Load Carrying on the Watsonia

 

Load carrying from wood, timber, 3d printed parts.

Minq recumbent chair

Crate can be removed without tools

With Cushion in place

Next to conventional basket

Milk crate as chair. (Sitting on the cushion, you can't see much of it)

Minq recumbent in Bicycle mode

Milk crates with cushions at Alphington market.

Single speed milk crate bike (not colour coordination!) at Piedemontes, in

the nearby suburb of North Fitzroy.

(A 21st century bike basket)

After my last post about this bike, I did little bits of work on it, changing the tyres, and removing the load carrying and chain guarding contraptions. The plastic chain guard was pretty brittle and deciduous anyway, and fell apart with even the slightest touch. For a while, that's the way it stayed, but I was slowly gathering ideas for putting load carrying back on it. Having had homemade contraptions on it originally sort of gave me permission, I wasn't doing anything particularly foreign to that bicycle.

A visit to a local farmer's market inspired me - here were milk crates being used as chairs as I had seen before and even written about in my book. And me and lots of other people have used milk crates as load carrying. How about a built-in chair on a bicycle? Turns out this has been done before on the 20 year old and short lived Minq recumbent. I managed to find an article about it in Velovision 23 from 2006.

I was thinking of a complicated timber-based seat cushion but something quite simple worked instead, I just cut down the foam inside a cushion I had spare to make it fit in the milk crate. The night before I did most of the work on the load carrying I fossicked for suitable timber and a bracket in the shed, and was able to find them. Overall I'm very pleased with the result. The cushion should benefit the load carrying, keeping it suspended and less prone to damage, and could also carry some pets - maybe a willing and extroverted cat or a smallish dog. 

I've put in a pic of a standard bike basket next to the removable-without-tools and customisable and doesn't rust and is-also-a-chair milk crate.

Just a note tacked on! This post hinges around the secondary uses of objects and even institutions.  I  encountered this first when reading "Design the Manmade Object" by design guru Nigel Cross from 1976. (I had a copy of it once but lost it somehow woohoo I found it on a UB stick and am printing it now) and it has stuck with me ever since. The Minq recumbent isn't just a bicycle, it's a chair as well. And the Watsonia load carrying has already moved on from its design purpose of being a milk crate, and now it isn't just load carrying either, its a chair as well. These are secondary uses for the objects.

I was visiting the Alphington Farmer's market on a bit of a research mission -  our bike shed Wecycle had been destined to move from a very public position in Batman Park to a more hidden and less public shed near the market. This could have changed Wecycle's focus, and removed a secondary role of Wecycle (primary role is to "recycle unwanted bikes and re-home them with people who need them") which is selling bikes to the public and providing low cost solutions to bike problems.

Anyway all these thoughts were just about out of my head when I heard a very up to date reference to secondary uses via an interview with Elissa Wardrop, an Australian online marketing whizz working for Ikea in Sweden. She was behind successful ( = viral = free ) online advertising for an Ikea plush toy. One of the toys was being used by a baby Orangutan in Japan and the story goes on from there. I relistened to the story (at about the 24 minute mark here ) and as a result of that found Elissa's article including secondary uses called "How to Sell a Spoon" . So I'm not just making it up or quoting something from the mid 1970's, its a thing. 

Regards Stephen (good on theory of marketing not so much on practice) Nurse

 

 

 

  

Watsonia Bike / Gipps Street Ramp

 

Top of Gipps St ramp, 2025

Ramp, 2025

Steps 2005 - 

a hard slog!

Ramp and Watsonia

Positron gears!

As found

Ice cream lid or similar as chain guard. This proved to be highly deciduous and didn't last long.

Front carrier arrangement

Super aero shelf brackets!

 

 

Note: this was pasted early 2026 about events mid December 2025.

Hi

Late last year I had been working hard at home on some presentations, and hadn’t gone outside the front gate for most of the day. An evening walk was just the thing to cheer me up, and on the way I found an abandoned old bike I quite liked which was a bonus. The bike was a Watsonia stepthrough and looking at it closely, it had some interesting cobbled together features which I quite liked. Recumbent riders aren’t the only ones to bike hack!

One hack was the basket supports, made from steel shelf parts. Certainly very aero, but when you consider the basket as well as its supports it’s not so aero! The other was the chainguard which is an old ice-cream-tub lid or similar. As well the bike had Shimano Positron gears, a system more than 40 years old that uses a push / pull cable instead of the pull and spring return which has become standard. But this example works fine! I ended up taking this one home although I already have way too many bikes and want to sell some.

There are a few Watsonia bikes listed on the net and they seem to come from Watsonia Cycles, a shop which David J is nostalgic about in his blog. Also a Watsonia track bike is revered for its style.

                 Normally it would have taken weeks to get round to fixing this one as I have a queue of bikes to finish. But I felt like getting out and about on something new, and was able to measure up and find a seat post, find a seat, and pump up the tyres all before going to a caf for my regular breakfast meetup with my friend Simon. After the caf, I rode off to inspect the latest and greatest bike infrastructure in our area, the Gipps Street cycling ramp. Despite the age, steel rims, the rear brake not working, lack of maintenance and manky tyres, the Watsonia bike went well. 

The new bike path is quite a revelation for me. To head south along bike paths used to involve a full-stop-and-bike-lift up 2 flights of stairs, and along roads involved riding along and turning right from busy Johnson St. Now it’s easy and safe to use the bike path to head south. The path is gently sloping and wide, and I have now ridden it twice, once to actually get somewhere. I was in some of the early protests about the old steps and local bike activists Yarrabug have written about the history of the new steps here.

                 Now I plan to pass on the Watsonia bike as is but with new 27” tyres and the rear brake fixed. If I upgraded the steel wheels for 700C aluminium ones (the sizes are quite close) I think I could stuff up the Positron gears and nice gear ratios - I’d like to move back to n-1 bicycles fairly soon. See you out there on the Gipps Street ramp!

 

Selling 2 Cruzbikes

 

Hi, I am selling my 2 Cruzbike Quests on ebay, these are unique Cruzbikes with custom aerodynamic tail boxes. Auction ends next Tuesday midday, Feb 17, 2026 (but if you just want to stop diddling around there are very reasonable buy it now prices. Cash only, pickup from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Here are the auction URLS https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/147146191514 and https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/147146174240 regards Steve Nurse

Repco Deville Resto

 Hi

Last week I rode to my volunteer job at Wecycle with a bike I'd fixed up, and rode home with a different one to fix up. This was a Repco De ville  stepthrough bike which I identified through the 1985 / 1986 Repco Catalogue available here. The bike has some great Suntour components, for example I like the rear derailleur where the holding screw pinches the cable in the guts of the derailleur, and its easy to see how the end stops work. There was a fair bit of cleaning up to do and I added a basket to the finished bike. The rims seemed to be lightly magnetic but look aluminium - I compared the wheel with a decrepit 27" steel wheel from the backyard and the De Ville wheel was lighter. As well there are currently rainbow lorrikeets squawking and eating pears  in my backyard  which is nice. 

The web pages where the catalog came from is "Blogging a Dead Horse" available here and the Stubby Holder sections are highly recommended and hilarious. They show the writer's (an avid BMXer) self commissioned stubby holders, their design inspiration and examples of the holders out and about, and with famous people.

Coleraine Recce Trip

 

Start of the Hamilton - Coleraine bike path near Hamilton

Chris outside the Holding Pen Cafe

Potential as a hill climb circuit! This is Racecourse Road, Coleraine

Mcconochie St Coleraine, decorated houses,

very wide with some potential for bike racing. The information centre is in the background.

and home to the pedal car races in October - I think these are the gridlines from last year.

Pedal Car sign

Op shop signs. The "closed" bit applied to yesterday's heat - it was open today, Hooray!

Football oval and surrounding asphalt track. There is a rise of about 6m as the track passes through the grandstand area.

The scoreboard is quite big!

Asphalt path runs through the grandstands

A few of the club buildings

Cavendish Road

Along the Cavendish Road.

Stop press 19/2/2025

The hire of the Football Club for the OzHPV challenge has been approved, we are now proceding with planning for the event! Woohoo, See you late October / Early November. 

Hi

Last November, my girlfriend and I took a Cup Day long weekend trip to Coleraine, a town in Western Victoria where my Mum lived when growing up, and where I visited my aunt and grandmother when I was growing up.  Sometime after that trip I decided it might be a good idea to hold an OzHPV event in the town, and ran it past a few people on the OzHPV committee before considering it seriously. Part of the motivation for considering Coleraine was that the town already has its own pedal car race, so knows (a little bit) about human powered vehicles. 

This trip comes during a spell of very hot weather for Victoria. Where I live in Melbourne it was 43 yesterday, but in Coleraine it was 45,  and poor old Ouyen had a new state record high of 48! My girlfriend and I had done some work repairing fences for blazeaid about a week ago, and on the way up this morning I passed through the area of the Streatham fire . Because of Blazeaid, the sight of rolled up, burnt fencing wire was very familiar. Fires are devastating for farmers who have a hard enough time of it anyway.

In Coleraine, I rode around looking at a few potential sites for an OzHPV race plus some old and new sights, and of course visited the excellent op shop and book shop. 

The football ground looked pretty good for an event. It is only accessible by dead end roads, and there is a continuous asphalt track (potential race circuit ) surrounding the oval. The football /netball club has a different oval to the cricket club, so the football oval has a summer quiet season when its used only for training. 

 Later, I met Chris, an organiser of the Coleraine Pedal Car event. Of recent times, there have been few groups that make their own pedal cars, and most cars are purchased from Trisled, then rented to teams. Chris himself has kept several older pedal cars, and picks one each year for his family (wife, daughter, grandchildren, he is the mechanic) team. The races take place around the old railway station (now the information centre), and a traffic management crew is employed to keep motorists away. The races are held on a Saturday so that everyone gets Sunday off. Chris recommended I speak to Ashleigh about hiring the footy / netball club's oval and premises, and told me where to find him. He was there in his office, which was great. The Football / Netball club proudly announced that their team did the most laps at last year's pedal car race, and also raised the most funds for charity.

After checking into a hotel, I rested then rode out along the Cavendish Road. A good day, and thank goodness not as hot as the day before! 

Gritjurk Country Fire Authority shed, about 10 k from Coleraine

A selfie, I balanced the camera on my tool kit box to take this.

Some roos (kangaroos) and sheep. The roos are hard to spot till you see their distinctive bounding.

 

Lots of scenery like this.

Leaning trike and Coleraine from the Arboretum on the hill.

The next day I woke up and there was a smoky sky - and I had left my phone in the bar of the hotel which was locked! Rather than wait around for some staff to arrive, I rode out again, this time going a bit further along the Cavendish Road. When I got back to the Hotel, the staff were on site and I rounded up my phone. Then I packed up and left, driving on the (slightly) circuitous route through Cavendish (not Hamilton) to Dunkeld. This was a good option, the roads were quiet and picturesque and the Cavendish cafe and general store was doing a roaring trade and served good tea and sandwiches!

Regards Steve Nurse 

Update Feb 3

OzHPV have now applied to the Coleraine football netball club for the hire of their clubrroms and oval in late 2026. Await a reply to see if its all go!

Regards Steve Nurse