The old Onkaparinga Valley railway is now the Hills' easiest and most rewarding bike ride — 22 gentle kilometres from Oakbank to Birdwood.
There is a simple trick to understanding the Onkaparinga Valley, and it involves a bicycle. Trains, famously, cannot climb hills — so when the railway from Balhannah to Mount Pleasant was pushed through in 1918, its engineers threaded the line along the valley floor, finding the easiest possible passage through country that is anything but easy. The trains stopped in 1963. The easy passage remains.
Today that corridor is the Amy Gillett Bikeway, a sealed shared path named in honour of the Australian cyclist who died while training in Germany in 2005, and it has quietly become one of the best half-days in the Hills. The full run is now 22 kilometres, from Oakbank to Birdwood by way of Woodside, Charleston and Mount Torrens — the long-awaited final stage into Birdwood opened in late 2025, completing a route that cyclists had been finishing on road shoulders for a decade.
Oakbank to Woodside: the warm-up
The ride begins beside the white rails of Oakbank Racecourse, where Australia's great picnic race meeting has run every Easter since 1876. The first leg to Woodside is barely four kilometres of paddocks and old oaks, which is just as well, because Woodside is where the eating starts: the path passes within sniffing distance of Melba's Chocolate Factory and the washed-rind treasures of Woodside Cheese Wrights. Veterans of the trail know to ride first and shop on the return leg, unless melted chocolate in a pannier is part of the plan.
Charleston to Mount Torrens: the quiet middle
Beyond Woodside the valley opens out and the traffic of the tourist towns falls away. Charleston drifts past — a pub, a hall, a scatter of stone cottages — and the path settles into its rhythm: vineyards, grazing country, red gums, the occasional whiff of eucalyptus and cut hay. This is the section to notice what the railway saw: the Hills as working country, not postcard.
Then comes Mount Torrens, and it is worth getting off the bike. The whole township is a State Heritage Area — one of only seventeen in South Australia — its main street essentially unchanged since 1870. Thirty-odd stone buildings, a heritage trail to walk, and not a traffic light in sight.
The new bit: on to Birdwood
The final 5.7 kilometres to Birdwood are the trail's newest and, riding them, you understand why locals lobbied so long. The path lands you in the old Blumberg, where the Blumberg Hotel has been refuelling travellers since 1856 and the National Motor Museum waits with a different kind of horsepower. Roll home the way you came, or do what the smart ones do: arrange a car at each end, ride it one way, and spend the difference on cheese.
The bikeway is free, flat and open year-round — it also features in our list of the best free things to do in the Hills.
