[Closed] We will be in Oz in April, Sydney and Cairns, biking advice please

Gold Coast is a few hundred miles south of cairns, plenty of riding around Brisbane/Towomba etc. trailforks is a good place to check on them. Around Sydney depends how far you want to get out some great riding up in Canberra and into the Snowy mountains at Thredbo around Hire bikes available up there. Riding up the coast towards Newcastle too.
Quite a few shops run demo schemes so you could do a day from that.

As for transport single day car hire is fairly cheap, you can get a bike in a fairly small car cheaply

Manly dam in Sydney. Good circuit around there though not huge. However easy to find. Now some other tracks nearby. Blue mountains is a day trip but Anderson fire trail from Wentworth falls down to Woodford then oaks from there to glenbrook. Both just fire trails but reasonable fun. Certainly different from the UK. You can get the train up to Wentworth then pick it up again at glenbrook to get back to Sydney. There is also a reasonable xc circuit at yellowmundee at the foot of the blue mountains. Ridden all of them a lot when I lived there 15 years ago. Bike hire. Can't help. Suspect Google will help with the hire and the finer details on the trails. Hope you enjoy

Judging by the amount of rain in Townsville I would take mud tyres for Cairns.

https://blog.queensland.com/2018/02/07/wet-season-tropical-north-queensland/
It is the wet season up there....
I think the WC trails behind the uni will be closed in heavy rain anyway, but for the OP the 3hrs each way from the GC to Cairns might be more off putting for a day out 😉

If you're after a road bike I highly recommend these guys on the GC. Used them when I was there for a conference and they supplied a sweet Cervelo and they'll drop off and pickup for free:
https://www.paradiseroadcycles.com/

Can't recommend any mountain biking there other than a flight across the ditch to NZ?

Be worth checking with Cairns MTB Club.

Cairns in April should be fine, plus there's lots of decent riding up the ranges around Cairns. There's a reasonable bike path system as well. The trails at Smithfield have some interesting DH bits if you're into that.

For Brisbane and the Gold Coast check Australian Cycling Forum (Qld), but if I was on the Gold Coast, I'd be in the sea, not on a bike. 🙂

Bunya Forest is ok for a bit of trail riding close to the city. There's a trail map available on-line.

If you get a road bike, try riding up Mt Nebo on the edge of Brisbane. There's great views and you can overtake cars on the way down. 🙂

The Gold Coast is 1100 miles south of Cairns - 20 hours drive.

For the Gold Coast, if that is where you are going, Nerang MTB Park is local and extensive and includes the trails built for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
https://www.trailforks.com/region/nerang-national-park-13302/

For Sydney most of the trails are in the northern beaches. Manly Dam is the most popular and if staying central you could access it via ferry to Manly and short ride.
https://www.trailforks.com/region/manly-dam/

I wouldn't bother riding in the Blue Mountains, but worth a visit for hiking scenery.

Canberra is 3 hours drive from Sydney; Thredbo 5.5 hours (if you escape Sydney traffic relatively unscathed). So you will be disappearing for a while to visit them. April is the very end of the uplift season in Thredbo so the weather cannot be guaranteed. Whilst both these locations have good riding, for Australia, I wouldn't take time out of a trip to Australia, and the many other unique attractions here, to ride them.

I have no personal experience of this company but they do bike hire and tours and look to be riding the good stuff when I see their social media posts.
http://www.joesmountainbiketours.com.au/

Ha, this shows I need to listen more to the wife! We aren't going down as far as Brisbane so presumably we aren't going to the Gold Coast at all.

We are staying in Collaroy, North Sydney with family and then the Hunter Valley. Then motorhoming out of Cairns, heading in a loop taking in Atherton I believe then up towards Daintree.

Clearly I haven't got any concept of the size or scale of the place...

Got all excited then looking at Trailforks and Collaroy till I read the trail reports. Big puddles or completely chewed out by motorbikes 🙁

Hello!

I live in Brisbane but travel all over the country with work.

Sydney it would be Northern Beaches trails, basically Manly Dam area.

Plenty of riding around the Hunter but you'd enjoy the vineyards more.

Cairns is ace! April will be fine, bit cooler and dryer. Smithfield is awesome, its where the words were held. Atherton is also awesome but some big snakes! Theres other stuff up that way too such as Davies Creek.

If you're in Cairns go see Graham at Cairns MTB Tours at Smithfield and he'll fix you up with bike etc

Near Atherton is the Tinaroo Dam. There's lots of of tracks behind that, more gravel bike than mtb, but lots of wildlife.

From Kuranda there's a track I used to ride that will take you along the high ground along the coast and comes out close to Port Douglas (Bump Track), again more gravel than hardcore mtb, around 40 to 50km. It was the bit ridden by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman that had "croc infested rivers" to be crossed. It's notable for the amount of wildlife that you otherwise rarely see in Oz, eg tree kangaroos. I think it's been opened up a bit since then, it used to be overgrown in places.

It's been 6 years since I last was there, so for up to date stuff the Cairns MTB Club, or any of the local bike shops is worth checking with.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/video-syney-australia-has-mountain-biking-but-no-mountains.html

Very timely!

I got in touch with Cairns Mtb on FB, lots of bike hire available so Smithfield is a definite and I will dig in to the rest of that info too, especially the bit about big snakes..

Thanks folks 🙂

Mugboo
...I will dig in to the rest of that info too, especially the bit about big snakes.....

Ah, snakes. Had almost forgotten about them.

I lived a mile away from the Smithfield trails. Remember I said, you'd see plenty wildlife? I can guarantee some of it will be wriggly. North Queensland is home to the top ten deadliest snakes in the world. 🙂

The dilemma when you come across a snake is do you brake hard and come to a screaming stop, only to find yourself right next to it.
Do you try to go behind it?
Do you just ride over it? (Please don't, they're protected)

It's taken me years to get to the point where I no longer look at a branch lying on the track with suspicion.

Rule of thumb is the snake doesn't want anything to do with you and will usually scarper if you give it a chance. The really aggressive snakes are also pretty fast, so they're probably long gone before you get near.

I had plenty encounters - mainly because I used to ride on my own or after dark. If the trails are busy, you won't see them on the track, but they'll be close by.

The old story that everything in Australia can kill you is almost true, but there's only 2 things that used to worry me.

Crocs - they are definitely out to get you, and there's plenty big ones around Cairns, so just be careful where you swim or wade. They are incredibly fast if they want you.

The other was cassowaries, and you can meet them on the trails. Mean dumb ostrich sized birds right out off Jurassic Park. Don't go near one - it can eviscerate you with one swipe - and don't run away, back off and keep the bike between you and it. You'll be lucky to see one though, they blend in to the rainforest pretty well despite their technicolour plumage. They'll generally just run off so it's unlikely to be a concern.

I rode some trails in Loftus national Park in November. Loads of dead branched on the track, all of which i assumed could be snakes! At one point i startled something next to the path, it proceeded to run away as i shat myself. Hard to enjoy the rest of the ride after that.

Hey, I don't need to fly all the way over there to see them. I came across a beauty in Dalby Forest, just warming itself in the middle of the track, as you say it slithered off when it heard or felt me coming.. Thanks for the info, Smithfield sounds like a great way to enjoy a bike without disturbing the family trip too much and by all accounts we are staying somewhere nearby at some point. Plus it will feel very different to Calderdales woodland 🙂

And to save myself from furthern embarrassment, where do I say I'm going? Queensland?

Queensland.

The Cairns region used to be known as Far North Queensland, abbreviated to FNQ, locally pronounced Effin' Q, so the tourism marketeers changed it to something fancy eg Tropical Queensland, just like they changed the mangrove swamps to everglades, and jungle to rainforest, thus magically changing a challenging environment into something more attractive to tourists. 🙂

Living there I didn't do much of the tourist type stuff, but I'd recommend the cable car trip from Smithfield to Kuranda, and take the train back (or vice versa). The Barron Falls can be spectacular, but by April less so.

If you can hire a motorbike, riding the ranges and the coast road to Pt Douglas is fun, but the speed limits are a bit low for real fun, and the revenue gatherers enthusiastic.

South of Sydney, Sutherland, you can get there by train. There's a trail thru the Royal National park you can take down to Woolongong. Over the main road you have Heathcote national park, that has some dcent enough riding.All very XC btw.

OOh, a motorbike, never thought of that 🙂

Shin pads are helpful for snake strike. First hand experience of that, though probably a large dose of luck involved too!!

[Thread hijack] Any of the posters still living in/around Sydney? And can anyone recommend the best place to sell a s/h (road) bike in Oz? It's about time I owned an mtb again [/hijack]

Depends how. Second hand, bike exchange if its good, Facebook for the mass market