As if cycling halfway across America in 30 days wasn't hard enough, the five Australians who call themselves the Bikes of Wrath added another challenge: the novice cyclists would do it all on a budget of just $420, relying on the kindness of strangers, and their busking skills, to get them over the line.

Inspired by John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, which follows the Joad family as they join the mass migration from America's Dust Bowl to the promised land of California, friends Leon Morton and Charlie Turnbull hatched the idea of retracing that epic journey – only on bicycles rather than a clapped-out jalopy.

"Charlie and I have this fascination with small-town America and the cultural resonance of it in the wider world," Morton says. "And the themes Steinbeck was talking about then still feel really resonant today – and we wanted to explore that on the ground."

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theage.com.au