Cycle Station is a large bike shop in Albury, NSW right on the border with Victoria. This region was particularly badly disrupted during the long border closure, on top of all the other state-wide covid disruptions, so the irony of this large sign facing one of Albury’s busiest roads would not go unappreciated by the locals.
Victoria and NSW
Over the Christmas break, my wife and I enjoyed a three week holiday, travelling around NSW and Victoria.
Unable to resist visiting at least a few bike shops, I noticed a few interesting signs of the times.
Here’s a sample.
In pre-covid years, you’d rarely see even a tiny ‘staff wanted’ sign in a bike shop window, but the combination of the bike boom and a general shortage of staff has made hiring good staff particularly difficult right now. Jay O’Mara, of the long-established O’Mara Cycles, which is on the cyclist-packed Beach Road in the suburbs of Melbourne, decided to put up a sign so large that passing cyclists, like me, couldn’t miss it!Usually a town the size of Tumbarumba, which is home to just 1,862 people, located in the back blocks of NSW, would have a snowflake’s chance in hell of sustaining a bicycle store. But in April 2020, NSW’s first decent new rail trail in years was opened between Tumbarumba and Rosewood. Ride Tumba opened not too much later and business has been brisk. This family is about to ride the trail, having just hired a full set of e-bikes. New MTB trails in the region have also helped.
