The Life-Sized City Blog

I'm reading an amazing book at the moment, after a correspondence with a reader.. It's called The Bicycle and the Bush - Man and Machine in Rural Australia . The author is Jim Fitzpatrick Books about the historical role of the bicycle are always a fascinating read for me. Just when you think that everything has been uncovered, nuggets of historical goodness are dug up, cleaned and polished for all the world to see. At first glance, the title seems a bit optimistic. Surely there can't be THAT much to write about on the subject. The Bicycle and the Bush, however, is filled with brilliant stories, anecdotes and historical references. Australia is in no way a shining light for bicycle culture in a modern context but what an astonishing role the bicycle played in building the nation between 1890-1920. It never ceases to amaze me when writers produce a work that requires so much research. In addition to a constant flow of nuggets, the book is richly illustrated. At left...

Thanks to our reader, Tim, for sending us the above photo of Australian sheepshearers on their bicycles. The bicycle is credited rightly with improving the human gene pool in the way that it increased the mobility radius for people not only in cities but also in rural areas. After the invention of the bicycle and the subsequent bicycle boom in the late 1880's, family names that were previously rooted to specific towns or regions started showing up in the registries of (relatively) far-flung parishes in the UK. The same is true for rural America and Australia. The inexpensive independent mobility that the bicycle provided allowed men and women to travel farther further in the search for work and... well... TLC. These photographs are from the Flickr photostream of the State Library of New South Wales . Stanmore, NSW, Australia. May, 1946. Albury, NSW, Australia. December, 1938. NSW, Australia. June 1937. An explanation is probably needed: "Tom Morris, who will attem...