Steve Gray YHS 1971 On yer bike! As a kid in Yallourn, I distinctly remember standing at the front gate of our house as a very young lad and at a set time each day, a few older guys would ride by on their bikes on their way to work, handle bars turned upwards for comfort and a slow pedalling motion got them there, but not in a hurry. One or two of them used to wave to me and say G’day; I know not who they were but their old bikes carried them forward with a gracefulness and ease I don’t often see these days. My brothers had bikes and even my sister had a big old girls bike, the sort that boys did not dare get caught dead riding! I think all were Christmas presents at some stage; Brother Colin was right into his, off with his mates vroom! He was gone into the wild blue yonder. Peter, on the other hand, found his good to get to his select few mates places, he was not big on exploring. In Yallourn, most kids had a bike of some sort, either a hand-me-down or a brand spanking new one with 3-speed “Sturmey Archer” gears - wow those were the days! Of course you only went to Arthur Oliver’s sports store to buy it, in the bike section of course… (He had so much stuff in that shop!) Out the front there were always a heap of bikes (literally) awaiting some form of repair (or was it to make it look like he was busy?). You would rock up with a worn cotter pin; he would put a tag on the bike and stack it up out the front… If you had a paper round your bike was first in line (most of the time). There were not many places you could not go in Yallourn on a bike and at Christmas, there were plenty of them being trialled up and down the streets, across the ovals up hill and down dale... When I got old enough, I was allowed to ride mine to school and most mornings I would do my best to catch up to Tim Harvey who lived up the road. He had a run up by the time he got to our place and I was off a cold start - he would whiz by and most times beat me to school by a good margin. Years later, I had a 10speed bike, which gave me the edge in the race to get to school by 9am; by this stage he was taking it easy, not wanting to get a sweat up and repel the girls. We all did MANY miles on our bikes, and if there was a dull moment in our school holidays, it meant we had not ridden enough around town. Sure there were the scrapes and scratches, bent handle bars and buckled wheels but in the main, a great time was had by all. For those on paper rounds, the bike was dusted off very early in the morning and often saw action until it was nearly dark in the evenings. They would stack up in the shed, under the veranda or in a garage until they were needed next time, the trusty bike in Yallourn did its fair share of errands and kept us fit and healthy to boot!
