bikes

first published in  QWeekend,  the Courier-Mail colour magazine on 8th September, 2012 I am visiting my home town of Brisbane again, as I have done regularly since moving south on March 28th, 1983. I left after years of living with the parochial Bjelke-Petersen government where corruption was rife, support for the Arts was minimal while funding for horse-racing was staggeringly high and everything connected to young people - music, student activism, having fun - seemed to be frowned upon. I return and read a report that the Liberal-National government is allocating a whopping $110 million to upgrade horse-racing infrastructure in the Smart State, soon after axing the Queensland Premier�s Literary Awards which cost a chaff bag $230,000. Shudder. I didn't leave solely because of the government, of course. I followed scores of my friends to the heady inner-city of Sydney where we dressed in black, sang tunelessly in art bands and held up the bar at the Trade Union Club. That...

Bright is a lovely town nestling in the valley of the Victorian Alps, a perfect base for cycling some of Australia's admittedly few mountains. On Friday afternoon, the only sunny day of the week, I pedal down the tree-lined Great Alpine Road towards Mount Buffalo. I've wanted to climb this mountain for yonks! The serious climbing starts thirteen kilometres into the ride where the gradient reaches 6% and remains steady for the next twenty kilometres. Sure, there are patches of 8%, but nothing really scary. With all the recent rain, the one constant of this climb is the sound of gushing water. It's as if the mountain is slowly melting from the top down, a granite ice-cream cone in the sun. Just as I'm getting into a rhythm, a Council ute stops beside me and the driver says the road is closed ten kilometres ahead - a landslide with boulders bigger than a truck. I can't bear the thought of turning around, so decide to take my chances. It'd need to be a big boulder t...

I ride nervously into Coonabarabran. Las t night, I read that the town derives its name from the an Aboriginal word, gunbaraaybaa, which in local tribe Kamilaroi dialect means... ahem... shit. This morning, mercifully, the air is fragrant with the treacle-sweet aroma of honeysuckle. Children dressed in green tartan uniforms walk to school, shouldering superhero backpacks. A comfortably overweight woman strides purposefully along the footpath, being lead by a shaggy-haired minature dog. It looks like she's following a furry vacuum cleaner. The vacuum barks at me and hoovers along the zebra crossing. Main Street is also the Newell Highway, so I keep well to the left as B-double trucks rumble slowly downhill. Outside the newsagent, two old blokes, dressed in neat shorts and long socks, discuss the affairs of the day. Both are sitting on mobility scooters. We all have an attachment to a set of wheels, I suppose? At the roundabout, I turn left and catch my first glimpse of the Warrumbu...