Where is He Now? Curating an Amazing Bike Collection!

Rochester, Victoria

If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you might remember that for two decades we featured regular columns by Greg Griffiths, across both Bicycling Trade and Bicycling Australia magazines.

In particular, his ‘Behind the Counter’ column often drew wry smiles from other bike shop owners/managers when writing about ‘slice of life’ encounters with certain ‘challenging’ customers.

Greg wrote these from first-hand experience during a long career working in some of Melbourne’s best known bicycle shops, including Hillman Cycles, Cecil Walker Cycles and Ivanhoe Cycles.

He was also an accomplished road and track racing cyclist and in later years rose through the ranks of race officiating to become a senior UCI International Commissaire. Greg travelled the world frequently, especially during the Australian winter, to officiate at major international events.

During one of these commissaire trips a few years ago, he had a stroke that made Greg and his wife Sue re-evaluate their lives. Greg recovered but the life-threatening episode prompted the couple to quit their jobs, sell their house in Melbourne and move to a country semi-retirement in northern Victoria.

One thing that moved with them was Greg’s already impressive collection of classic bikes, mainly road bikes from the second half of the 20th century. Shortly after arriving at their new home, Greg built a very large shed that could display his collection in a way that did it justice.

He has steadily collected at least one bike from every letter of the alphabet – which is pretty tricky for letters such as Q and Z! Anyone who’d like to guess which brands he has for these letters can write their answers in the comments below. One day, he hopes to publish a coffee table-style picture book featuring his A to Z of bikes.

Greg is still commissairing, with six international events last year and three planned so far for 2023. He’s also organising a local bike event in April.