Transport

Transport  – Bikes and Bobs

You will notice that there is no car garage at the Painted Fish, but we do have two purpose built sheds for bicycles.

Shani’s relationship with cycling has developed over the last five years. She began riding a recumbant tricycle (she couldn’t fall off). Tim is a keen cyclist, so to keep up with him Shani has had an electric motor fitted to her bike. It runs for about 20 –25 kilometres and was a great for extra boosts up hills.

After a recent trip to visit her brother in Canada, Tim picked Shani up at the airport (at 2am after 48 hours in transit!) with a tandem bicycle!

Once she realised that Tim was in charge and she should just pedal, she loved it and we use it for all our trips when we are together. It also has a higher power to weight ratio than two normal bikes and less wheel rolling resistance.

For big shopping trips our bob trailer is especially effective. Our record is two fruit trees, two panniers full of seedlings, six bags of organic soil improver and a bale of pea straw!

Our street now has its own cargo bike so people can take it for big shopping trips or rides downtown with kids and dogs. We ordered this bike from Count Down Bikes in the eastern states.

We also offer free bikes to our guests to encourage them to cycle around Freo. We often have guests returning their hire cars early when they realise how easy it is to ride or get the CAT bus.

The bikes are mostly procured from “Verge Mart” and nursed back to life (thanks to Alex and Clive from Mercer’s Cycles) using second hand parts. We also offer a 10% discount to cycle touring guests.

Car Sharing – formally and informally

Car Sharing is a fantastic idea which our guests tell us has taken off in many European cities. As cars spend 98% of their time parked it makes sense to share them saving money, resource and the space they take up.

Car share companies remove the complication of who owns, insures, and maintains the car. For a short while Hulbert Street had its own share car courtesy of Nexus Car Share. Sadly this business was a bit ahead of its time and is no longer operating.

We have reverted to a more loose arrangement. We let people borrow our old ute (“the Hulbert Street community ute”) when they need to move big things and when we need to travel a long way or transport delicate things in the rain we can usually find someone who will lend us their vehicle.

One day we are sure more Hulbert Street residents will share vehicles and there will be more room on the street for fun!