Hurstbridge sits on the northeastern edge of Melbourne, at the end of a suburban railway line, where the outskirts blur into bushland and low hills. With Wattle Glen beside it, the area belongs to what planners call the Green Wedge, a strip of farms, orchards and eucalypt forest that keeps the city from sprawling all the way to the Kinglake Ranges. The dot sits here because this is a way home from the Grampians, which lie more than two hundred kilometres to the west, and this is the quiet end of the loop.
The Grampians, known to the Aboriginal people as Gariwerd, are a series of sandstone ridges rising abruptly from the flat plains of western Victoria, with rock art sites, waterfalls and thick spring wildflowers. Halls Gap, in the heart of the range, is a small tourist town where kangaroos graze on the oval at dusk, and the roads over the ranges have a mix of climbs, bends and long views.
By comparison, the Hurstbridge area is gentle riding, though with its own character. The roads wind through the hills in tight, shaded curves, past old farms, orchards and bush blocks, and there are good coffee stops. The nearby artists' colony of Montsalvat, in Eltham, was established in the 1930s and is a curious cluster of stone and mud-brick buildings, now used for weddings and exhibitions. The region also carries the scars of the Black Saturday fires of February 2009, which devastated parts of the Kinglake area, and the regrowth of the forest tells a quiet story of recovery.
Fuel can be found in Diamond Creek and Eltham, and Hurstbridge has a bakery, a pub and several cafes along its main street. It is a very friendly place for a stop, and locals will often stop to ask about your bike.
Summers in this area can be hot and fire danger is real, so check conditions on days of high fire risk. In autumn and spring the light through the gum trees is soft, the road is dry and the air smells of eucalyptus, a good way to end a long day.