our partners
Get updates on mail
address
270 Angas St,
Adelaide SA 5000
Copyright © 2026 Bicycle SA. All Rights Reserved.
270 Angas St,
Adelaide SA 5000
Copyright © 2026 Bicycle SA. All Rights Reserved.
Kate and Brydie from Bike SA with the team after their bike maintenance course generously provided by the City of Mount Gambier
When a young Liz Wheeler met World War II hero Nancy Wake AC GM in the late 1980s, she could never have imagined that almost 40 years later she would be using Nancy’s incredible legacy to change the lives of female military veterans as well as entire communities in the state’s South East.
Driving home to Mount Gambier from Anzac Day services in Canberra last year, Liz started talking with her friend Leanne Dunn about reading of Nancy’s daring exploits in her biography, Nancy Wake by Peter Fitzsimons.
“I’d always been amazed by this incredible feat of endurance, this ride through enemy territory in 1944,” Liz said. And before they knew it, these two non-cyclists had started planning for the Nancy Wake Memorial Ride they will be undertaking in France next year.
By the time they arrived home, they had an initial plan despite “still not having looked at a map” and they put the idea to several other female veterans in the region.
“We aimed for women around Mount Gambier who were well over 50 and had joined the Defence Forces at a time of great change when women were allowed to go into combat-related areas so we had that common cultural background. Lo and behold, a bunch of ladies said ‘Why not?’ and we went from there.”
There will be five women on the inaugural ride next year, all military veterans from the South East. They are:
The purpose of the ride is to raise the profile of women veterans of the ADF, while celebrating the life and achievements of Nancy Wake and striving to improve the health and wellbeing of women aged over 50 living in regional South Australia.
The ride will pay a truly fitting tribute to the courage and tenacity of Nancy Wake. Plenty of people these days organise fundraising rides. But these women have planned and organised a ride on the far side of the world, covering 500km on upright touring bikes – doing their best to replicate Nancy’s experience – and they all had rarely, if ever, ridden a bike before.
“Leanne (Dunn) hates riding. We have an index called the Dunn Curse index for our training ride which indicates how bad a ride has been. We would be flying first class to France if we had a fundraising swear jar on our rides,” Liz said.
“But she is one staunch lady. To see how far she has come is truly remarkable. Most of us started out on the Mount Gambier City Council free hire bikes, we didn’t even have our own bikes.
“Some of us are still falling off. But from our military way of thinking, this is a mission and we will complete it. That’s a given. If we have to carry each other up a hill, that’s what we will do.”
As a Resistance fighter, Nancy sabotaged German installations, organised parachute supply drops and maintained radio contact with the Special Operations Executive in Britain. When the radio codes were lost, she cycled about 500km across occupied central France in 72 hours to organise replacement codes.
“Nancy conquered that challenge in three days, in a dress and stockings while flirting her way through the Gestapo checkpoints,” Liz said. “We will take a more leisurely approach. We will be riding regular bicycles and anticipate it will take us two weeks. We plan to visit schools along the way to share Nancy’s story with the locals.
“Something we really keep at the forefront of our minds is that although we are a bit older than Nancy was (she was 32) when she did this ride, she didn’t train for it. There was a job that had to be done, she put herself up for it knowing that she was the person most likely to get through the enemy lines. They looked at getting a newer bike for her but she said ‘No, I’ve got to get through looking like the average person and they’re riding old bone-rattlers’. She had a basket on the front filled with stuff that would be going to market. She needed to look the part of a young lady riding around doing her chores.
“The Gestapo, who knew her as the White Mouse, were hunting her. If she had been recognised and captured at any time throughout this long journey, she would have been tortured and shot.”
While it was important to Liz and her team-mates for the first ride to have the small team it does, this event has already generated significant interest across Australia as well as in New Zealand. And their hope is for the memorial ride to be an annual affair which they will open up to people of all ages and abilities who want to share the experience and keep alive the memory of those who risked everything to stand up against the Nazis.
Even before they leave for Europe, they are making an impact on their region. Their training rides, as they build from nothing to long days on the pedals, have been based around engaging and inspiring local communities.
“We have caught the imagination of so many people. We ride out to small country towns and give presentations to the local communities and to schoolkids. In Kalangadoo at the end of December we had a dozen kids and adults of all shapes and sizes ride into town with us, join us for lunch and ride us out again. It was fantastic,” Liz said.
“People have just been hopping on all sorts of bikes and having a great time with us. And the number of people we meet who say they want to come for a ride with us is huge. If we help one person get on a bike, that’s great.”
Beyond the motivation they are providing for individuals and communities to hop on bikes and improve their health, the ride itself and their preparation is serving as a means to safeguard people’s health and wellbeing.
“We are doing a research project as part of this endeavour, monitoring our physical progress through the training and the ride itself. MESHA – Military Emergency Services Health Australia – is doing a study on us with regards to our mental health and our approach to this whole mission – our training and the challenges we face to get into the saddle on any given day,” Liz said.
“We are maintaining journals and they will take data from us during the ride in France.
As part of that, we’ll be running a GoPro throughout the ride which will allow anyone back home across Australia to join us on a virtual ride, which will be a fundraiser for MESHA. And the money raised with stay in SA.”
Liz is now in the process of reaching out to communities along their route in France to arrange for opportunities to talk about Nancy Wake and their reason for being there.
After they arrive in Paris – shortly after Anzac Day next year – and before they begin their ride, they will head north to Fouilloy to make a presentation to the Sir John Monash Centre,
a museum and interpretive centre that commemorates Australian servicemen and women who served on the Western Front during the First World War.
From there, they will head south to Blois, where the bike that Nancy rode is on display at the French Resistance Museum there.
They will finish their ride in Montlucon, where Nancy fought in several battles and where, just outside of town, her ashes were scattered after she died in 2011 at the age of 98.
If you wish to help with fundraising for their ride, they are gratefully accepting donations. Follow them on Facebook – Nancy Wake Memorial Ride – and contact the group through that page. They will also soon have a GoFundMe page set up in the same name.
Bike SA will be following Liz and her friends as they prepare for their ride to pay their respects to Nancy Wake. Keep an eye on upcoming editions on Cycle, blogs on our website and our social media for updates on their courageous project.
