Eri no Machi 恵莉の町

CERES, East Brunswick

08 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment

by CC in environment Tags: ceres, melbourne

LOL, this poster is adorable…

So a couple months ago my bike got stolen, and I wish I could say the same about my bike thief. But no, it was my fault: A few nights in a row I left my bike outside (in the rain! poor bike), all because I was too lazy to change the code of the garage remote. My justification was even worse — I was pretty sure no one would steal it as it was a pretty shabby looking 2nd hand bike to start with. I never really took care of it…maybe if I knew how, it would be a different story… although now that I think about it, I probably could have been less lazy and actually wiped off the cobweb which was a result of me going home to KL at the start of the year (it eventually came off from general use, who am I to disturb spidey’s habitat? trust the force of nature and wind to take care of it organically!).

This is the only photo I have of my stolen bike…

..and even this photo had less to do with the bike itself, I was more touched by the kind & helpful Yarra Trams officer who was nice enough to help out when the pump thingy wouldn’t pick up the orifice or whatever you call it on the tyre! All I can say is that I hope the bike thief would be a better owner to it than I ever was, it was a good 2 years. Hopefully the bike thief didn’t chop you up for parts, and you ended up in a place like the………………… CERES BIKE SHED!  (which is really what I wanted to post about….pics of CERES!)

I really do love this place and the whole concept of it. Maybe it’s cause KL doesn’t have something like this that is so accessible and encouraging to care for the environment, but I walk around in awe of this space. I told three people, all of which were born and bred in Melbourne, and all of them gave me a very nonchalant response to my visit to CERES – their visit there were during compulsory school trips.

The bike shed visit was a bit of a bust for me personally though, the whole point is to keep going and work on a bike in bits and pieces and eventually make a one that suits you. Unfortunately, an hour into learning from Hank (or Frank, I forgot his name), they realized they were running low on many key parts, or the bikes that didn’t need much fixing up were not the right height. I also realized that I really couldn’t afford to spend the following few weekends on this bike making/hunting project It was really fun though! The volunteers are really friendly, and they’re just happy for people to come and help out. It was cool to just pretend for a bit that I was a mechanic.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the park, taking some photos, looking at chickens and before I went home I bought coffees for the two volunteers, both of whom helped me out and made the whole visit really worth it. Till my next visit:

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