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A Collection of Stories and Reflections
This page contains stories, short reports, observations and reflections. Some relate to motorcycling. Others may have come about from non-motorcycle experiences while touring. I hope you enjoy reading them.
I met Reg Dodd in Marree on my Big Trip North. He was chairman of the Arabunna People's Committee. The Arabunna are the local Aboriginal People. I discovered a day later at Coward Springs that Reg was a renowned story teller. Some of his stories were reproduced on story boards in the renovated drivers' room at the old Coward Springs siding. With Reg's permission, I have reproduced several of his stories.
William Crick was my great grandfather. He arrived in Australia from England in 1852. He first settled in Truro, South Australia. He was 19 years old when he arrived. Over the years, he had mail contracts between Adelaide and Wentworth; and Wentworth and Bourke and Wilcannia. He ran a steamer and wool barge along the Darling River. He later moved to Wellington and then Sydney. This story is about his early pioneering days. Having researched William Crick, I then got drawn into researching his ancestry. This is very much 'work in progress.' However, the results to date are published here. I need to caution that this is a 'moving feast.' As one works through records, lots of new and often inconsistent insights emerge. I hope Crick genealogy fans might find it interesting. This second part draws from data obtained in the first and several subsequent censuses in England, beginning in 1841. This wasn’t available to me when I prepared Part 1. Part 2 presents a lot more detail and some great insights into the life of the Kirtling Cricks. It also corrects some wrong guesses and assumptions made in Part 1. Eventually, I’ll turn both parts into a coherent whole, but for now it might be easier to manage to have them separate.
Did you wonder about the main picture on the pages of this site? A dragon rider and his dragon? Did you even pick it as a dragon? It’s actually Eragon and his dragon, Saphira. And there’s a good reason why the dragon rider and his dragon feature on this site.
My grandson, Dylan, is twelve. He loves being on the back of my bike. We mostly do short trips, but have done one to the Blue Mountains – quite a day’s ride from home.
This happened with Natalie, my then 17 year old stepdaughter, at the helm. Fortunately, it wasn’t serious for her. It just wrote the bike off. It was a sight to arrive half an hour afterwards and find her sitting on the gutter with helmet still on! There was a good reason for that – at least, for her.
This is a great story. No, not mine. Shantaram’s. He had a life as a guest of Pentridge (former high security prison in Melbourne). As an escapee on the run he spent many years in the slums of Bombay, where most of the story takes place. He has since reinvented himself as a philosopher, mentor and philanthropist. Well you might wonder about this. I stumbled across an allusion to Gulistan in a past edition of the Australian Road Rider. One of many esoteric allusions that The Bear, as the editor calls himself, manages to weave into his writings. |
El Crucero
