Ten Years On

Here I am, wondering how to approach this post without becoming too maudlin. Friday is the tenth anniversary of ghastly series of incidents at Port Arthur most would prefer to forget or wish to whatever deity had simply never happened. Personally it's simultaneously a tragic anniversary and bittersweet blessing. In the aftermath of things utterly unimaginable sometimes comes the catalyst for another stage and a new approach.

That catalyst for me was a dear friend who left a bike frame out the front of my house, retrieved from the local tip. They realised I was literally losing the plot in the months after April 28 and badly needed some form of positive diversion. That crappy old Malvern Star became the first Frank, the first in a vast flock of bikes I've been privileged to fiddle, twiddle, admire, crash, break, decorate oddly and generally thrash to the shithouse. Oh the tales those bikes could tell. Oh the tales the boxes of stuff could tell, that have been accumulated over the last decade, full of bike magazines, propaganda, leaflets, notes, minutes, posters, posters, documents, drafts, stickers, dozens of costumes, decorated helmets and a myriad of cat and bike weirdness. Oh the tales several computers have accumulated on their hard drives. An estimated 1027 posts spread over four blogs. Ok, it's really 1006 entries if you preclude the beer & kittys silliness.

Malvernia Star @ Fringe Parade 2001

There's this vast conglomeration, a convergence, an over abundance of all things bicycle themed that I am now ceaselessly fascinated on a continual basis. Happily there seems to be no end in sight and I have this outlook that one is only at the beginning of something unfolding waaaayyyy into the future. Oh sod it, I will become maudlin.

Sometimes after going through unimaginable shit you do find something. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now, I see.

We love bicycles.