Alasdair Macleod was 57 when he set off around Australia. Some 16,643 kilometres later, he completed his journey, aged 70.
When he entered his early 50s, architect and building consultant Alasdair Macleod, by his own admission, was not in good shape. “By 53 I was working too hard, overweight and drinking more than I wanted to.” When his mother died in 2002, something shifted. “I realised I needed to get fit.”
So, he teamed up with his younger brother to ride the Great Victorian Bike Ride from Casterton to Sunbury. It was memorable for many reasons, not least because of his choice of bicycle – an old mountain bike, two sizes too small, with the seat jammed as high as it would go, borrowed from his son. But it lit a spark.
The following year, 2003, Alasdair gave up alcohol and successfully completed 210 kilometres in the Around the Bay in a Day challenge. In 2004, he swapped working weekends with cycling Beach Road. The spark had become a flame – and the idea of cycling around Australia took shape. “I thought, what better way to celebrate changing life patterns than to attempt to ride around Australia.”
Alasdair didn’t have a lot of spare cash or an enormous amount of time, so he devised a plan to cover the 16,643-kilometre journey over 13 years using a combination of solo trips and organised group tours.
In 2006, aged 57, without fanfare, he set off on the first leg of his journey – Melbourne to Sydney, solo. Well, apart from a friend, Brian, who met him for coffee and lunch and made sure he was still upright. Five days later, he arrived in Sydney. A couple of months later, he completed Adelaide to Melbourne – 1,128 kilometres over 8 days – with specialist multi-day cycling company, AllTrails.
Alasdair’s navigation of the continent was ordered by opportunity – sometimes clockwise, other times anti-clockwise – but despite headwinds, burning legs and other body parts, his dream never wavered. In June 2019, he completed the last leg of his round-Australia journey – 2,209 kilometres over 25 days, from Darwin to Broome. En route, Alasdair celebrated turning 70. ‘Right in the middle, at Kununurra.’
He maintains the Hume Highway is the safest major road in Australia, with wide shoulders and gentle gradients meaning trucks can sight a cyclist a kilometre away. The most dangerous, the Bruce Highway, in Queensland’s north, which saw him abandon his bike one afternoon after a close encounter with a truck and re-plan his route.
It was in Queensland too that he ran afoul of the law. Having arrived in Normanton, he thought he’d join the locals and take his bike for a spin down the main street – a wide stretch of bitumen about two kilometres long, stretching from the river to the railway line. Despite the lack of traffic, Alasdair was picked up by the police for not wearing a helmet. ‘They made me walk home.’
Every year, millions of Australians set ambitious goals, only to abandon them within weeks or months. While some might consider cycling 16,643 kilometres over 13 years as the slowest lap of Australia, Alasdair’s unwavering self-belief and commitment changed his life. Now 77, he’s fitter than he’s ever been.
