Events

This is a ride through my dark past but also a lunch stop at the amazing Organ Pipes National Park / so close to Melbourne but hidden away by highways and the car. Read all about it. It's a picnic lunch at the Organ Pipes NP, so please pack some great food to share, and a thermos of coffee too.

This ride is suitable for all Vespa, and all rider experience. It's a city ride. If you've just joined the club and want a 'first' ride, then this is one for you. Can't wait to see you. I need to do a recce ride to finalize the route, and also decide how to get back into Melbourne without retracing the route. Keep checking back!

The Organ Pipes National Park is part of an Aboriginal cultural landscape in the traditional Country of the Wurundjeri People. We respect the deep and continuing connection that Wurundjeri Traditional Owners have to these lands and waters, and we recognise their ongoing role in caring for Country.

Meet at Small Axe Kitchen, 281 Victoria St Brunswick, for coffee, and breakfast too if you want. It's really good. We'll be there from 9 AM. It's just around the corner from Sydney Rd, and connects through to the Sparta Place area. If you are still planning, you can pick up some pastries and treats for lunchtime too. We depart here at 10 AM. And off we go.Here are some possible stops.

Hoffy's Brickworks. Brunswick was then one big series of clay pits feeding the ovens of the brick works and building Melbourne homes. (All those strange Brunswick parks are former pits filled in). The old Hoffman's brickworks ovens still survive in a modified residential form. Now, just another brick in the wall.

Pascoe Vale / Oak Park. John Pascoe Fawkner was one of the original investors in Batman's Melbourne settlement. He set up a huge estate in Melbourne's North and his country home overlooked a wonderful valley down to Moonee Ponds Creek, full of sheep and earning big money. In the 1950s that valley was renamed 'Happy Valley' and subdivided. So I grew up in 'Happy Valley'. I remember small weatherboard boxes, unmade roads, deep trench gutters out the front of my house, beautiful rainbow oil stains in the puddles, and the dunny man exchanging pans every Tuesday. We''ll ride the big hills and down Happy Valley.

Essendon Airport. In the 60s my friend Allan Warren and I would pedal up to the airport where we would buy chips and be amazed by the beautiful smart men and women in uniform, and the connection to the rest of the world.  It was so cosmpolitan and it inspired me to always escape and travel. It's a nice place to visit with lots of the past preserved, and you can still stand at the tarmac where the Beatles arrived in 1964. Oh.

 Bridges. If David comes on the ride he'll appreciate these bridges.

The Trestle Bridge is an amazing wrought iron construction. In my time it crossed a remote valley. It was a place where bodgies and widgies hung out, and where stolen cars were crashed and burned etc. Different today but still an amazing structure. I only ever heard a train cross it once, and I remember the roaring noise and vibration.

Bulla Bridge. Stiil in use but you'll get to see it from a now rarely seen view. This was a popular picnic spot for my family then, as it was a short car trip to the 'country'. It's lost now.

Sunbury Pop Festival and the Billy Thorpe Memorial. As a rebellious teenager I attended two of these, much to the upset of my parents. - Jan 74, and Jan 75, sleeping out on the hill in front of the stage. I got to experience all that Australian music, and then back to school a week later. I remember writing an account of my experience and my Year 11 Englsh teacher reading it to the class much to my embarrassment. Lots of memories, but one to remember is  'foreign' and unknown band Queen being booed off the stage in 1974 after making the crowd wait so long for set up. Freddie Mercury, "Well, if you want a good show you have to wait." Boooo. We'll visit the site of the Billy Thorpe Memorial overlooking the 'natural amphitheatre' where the event took place. After all it was his event.

Lunch at the Organ Pipes National Park. Hard to get to as you will find out, having been smashed by the nearby Calder Freeway. But its a beautiful and peaceful oasis. We'll have lunch here and a look around before heading home.