden 200 kms before.”
She thinks I just might make it in one day. She says it’s not unheard of, but cyclists travelling out there is pretty rare, perhaps a few per year. Most people drive there and then some might ride their bikes once they get there.
She warns me about the rain in the forecast. I tell her I’ve pencilled in two days to get out there (thurs/fri). I’ve booked the Shearers Quarters for Sat/Sun/Mon nights so that I know I have water and can get out there before the forecast rain on Saturday. I’ve booked the first available tour on Monday so I can hopefully get back to a sealed road on Tues before the rain on Wed.
She says, “oh, you’re the one in the system. What if I move the booking forward for you? I’ve got it booked out through Friday night for staff, but they are going home on Friday. So you could stay Fri/Sat/Sun nights instead and then head off after the Monday tour. It will give you more leeway for the rain next week.”
I reply, ‘oh, okay, that would be great. Do I need to ring them to change that after you’ve pulled the staff booking?”
She says, no, she can do it all for me. She tells me the road I plan to leave Lake Mungo on, the Top Hut Road, was in good condition the last time she drove it. There will be fewer people on it than the Arumpo Road, but if I come unstuck, someone should come along within a few hours. The Arumpo Road has plenty of vehicles that travel it, so I won’t be isolated on it.
I thank them both so much for their time and for rearranging the booking dates for me. It’s good, too, because they know I’m coming, and I’m sure they’d sound the alarm if I don’t show up. It all feels very safe and very do-able.
The only variables of concern: 1) what if it rains heaps on Saturday and they close the park?; and, 2) what will the wind be like tomorrow? It’s a forecast headwind, but how strong will it be?
I can’t control the first variable. I can’t control the second variable either. But I can control when I get up and how many kms I’ve covered before the wind gains strength.
You know what that means….
Another cold, wet pack-up tomorrow morning at sparrow’s gurgle.