Three-year-old Matilda Rickard faces possible heart surgery in February, prompting her family to hit the road last Monday for a long-anticipated ride of a lifetime.
Matilda has Down syndrome and has already undergone two operations for a heart defect.
Her Drysdale family had planned the 350-kilometre Great Ocean Road adventure since completing a 500 kilometre ride in Tasmania in 2015, mother-of-seven Jacqui Rickard explained.
“My son Levi (15) has got Matilda in the trailer,” she said on Wednesday, after they rode 175km in eight days to Blanket Bay.
“I said, ‘one of you guys have to take either Matilda or Adeline’ (8) and he said, ‘Matilda, because she doesn’t talk as much’.”
Initially they had hoped to cycle during “more stable weather” next year, but Matilda’s possible surgery date and the COVID-19 silver lining of less traffic changed that, Jacqui said.
“There are no tour buses, no international drivers or no Melbourne drivers. It’s never been quieter and it probably never will be.”
Unlike road trips, the kids had been too busy cycling to argue, she said.
“They wait for me at the top of every hill and they call me the grey nomad, because I’m slower,” she laughed.
Her husband James had been unable to join them after starting a new IT job but was on “24-hour standby”, she said.
He drove almost three hours on Tuesday night to deliver his bike when one of the boy’s derailers broke, before driving home the next morning.
As Jacqui prepared for the return journey, she swore never to use a Google Maps “shortcut” again after struggling along a track “suitable for hiking” between Apollo Bay and Blanket Bay on Monday.
“That was quite an adventure that we’re not keen to repeat.”
Luke Voogt
