A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Well not quite.

Try the late nineteen seventies at a LBS in an outer Melbourne suburb.At that time shops closed at midday on Saturday and did not reopen until Monday morning.There used to be a bunch of teenagers hanging around outside the LBS so one day the LBS owner invited them to come on a bike ride on the Sunday and this was the start of the Knox Bicycle Touring Club.

In the early days there were a lot of touring rides both unsupported and minimally supported by a car towing a small trailer to carry the gear.

The members grew older, married and started families and the club slowly changed into a Sunday riding group and attracted retirees as members. Some of these organised supported tours and some rode unsupported but these rides were private and not part of the club's official programme.

Although I had done a number of "credit card" type tours I have only done two completely self supported rides in my life. The first was when I was about 20 years old when I visited the Anglo -Zulu war battlefields ( remember the film "Zulu" )in Kwa Zulu Natal Province in South Africa. We rode Raleigh Sports bikes with Sturmey Archer three speed hubs laced into steel rims but our gear was minimal. Last year I was invited to join Banjo a fellow KBTC member who has a lot of unsupported touring kilometres under his tyres on a ride from Adelaide to Melbourne. Thereafter I decide to try and return at least some of the KBTC members to our beginnings so I started to lobby at our morning coffee and lunch stops and obtained expressions of interest from about six members for a three day two night mini tour. The list finished at three riders plus myself.

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