2024-11-08 -37 144

Location

On the edge of Albert Park, just off St Kilda Road.

Participants

Expedition (by Stevage)

It's been a rough time for Melbourne geohashers. Slim pickings all around. But today, the gods shine on us and offer us a treat: a tasty little geohash at the edge of a park only a few kilometres south of the CBD.

There are whisperings of a lunchtime expedition. Cam can't come - he's started a new job and is too important. I have a morning meeting in the city which makes this extra convenient. KT can't come, she's busy studying. Pwc and Lachie are in. Oh, suddenly Cam can come, fancy that. And KT too. The FOMO is strong. Oh, here comes John. And Laura is going to meet us there. What a party!

But then it rains. I'm first on the scene, and find a strategic meetup location undercover. By sheer coincidence it happens to be in front of a pizza stand (of prior geohashing expedition fame). I couldn't help it.

Bit by bit the gang assembles and succumbs to pizzariffic temptation. Then KT's bike succumbs to my casual chaos and crashes to the ground, just as the expedition gets underway. We spend a while adjusting the rear wheel before working out it's the front wheel that just needs a quick rejig. We rejig it and off we go.

After a decade or so of construction, Anzac station on St Kilda Road is finally finished, which means at long last there are no roadworks along this section. It's a nice change.

And then I find a Nippy's iced coffee that KT has snuck into my bike frame bag, and my day is just getting better and better.

Soon we will need to contend with one of Melbourne's most bike-unfriendly road disasters: St Kilda Junction. It's a spectacular mish-mash of roads going in every which way. Trams are going straight or turning right. Punt Road, St Kilda Road, Queens Way and Fitzroy St are colliding at high speed, and there's even an underpass for pedestrians. But bikes are placed firmly in the too hard basket.

We place our faith in Lachie, who places his faith in Google Maps, and we cross St Kilda Road before the chaos, implicitly declaring the footpath a bike zone. Somehow it's now only a single service lane that we have to cross, finding ourselves in this little bit of parkland.

We form a high-vis party at the hash, and the sun suddenly shines brightly upon us. KT thinks this would be an excellent time to go and drive a train, and scurries off.

Inevitable pizza
Cyclists nearby
All the gang!
The hash location

There's a suggestion of a beer at Brewmanity. I can't resist a heavy-handed portmanteau, so away we go. Cam is leading the charge, but taking some questionable route choices, and everyone thoroughly enjoys heckling him.

The raging party music nearby turns out disappointingly to just be the intermission in a game of women's cricket at Junction Oval. We zoom past and find ourselves on the Albert Park Grand Prix race circuit. Fortunately there isn't a race in progress today.

Arriving at Brewmanity, John and Pwc vanish, leaving the rest of us to explore a variety of other pubs, beer gardens and lifts in the area, until by a process of elimination we find them exactly where they said they would be. It's a great vantage point: we can see the city, and also the televised version of the cricket match we just passed.

There are parmas and beers and chips and gravy and a few more beers and then I sneak off home. On the way, I can't resist a Tim-Tam flavoured ice cream in a chocolate sprinkles cone, but really it was a tiny bit too much. I'm very proud of cycling up a set of steps from the Yarra back up to St Kilda Road though.

What a day!