Bike It In A Dress: Melbourne to Adelaide 2019

In 2019, I undertook a huge challenge that I’d never even dreamt of before, let alone attempted: I rode my bicycle from Melbourne to Adelaide, wearing a school dress for the charity One Girl’s 2019 Do It In A Dress campaign, raising money for the education of girls in Africa.

The charity runs this campaign every year as their major fundraiser, and the idea is that participants come up with fun and/or challenging activities whilst wearing a school uniform dress (in honour of many African school-aged girls who can’t) and their respective friends and family sponsor them and donate to the overall cause. I had the idea in February 2019 to do something a bit hard, a bit different, and came up with Bike It In A Dress, my effort towards the campaign. In June, I became an official Ambassador for the One Girl team, and set out planning and training for the big ride.

I raised $3,482.93 for the charity, who collectively raised about half a million dollars to help educate girls. It was so rewarding, knowing that I’d personally helped 11 girls go to school for the year, as well as being a fantastic physical and mental challenge that years later, I’m still buzzing about.

I created a blog at bikeitinadress.org (since retired) to help me track and post about my own journey. I’ve duplicated some of those blog posts on this site as well so you can still read about my journey…

Before I undertook this ride, the farthest I’d ridden my bicycle was a few kilometres. By the time I rolled into Adelaide, I had awoken something deep inside me, and set myself a path for the coming decades. It literally changed my life.