Despite being flooded by negative news from Turkey due to Kurdish, Syrian and Russian turmoil, the recent annual 2019 Turkish Fancy Women Bike Ride has given us some much needed grassroots balance, hope and biketivism positivity.

Fun, colour, community and flowerbikes – woohoo!

2019 Fancy Women on Bikes Ride

The Turkish Fancy Women Bikes Ride is held every year.

Thousands of women (and their friends, men too) get dressed up and ride decorated bikes around the city in order to increase the visibility of women in society.

I first posted about the Fancy Women Bikes Ride in 2016. If you have not read this post, check it out. Thanks to the support of A Might Girl, the post gives a detailed background about the ride, the organiser, key issues and some awesome resources.

Since 2016, the Fancy Women Bikes Ride has gained in attendance and reach.

Fancy Women Bikes Ride is now held in more than 100 cities worldwide, including Amsterdam, Athens, Milan, Washington and Edinburgh.

This year there were over 60,000 riders worldwide.

This isn’t a bike ride so much as a reclaiming of the streets – it’s about women making themselves visible in an outfit that doesn’t make cycling look like an urban battle. It’s a powerful way to rethink our streets so that they’re fit for everyone, however they choose to dress.    Suzanne

The ride has expanded to represent wider gender rights and bike advocacy aims such as safety, awareness, better infrastructure and inclusion for all.

The event motto is: Cycling for not one but every day to encourage daily bike use.

The Fancy Women Bike Ride takes place every year on the World Car Free Day in late September.

Visibility and safety for women

Didem Tali sees this event as being a forum where the local women defy systemic intimidation and reclaim the streets. In Turkey, crooked roads, pollution, mushrooming construction and — most importantly — lingering sexism, means Istanbul and many other cities in Turkey and beyond aren’t always hospitable to women.

Catcalling, harassment, intimidation and road rage are very common experiences that Turkish women experience in the streets every day.

Event origins

Writer Pinar Pinzuti explains the origin of The Fancy Women Bike Ride as coming to life in 2013 thanks to Sema Gür, who hoped to challenge the male-dominated world of cycling in Turkey. Sema, a teacher living in Izmir, created a Facebook event and invited her friends to come together for a bike ride one Sunday afternoon. It was by coincidence that it was on the same day as the annual World Car Free Day, during the EU’s Mobility Week.

Sema ür learned to ride a bike at the age of 39 and she started to participate in bike tours in her city. She realized immediately that the bicycle scene was dominated by men. Men choose the cycling route, men decide how fast the group should pedal and men also say how women have to dress during the bike tour. Sema did not agree.

Therefore, she decided to organize an “easy” ride in the city center of Izmir for her friends and asked them to wear whatever they wished, regardless of what the common dresscode would be. Her friends and other women loved the idea and they came to the event with flowers and balloon decorated bikes.

The foundation for an annual event organized by women for women was set. In the following year The Fancy Women Bike Ride already expanded. Volunteers from Istanbul, Ankara and a couple of other cities organized women bike rides at the same day and same time.

The event is organized by volunteers who are eager to promote cycling to their peers. Hand-in-hand with the organization of the ride they ask local authorities to increase safety on roads, create urban cycling infrastructure and plan bike-friendly services.

Although the event itself is once a year, the women’s peer-to-peer initiatives last all year around. Women organize cycling courses in their communities, group rides for the weekends, cycling events for families with small children.

This week, Griffith Uni held their 2019 Excellence in Teaching Awards.

Griffith Awards for Excellence in Teaching (GAET) are awarded by the University to recognise and reward teachers, teaching teams, professional staff and programs for their contributions to student learning. GAET are awarded on the basis of a University-wide application process. These awards a very competitive and prestigious.

I am delighted to announce that I was awarded: Highly Commended for Excellence in Teaching Awards Sessional Academic Staff category!

Whoohoo!

This is a great honour and a lovely surprise!

So this week, I attended the 2019 Griffith Teaching Excellence in Teaching Awards night at Griffith’s Gold Coast with the other awardees, colleagues, friends and family.

It was a fantastic night!

Congrats to all the nominees, highly commended and award winners!

I was very pleased to see many colleagues I work with also being recognised like: Dr Dawn Adams, Bronwyn Reid O’Connor, Prof Stephen Billet and the wonderful Kungullanji Program and Indigenous Research Unit teams (below). Congrats all!

I adore teaching and take student engagement seriously.

As I say to my classes – I work to create the kind of class I wish I had as a student.

My teaching and learning pedagogy is underpinned by a commitment to community, care, confidence and curiosity.

I feel very honoured to be working with such amazing people who are up for exploring alternative ideas, working hard, sharing experiences, expanding knowledge and having a bit of fun along the way.

A massive big THANK YOU!

Thank you to all the managers,  course convenors, colleagues and students who nominated me.

I was overwhelmed and very moved by the amount of thought and enthusiasm people put into my nomination. Award nominees are not told who nominated them – but you know who you are – and THANK YOU!

Also, a massive thank you to all the other staff and students who wrote in, supplied references and filled out end of course SET (Student Evaluations of Teaching) surveys that helped evidence my nomination.

Below is some anonymous student feedback about my teaching from previous classes. Such feedback is heart-warming, motivating and humbling.

GAET Award Categories

Each year, Griffith Excellence in Teaching Awards recognise 15 categories:

• 4 Group Excellence in Teaching Awards, one for each Griffith Academic Group (Arts, Education & Law, Health, Business & Sciences)
• 4 Group Educational Leadership Awards (one for each Academic Group)
• 4 Group Active Learning Awards (one for each Academic Group)
• 3 Excellence in Teaching Priority Area Awards one for each of the three categories:
  • Early Career Award
  • Sessional Academic Staff Award
  • Innovative Assessment Award

GAET Award Assessment Criteria

Some people have asked me what/how the GAET is awarded. The GAETs are assessed based on submissions responding to criteria one, three and four (below) only, but may also include criteria two and five (optional).

• Criterion 1: What approaches to teaching and learning have you employed to influence, motivate and inspire students to learn?
• Criterion 2: What curricula, resources or services have you developed that reflect a command of the field? (OPTIONAL)
• Criterion 3: What approaches to assessment and feedback do you incorporate that foster independent learning?
• Criterion 4: What evaluation practices do you employ that bring about improvements in teaching and learning?
• Criterion 5: What innovation, leadership or scholarship has influenced and enhanced learning and teaching and/or the student experience in your practice? (OPTIONAL)

Find out more about the award winners at the Griffith Celebrating Remarkable Teachers website. 

A few years ago I attended the Australian Walking and Cycling Conference in Adelaide. There I met the amazing Freestyle Cyclists’ South Australian co-ordinator and National Vice-President Dr. Sundance Bilson-Thompson. Not only an incredible man and devoted cyclist, but Sundance is also active in pushing for Australian bike helmet reform (removal). Since meeting Sundance, I have kept up with Freestyle Cyclists work, news and campaigns. Their approach, research and commitment are impressive! In support of this community action group of highly motivated cyclists trying to effect positive community change for the betterment of all bike riders, I am reposting here their latest article commenting on the current Australian Helmet Law and statistics. Enjoy! NG.

This is a guest post by Chris Gillham, who maintains Cycling Helmets a rich repository of facts and statistics on Australia’s helmet law disaster.

With Australia’s National Cycling Participation surveys suggesting either a decline of more than a million from 2011 to 2019 (if the population percentages of 2011 and 2019 are applied only to the 2018 population) or 539,046 (if the 2011 results are applied to the 2010 population and 2019 results are applied to the 2018 population), how many of them are instead driving a car to their friend’s place, the shops, etc?

Australian Bureau of Statistics data can be handy, although we concede they only show the numbers of vehicles and not how often people drive their vehicles.

They show that in 2011, there were 13,152,834 registered passenger vehicles and motorcycles in Australia.

In 2019, there are 15,374,253 passenger vehicles and motorcycles registered in Australia. That’s a 16.9% increase since 2011.

In 2011, Australia’s 17yo+ driving age population was 17,534,610 and in 2018 it was 19,717,980. That’s a 12.5% driving age population increase since 2011.

That 4.4% difference between vehicle registrations and population growth can be equated in numerous ways but, most simply, 4.4% of 15,374,253 registered motor vehicles and motorcycles is 676,467 more than if registrations had matched population growth at 12.5%.

That 676,467 excess is comparible with between 539,046 and a million fewer people riding bikes from 2011 to 2019.

Sure, the figures can’t assume that every discouraged cyclists didn’t also have a vehicle anyway, but there could be a proportion who buy a car because they’re discouraged from cycling a few kilometres, or maybe a second family car because the partner is discouraged from cycling, etc. Whatever, the data suggests an increased ratio of vehicles per person since 2011 and raises questions as to whether Australian car registrations would have risen 86.0% from 1990 to 2019 (7,797,300 > 14,504,148) vs 17yo+ driving age population growth of 54.3% from 1990 to 2018 (12,780,937 > 19,717,980).

Traffic speed is used by the Australian Automobile Association to gauge vehicle congestion in Australian cities …

 i.e. traffic congestion has been increasing in all capital cities since 2013.

The most recent AIHW data show there were 34,042 hospitalised road injuries in Australia in 2011 and 38,945 in 2016.  That’s a 14.4% increase.

From 2011 to 2016, car occupant injuries were up 14.1% (16,722 > 19,085), motorcyclist injuries were up 12.6% (7,571 > 8,523), pedestrian injuries were down 0.6% (2,760 > 2,744), and pedal cyclist injuries were up 28.0% (5,393 > 6,905)..

Of course, those are only hospitalised injury figures to 2016 and if we had the extra two years to 2018 the percentage increase would probably be nudging the 16.9% increase in registered vehicles and motorbikes from 2011 to 2019.

Pedestrian data are the exception but although the figures are dated and not entirely indicative, we note ABS recreation surveys showing 4,258,800 Australians walking for exercise in 2011-12 and 3,544,900 in 2013-14, a 16.8% reduction.

The data supports a logical assumption that discouraging cyclists with helmet laws increases the injury risk to all road users.

Village Bicycle Project is doing amazing work mobilising individuals and communities by providing bicycles. They currently have a crowdsourcing initiative for their work in Sierra Leone (see below). Their aim is to raise $5,000 – which is totally achievable with your help. This is an incredibly worthwhile project and I’d encourage you to donate what you feel fits with your principles and budget. This is a great opportunity to show that bicycles really do create change! NG.

We know that getting women on bikes might seem small, but we also know that in rural communities a bike is the key to unlock countless opportunities for education, health and wellbeing. That’s why VBP has a holistic approach to women’s bicycle empowerment based on knowledge, transportation, economic opportunity, and fun.

Who we are: For the last 20 years, Village Bicycle Project (VBP) has been providing bicycles, tools and training to communities in West Africa. We have distributed over 126,000 bicycles, trained over 21,000 people in basic bicycle repair, and taught more than 4,000 women and girls how to ride a bike.  

Our approach: We have been developing our 4-prong approach to getting more women on bikes for the past few years, and in 2020 we are excited to expand our programming in Sierra Leone. Help us reach more women than ever before!

1. Learn to Ride Programs for school age girls:
There are a number of cultural stigmas that hinder women from learning how to ride a bicycle.  Our Learn to Ride (L2R) Programs give them that opportunity in a supportive women’s only class.

2. Bicycle Distribution Workshops for women of all ages:
Our standard One Day Workshop (ODW) provides participants with a bicycle and a half day’s maintenance training so they can keep their bike in good working order.  A major focus of our ODWs has been school-age students with a particular emphasis on young women.

3. Advanced Mechanical Repair classes for women bike entrepreneurs:
For those women that have shown an interest and aptitude in bicycle repair, we offer a full-day Advanced Mechanical Training and support in opening their own shops. We are proud to have launched the first women-owned bike businesses in Sierra Leone!

4. Development of women’s bike racing through the Lunsar Cycling Team:
The Lunsar Cycling Team is a local team in central Sierra Leone that has become one of the premier cycling organizations in the country.  Women make up about 25% of the team and have consistently won the national cycling championship raising the profile of women’s’ cycling and breaking down stereotypes that keep women from riding.

Our goal is to raise $5,000 which covers the cost of shipping a container of 500 bikes and gear to Sierra Leone.  That container and the associated revenue will supply bicycles and funds for one year of women’s bike programming. With a container dedicated to funding women’s bicycle programming, it will enable VBP to plan for program expansion for the entire year.

Want to read more? Check out these articles about Karim Kamara, our Sierra Leone Country Manager, as reported by Vice  and Cycling Tips .  

Your support is vital to helping us reach more women in Sierra Leone than ever before, please donate today.

FreshLines is an annual multi-day symposium run by Griffith HLSS postgraduates for postgraduates. It offers oral presentations, keynote presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and opportunities to network. This event is specifically designed for Griffith HLSS HDRers and is funded jointly by Griffith University’s School of Humanities, Languages & Social Science and the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research.

I was approached by one of the organisers to submit an abstract for the symposium. Since I am not attending the Griffith Education and Professional Studies (EPS) Research Conference this year, I decided to take the offer! FreshLines will be held over two Griffith campuses (Gold Coast and Nathan) on 23-25th October 2019.

My submission has been accepted and I’ll present on Thursday 24th October.

Symposium Topic

Productive Tensions: Working across Disciplines and Identities

Session Title

Skills, spills and thrills: reconciling bicycles, African girls’ education, materialist cartographies and ethical expert-iments.

Abstract

Academic: I am an athlete-teacher-feminist undertaking a posthuman-educational-emplaced qualitative study. First Date: My PhD explores how bicycles feature in rural African girls’ access to secondary schooling.

This means my study frays the seams of politics, economics, geography, sociology, education and mobility. Instead of using human participants, my PhD positions bicycles as my ‘more-than-human’ research ‘subject’.

My choice to advocate greater critical pluralism of nonhuman agency has unearthed myriad gendered, political, ethical and processual im/possibilities.

This endeavour is both exciting and exasperating.

In addition to more apparent critical race and post-colonialist challenges of being a privileged, white, Australian female researcher undertaking embodied fieldwork in rural sub-Saharan Africa, working with feminist New Materialisms further charges me to engage with multi-sensory, ethico-onto-epistemological complexities (Barad, 2003) that continuously require me to (re)question ‘different ways of becoming’ (Colebrook, 2006).

How do you make sense of yourself (researcher-becoming) and your PhD (academic-assemblage), when you/r (re)search is disciplinary promiscuous and actively working to dissolve traditional academic ways of thinking, knowing and being?

Using key examples from my current PhD project and professional INGO work, this session will share some of my ethical and methodological skills, spills and thrills of applying feminist New Materialisms to trans-disciplinary practice.

Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in culture and Society, 28(3), 801-831.

Colebrook, C. (2006). Deleuze: A guide for the perplexed. London/New York: Continuum

We are very lucky for this month’s New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) to have Geraldine Harris (Griffith Uni, PhDer) presenting aspects of her experience of working with feminist New Materialisms in child-centered leadership and more specifically, some visualizations she has created based on her emerging data analysis.

Geraldine has extensive professional experince as a child advocate working with collective action and leadership facilitation. She is the Director of Equitable Childhoods Consultancy.

Diverse plateaus + visualisations of place-based child-centered leadership

Her PhD topic is: Place based leadership & Social Innovation (Child & Family).

Her recent writing and work contributes to discussions around what are the key trends and principles emerging from the process of implementing a whole of community and government approach to supporting families at risk of vulnerability. Geraldine is an expert in collaborating with professionals, practitioners and researchers to explore early intervention and prevention strategies developed through the Australian Communities for Children initiatives and their efficacy.

Using feminist New Materialisms, Geraldine’s work supports community services, education and child welfare practitioners and policymakers to implement place-based collectives and and suggests alternative ways to look at impact approaches to child development, wellbeing and protection.

For this session, Geraldine shared some of her current PhD musings, visualizations and emerging NM understandings. She also spoke of the challenges and blockages she has experienced which was both reassuring and disheartening to hear.

Current New Materialisms musings

In line with PhD intellectual property and confidentiality (the visualizations and content Geraldine’s shared in this session is her original work and makes up her PhD ‘data’), I’m not sharing details or images of this session – you had to be there to see it. Awesome work!

Below are some other New Materialisms ideas and visuals Geraldine has been thinking-with.

The Fold #SIQR17 pic.twitter.com/LoZ1fiYjbG

— Geraldine Harris (@GerECEC) July 14, 2017

Session Resources

Prior to her presentation, Geraldine recommended the below 3 stimuli to get the juices flowing as each provides interesting but diverse plateaus in which to encounter the complex entanglements of NM – two academic papers and 1 video.

Geraldine set these resources as she found them to be fruitful provocations for NM work, especially after initial readings of Barad, Deleuze & Guattari, Ingold, Massumi & Braidotti.

Iris van der Tuin (2017) presentation at Manchester Metropolitan University Summer Institute of Qualitative Studies (which Geraldine was lucky enough to attend in person!) on Epistemology in a Speculative Key – see below.

This guest blog post comes courtesy of the invincible Jen Sheean. Husband and I first met Jen out on some local mountain bike trails. Not only is Jen relaxed, smart and fun – but she also rides a singlespeed. KUDOS! We took an instant liking to her and have kept in touch, both on and off the bikes, ever since. You might remember Jen’s previous guest blog post on the Brisbane Bicycle Short Film Festival 2019. I recently asked Jen if she would be up for riding with me as a team in the Chicks in the Sticks 2019 3hr Enduro MTB event. And to my delight, she said YES! In this post, Jen gives us an overview of what happened on the day. A massive thank you to Jen – not only for doing this blog post, for being a wonderful mate, for being killer on a singlespeed, but also for her unwavering positivity and for being up for doing something different. I always have a great time with her. Thanks so much Jen! Ride on! NG.

Chicks in the Sticks 2019 Event Report

Sunday, 25 August 2019 should have been a day like any other Sunday. Being late August, the weather had started to warm up. The winds that generally accompany the Ekka had died down. There was nothing to indicate that this particular Sunday would be anything other than an ordinary Sunday with an early morning mountain bike ride followed by breakfast at the nearest café and then the usual housework. Nothing, except that it was the day that the Chicks in the Sticks mountain bike race was scheduled to run.

This race, hosted by RATS MTB club, has been a much anticipated event for a few years now. This inclusive event provides a rare opportunity for women and girls and other gendered people to ride together or race if they are so inclined. There is no pressure to perform at any particular level. The emphasis is on participation and fun. And there was plenty of both to go around!

The indefatigable Nina and I entered as a two-person team. We were the only people riding singlespeeds (which won us a prize!) and we had decided to just ride, meet people and have fun. Nina is a dab hand at meeting people. No sooner had we selected a place to set up than she had a couple of nearby ladies rubbing sunscreen on her back.

The race was held at Scribbly Gums and the course was a lot of fun (although it was very dry which made for some interesting riding as the day wore on). People dressed in fabulous costumes with Edwina Scissorhands taking out the prize for the best costume. Some participants were serious racers and they did a great job. Others were happy to just complete whatever number of laps they had set themselves. They also did a great job!

I am not a person who participates in races and the only reason I entered this was that Nina assured me we would not be racing. And I am so glad I did! The atmosphere was friendly. The event was well organised – running almost completely on time. It was a wonderful day out and I have no regrets about participating – even if that housework did chide me for its neglect until the following weekend.

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Adrien Niyonshuti

The remarkable story of cyclist Adrien Niyonshuti is one of resilience, opportunity and hard work.

Adrien Niyonshuti is arguably the most famous African mountain biker to date.

As covered in may news reports, Niyonshuti was seven when the militia men came to his village in Rwanda. Somehow, he escaped the April 1994 genocide – but six of his brothers did not. In the years since, cycling has been his therapy, his companion, his hope.

In 2006, he entered Rwanda’s first annual cycling festival, created by Jonathan “Jock” Boyer (the first American to finish the Tour de France), and mountain-bike pioneer Tom Ritchey. He recalls in the documentary: “It was difficult because it was my first time to ride a mountain bike. I was so scared to race with them … I crossed the line, I win. I surprised myself.”

Mountain biking has typically been a white man’s sport. “If we had more opportunities to compete with those white folks, I think it would bring hopes to our lives and our country,” Niyonshuti told an interviewer at the time. “We might develop as cyclists.”

Five months later, Boyer returned to set up and coach Team Rwanda, unmissable in their bright blue and yellow shirts with the image of a sun rising above hills.

Adrien was the star rider of Team Rwanda for the London Olympics 2012.

Read more about Adrien’s remarkable story of how he came to mountain biking (The Guardian).

I was looking through the internet recently and found there was The Adrien Niyonshuti Cycling Academy website.

At first glance, I was thrilled. I was excited at the prospect of a growing mountain biking scene in Rwanda. The website has some good detail and lofty content, but has not been updated since 2014.

I wonder if it is still running, or if it is on hold while Niyonshuti is on the Pro circuit.

Adrien is still riding at the elite level, and as of 2018, he was looking for a pro contract. He has kept very busy during 2018 as his result stats indicate. This is not surprising considering he is the twice flag bearer for Rwanda’s summer Olympics team and has just ended a two-year World Tour run with South Africa’s Team Dimension Data-Qhubeka. Niyonshuti, now 302 has raced for the South African team for nine seasons as it progressed from the UCI Continental to Pro Continental and finally World Tour status.

The Academy is a great idea to support local up and coming riders. I hope it is still operating.

The Academy has posted a February calendar of training and social events.

The Adrien Niyonshuti Cycling Academy

Here’s a bit of background about the Academy from the official website:

After the 2012 London Olympic Games Adrien immediately felt he wanted to offer the chance for young people in his country to experience the power of cycling, to install hope and to pass on its positive values to future generations.

The Academy idea was born and the first location chosen was Adrien’s home town of Rwamagana. Along with support from the Rwandan Cycling Federation, Team Rwanda and the Rising from Ashes Foundation the Academy was officially launched in the August 2013.

The initial 2014 program will focus on building the Academy in Rwamagana with a view to opening up two new Rwandan centers in 2015. The presence of a professional team documenting and continuously assessing performance via tangible results the Academy will have gained the tools and experience to expand outside the borders of Rwanda.

Cycling 2012 Adrien Niyonshuti was the first Rwandan Cyclist to compete for his country in the Olympic Games. Adrien’s story captured the hearts of Rwandans at home and abroad as a symbol of pride and hope for a new Rwanda.

His personal story was magnified by the fact that he had lost 60 of his family members including six of his brothers in the 1994 genocide. His journey, along with his team mates from Team Rwanda, into the world of professional cycling was documented in the award-winning documentary Rising From Ashes.

Soon after the 2012 London Olympic Games Adrien immediately felt he wanted to offer the chance for young people in his country to experience the power of cycling install hope and values to the next generations.

The Academy idea was born and the first location chosen was Adrien’s home town of Rwamagana. Along with support from the Rwandan Cycling Federation, Team Rwanda and the Rising from Ashes Foundation the Academy was officially launched in the August 2013.

The Academy has listed an ambitious number of projects, including:

• Community
• Peace
• Education
• Nutrition
• Mechanics
• Enterprise

I’ve sent an email to the Academy to see if they are still operating. Fingers Crossed!

All images from the ANCA website unless specified. Some content in this post is from the ANCA website and the Guardian article.

Bicycles play a central role in ensuring better health, social, transport, economic and environmental outcomes. By default, bicycles are a fundamental go-to green transportation mode par excellence.

So it is no surprise to see bicycles at climate change protests.

Leki (my flower bike) and I have attended quite a few climate change rallies in my current home town of Brisbane, Australia.

And this month’s biggest student Climate Change Strike will be no exception!

Brisbane Global #ClimateStrike

This Friday (September 20th Sept) thousands of school students across Australia (and many more around the world) will again walk out of their classrooms to protest government inaction on climate change as part of the Global Climate Strike.

These protests follow an earlier round in March, in which 150,000 people in Australia and 1.5 million people worldwide marched in protest. This time almost 100 protests will be staged across Australia.

The young Australian protesters are demanding no new coal, oil and gas projects (including the Adani mine); 100 per cent renewable energy generation and exports by 2030; and funds to help workers from fossil fuel industries transition to new jobs.

Brisbane’s protest will begin at 1pm at Queens Gardens. The march will begin at 1.30pm, heading north up George Street past Reddacliff Place, west on Adelaide Street, south onto N Quay, south-west over Victoria Bridge, south onto Grey Street and west onto Glenelg Street. It will continue along Glenelg Street to its finishing point at Musgrave Park.

As the Brisbane Rally organisers highlight, Australia is already on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Prolonged drought. Flash flooding. Catastrophic bushfires, severe cyclones and heatwaves. But just at the time when we need to ramp up climate solutions, we have elected a Government that wants to open the floodgates to new coal, oil and gas projects that put all of us at risk.

So, on September 20, three days before the UN Emergency Climate Summit, school students are inviting everyone to join us for our biggest ever global #ClimateStrike.

By taking time off school and work together around the world, we’ll show our politicians that people everywhere want climate justice and we’re not going away until we get it. We’ll strike in solidarity for everyone who’s already being hurt by the climate crisis and everyone who will be impacted if we don’t act now: workers, first nations people, young people, mining communities and more.

On March 15, 1.6 million of us went on strike around the world. On September 20, we’re going to take our movement to the next level.

If you’re an adult, please take the day off and invite your friends, workmates and families to join us.

Bring your bikes!

Here is information about the Brisbane Rally.

What will happen at the Brisbane Rally?

To everyone who cares about a safe climate future, this is your invitation to join the #GlobalClimateStrike on September 20 – people around the world standing up to confront the climate crisis when our politicians won’t.

What is happening on the day?
From 12.30 we will assemble in Queens Gardens (Cnr George and Elizabeth Streets, Brisbane)
1.00 Welcome to Country + speakers
1.30 March to Musgrave Park over Victoria Bridge.
2.15-2.30 Arrive in Musgrave Park
2.30-3.30 A performance from Pacific Climate Warriors, information stalls + more inspiring speakers
3.30 Music from “Crown”, local band from Kenmore State High School
4.00 – CLOSE

Songlines Choir will be singing near the corner of Elizabeth Street and William Street from 12.30-1.00pm before the formal program starts. More info here.

Speakers include
Aunty Deb Sandy – to give the Welcome to Country
School Striker Parker R – 10 year old from Annerley with his poem “Save our World’
– School Striker Sunny from West End State School
– Stuart Traill – State Assistant Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union. Stuart will be speaking the need for a fair transition for workers and to build publicly owned renewable energy
– Sid Plant – A fifth generation cattleman, member of the Oakey Coal Action Alliance who have been fighting to protect prime farmland from the expansion of the Acland coal mine expansion.

Sign up here for updates.

For Site Map, March Route & other important info click here.

What to bring
Your friends and family! We need everyone.
Placards
Banners / Flags representing the group / union / organisation you are part of!
Hat and Sunscreen
Water bottle — It’s likely to be hot!
Snacks
Cash for Merch stalls in Musgrave Park

Other rallies Australia-wide

There will be a other rally Australia-wide. Organisers predict the largest crowds in the country will be at the Melbourne rally, which will begin at Treasury Gardens at 2pm. The rally will leave the gardens at 3pm and travel along Spring Street towards Collins Street. It will then turn south along Exhibition Street, then east along Flinders Street, before returning to Treasury Gardens. Trams on routes 48, 11, 12 and 109 will be diverted during the march.

In Sydney, the protest will begin at the Domain at 12pm. Students will march down Macquarie Street and Elizabeth Street before finishing at Hyde Park.

Students in Adelaide will begin their protest at 12pm at Victoria Square. At 1pm they will march north along King William Street to Parliament House. Rolling road closures will be in effect on the western side of the street.

In Perth, protesters will first gather at 11am at Forrest Place before marching along William Street, St Georges Terrace, Mill Street and Mounts Bay Road before arriving at Elizabeth Quay.

Here is a  full list of Global Climate Strike locations across Australia held on 20^th September.

Content for this post is adapted from Nick Buckley’s article for Broadsheet and Global Climate Strike Brisbane.

Who doesn’t love a good urban legend – especially one about a bicycle?!

The best example of this is the Vashon Island Bike Tree.

The Vashon Island Bike Tree is an old rusted children’s bicycle that has been ‘eaten’ by a tree in Washington. How it actually got there is a mystery and subject to much speculation.

The Vashon Island Bike Tree is still a major tourist attraction and has been immortalised in the children’s book Red Ranger Came Calling by Berkley Breathed.

Recently, Sam Dickson (Vintage News) set out to find as much as he could about this urban legend and to see how much of the story is actually true. Although I appreciate Sam’s dedication, I still really like the community-developed story. It has been embellished and retold so many times you are not sure what is true and what is not – which is part of the mystique.

The Bike Tree is a local myth and adds a little charm, mystery and history to the area. For those who love the original urban legend stop reading now! For those who want a bit more factual input read on. Either way – spoiler alert ahead! Here is what Sam found:

We have all seen this picture on the internet a thousand times. A tale of a lad that went off to war and left his bike against a tree.

He never returned from the war so his parents left it there as a memorial. We know this story, right? You have to love the internet for its eccentricities and this story is another example (remember the catfish that swallowed a Nazi?).

The headline itself is the biggest clue – the USA did not enter WWI in 1914. It entered in 1917. They also never sent boys off to war – looks like a 10 years-old bike.

Furthermore – this isn’t a bike from the early part of the 20th century. So lets have a look at the real story behind this picture.

Vashon Island Bike Tree. We don’t have to go back to 1914 for the beginning of this story – in fact we just have to go back to the 1950s. You see, this is a bike from the 1950s and it belong to an 8 years-old boy called Don Puz. According to The Seattle Times.

The story of how the bike came to be in the tree is told by a retired King County deputy sheriff, Don Puz, who now lives in Kennewick. The only bike he rides now is a stationary one. He grew up on the island and lived here until 1992. Puz tells how, in 1954, his dad died in a house fire, leaving his mom with five children.

The island came together and donated various items to get the family going again.

Among those items was a bicycle for young Don. “I never liked the bike. It was like a tricycle, but with two wheels. It had hard rubber tires and skinny little handlebars,” he says. Puz says eventually the family moved to a home near what became Sound Food, but which then was a swampy area. “We liked playing there, catching polliwogs. We’d get into ponds and mud. It was a good place,” he says. Sometime in the mid-1950s, says Puz, he forgot the bike in that swampy acreage and never bothered to get it back. Good riddance.

Then, in 1995, when visiting a sister still living on the island, she took Puz to see the local landmark. “The first words out of my mouth were, ‘That’s my bike!’ ” he says. “There was no doubt in my mind.” He still holds no love for the bike or its current decrepit state. Says Puz, “A bike itself doesn’t have any feelings.”

“I don’t think I own it anymore,” Don Puz says a little wistfully, a little bit in awe, perhaps, of how time makes up its own stories. “I threw it away a long time ago. I think the tree owns it now”.

It has now become a major tourist attraction and also a target for souvenir hunters and very little remains of the bike. Locals are trying to keep it alive by replacing the stolen parts but it is getting harder and harder to find replacement parts for a bike this old.

How the bike ended up in the tree probably wasn’t a case of a young fir sapling growing under the bike and swallowing it, says professor Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh, of the University of Washington’s Department of Biology. “That bicycle would have been too heavy for a young tree,” she says. More likely, says Van Volkenburgh, when the tree was older, “somebody hung that bicycle on the tree”.

The BBC reported:

A spokeswoman from Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park said: “The mature sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) has significant cultural and historic heritage which is recognised locally, regionally and nationally.

“The tree has been recorded on a number of veteran tree surveys such as Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Countryside Trust 2013 and Woodland Trust ‘Ancient Tree Hunt’ 2009.”

The Park Authority says a tree preservation order would protect the tree in the event of any future change in land use in the area.