Hans Pehl has ridden about 11,000km, and still has about 3000km to go before he finishes a bike-riding trip around Australia.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
When most other people his age are starting to slow down, Hans Pehl is going at life full-pedal.
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The 75-year-old is riding his bike around Australia, and stopped in briefly at the Shepparton Visitor Information Centre as he made his way through town recently.
He had camped the night before at Arcadia, and planned to hopefully ride to Yarrawonga that night where he planned to again camp.
Hans’s journey started at his home at Tolga in Far North Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands in May last year and isn’t expected to end for a couple more months.
So far, he has ridden through central Queensland, the Northern Territory, and the Kimberley and Port Hedland in Western Australia, before cutting inland to head towards the Nullarbor where he spent 17 days riding from Norseman to Ceduna.
He continued through South Australia and into Victoria, before hopping on a boat to Tasmania.
His five weeks in Tasmania certainly threw up colder weather than this Queenslander was used to, with snow falling on one of his rest days.
The night before he had camped inside an empty church on the side of the road to keep out of the cold, before treating himself to a cabin the next night.
“The weather was that cold I thought my eyes were going to freeze over,” Hans said.
Hans says he will probably have cycled 14,000 to 15,000km by the time he finishes his trip — although the exact amount is unclear because the odometer measuring his kilometres broke earlier in the trip.
Hans Pehl had a short break in Shepparton as he rides around Australia.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
He is now on what he dubs “the home stretch” — but with 2800km and about two months of riding to go, that is all relative to what he has already ridden.
Unlike some who do big bike rides to raise money for charity, Hans is just doing it because he likes bike riding and seeing new places.
He started riding a bike 18 years ago because his dog needed to go for runs, and it was easier to do it on a bike.
Then he started taking up bike riding on weekends, and did a trip to Vietnam with a friend.
Then, in a story akin to Forrest Gump’s famous run, six years ago Hans said he decided to go to Germany — where he is originally from — and “go for a ride”.
That ride lasted two months.
Since then he has done long rides throughout different parts of Australia and in Europe.
Over the past five years he has been away for at least three months every year bike riding.
That ramped up to six months on the bike in 2024, before this mammoth 12-month trip, which is his longest so far.
On this ride, his biggest tally has been 110km in a day both in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, as well as on the Nullarbor.
“That’s on a straight road and with a tail wind,” he said.
His shortest days came in Tasmania where he only averaged about 20km in a day — “that was mostly walking, and mostly uphill”, he said.
Throughout the trip — taking into account rest days — Hans has averaged about 80 to 90km every day.
He prefers to take the roads less travelled where possible — with small country roads a preference over bigger busier roads.
“I’d rather go twice the distance and stay on country roads,” he said.
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