After presentations to the club, formation of an ad hoc committee, several meetings, and background work, including tapping the experience of local off-road riders, Maryborough Rotary Club is confidently and meticulously planning our inaugural Grand Final weekend cycling event, Wheels & Wattle.
We hit on the event name Wheels & Wattle to evoke Maryborough’s former much-loved Wattle Festival, which has not been held for many years but is still remembered with affection by many locals. The name also fits because at the end of September the local wattle will be in bloom – along with the similarly coloured canola! Pictured is the Start of the “Strawberry 10” Ride at Victory Park, Wagga Wagga - a possible model for our Ride. Click “Read more…” for more details and pix
After recognising that the club’s Pyrenees Magic cycling event was declining for various reasons and a replacement event was needed, the planned new event draws inspiration from the hugely successful Gears and Beers weekend event run by Wagga and Wollundry Rotary Club.
Held over the NRL Grand Final weekend at the start of October, Gears and Beers attracts some 2000 riders to the Riverina city of Wagga Wagga for six rides over two days. Ride distances range from 10 kilometres (Strawberry 10, the one I did) to 130 kilometres, the Dirty 130. Some routes are all-road and others are mixed-surface events traversing gravel and bush tracks through farms and forest. Funds raised each year are in five or six figures.
A big drawcard of Gears and Beers (see https://gearsandbeers.org.au) after the last riders have returned to Victory Park in the Wagga Wagga CBD is the Sunday afternoon festival, featuring live bands, food trucks, merchandise and local craft beer stands (the following Monday is a NSW public holiday). The festival is free for ticketed riders but non-riders can access the fun for $20 at the gate, with the park fenced off for the event. This leaves riders and visitors the entire Monday free for local tourism or a long drive home to Melbourne or Sydney (or Maryborough, Victoria).
There are important parallels that we can draw on to guide our event. Hosting an event in a prominent park in a town’s CBD makes it high-profile and attractive for sponsors, food trucks and merchandise stalls. Local residents will notice that something is happening and may purchase ride-up tickets if they have missed pre-publicity. Princes Park is much bigger than Victory Park and is effectively fenced with entry gates on all sides.
Another similarity is that both cities are surrounded by fantastic off-road tracks, creating an “adventure cycling” experience on a variety of surfaces suitable for gravel or mountain bikes, or hybrids. We can tap into local expertise on both the indigenous and gold rush history in planning our Wheels & Wattle rides. A guided walk is one idea.
Recognising that Maryborough Rotary Club will be unable to stage this event alone, we will also adopt the Gears and Beers model of engaging other community groups and service clubs to help out, with suitable financial reward proportional to each group’s input. We will need traffic marshalls, route guides in numbers beyond our own club’s capacity This will help to create a whole-of-community event across Central Goldfields Shire.
But there will be important points of difference too.
Riders at Gears and Beers must arrange their own hotel accommodation or camp some distance from the Victory Park starting point. And beer and live music is great for couples, groups or singles but also makes this event a difficult long weekend holiday choice for families with young children, especially if they are travelling long distances.
By contrast, our local council and community have strong experience in hosting camping on Princes Park for Energy Breakthrough, the school-based pedal car event, now more than 30 years old. Recent editions of Energy Breakthrough and the Highland Gathering have included paddle-boat rides on Lake Victoria and carnival sideshows that we can invite to our event. For those not riding on Saturday afternoon and wanting the footy, they could watch the Grand Final live on a big screen in Princes Park.
By carefully choosing what attractions we invite, we can craft a family-friendly weekend event attractive to young families, including the thousands of Melburnians keen to take advantage of a long weekend in mid-spring by coming to an event with a variety of attractions as little as two hours’ drive away.
We are keen to share information about Wheels & Wattle as we go along. For updates and ways to get involved, please contact event organiser Anthony Ohlsen by email to Anthony.Ohlsen@rotary9780.org.
Below are some photos from the 2025 Gears and Beers:
