How a trip to a local tip started a cycle of help

When retired electronics specialist and farmer Hans and his wife began building their home, sourcing materials from the local Reviver tip shop, they noticed an abundance of old bikes. “I kept seeing an awful lot of bikes there being thrown away,” he says. “Most of them were perfectly good, with very little help needed to get them back to working order. I hated the thought that people in other places could use them—and in some cases, change their lives.”

His vision to restore bikes otherwise destined for scrap of landfill solidified when Hans saw a story on the ABC’s 7.30 Report about Aussie backpacker Michael Linke setting up “shops” in Africa to give bikes to students and health care workers. His Bike Empowerment Network (BEN) project imported 12,000 bikes in its first five years and trained 500 mechanics. Sydney charity Bikes for Humanity was sending bikes to the BEN, and Hans contacted them to offer his help.

Since then, the 73-year-old has restored and reconditioned “around 6000” discarded bikes which have been sent to Africa and other communities in need. In recognition of his help, he was named Wingecarribee Shire’s 2019 Australia Day Citizen of the Year.

Hans heads up a volunteer group which meets weekly to bring bikes back to life. Their ‘workshop’ is a car park at the Moss Vale Resource Recovery Centre—the tip—where a shipping container is filled with tools, spare tyres and countless tiny parts. Hans works on bikes in the back of his ute while other volunteers prop cycles on stands.

Once bikes are restored and road tested, they’re crammed into shipping containers in a real-life Tetris operation. Every centimetre of space is maximised, with tyres and other spare parts shoved into empty spaces.

Right now, Hans and his team have two containers filled with hundreds of bikes ready to ship. But the repair group has a problem. Because COVID sent shipping costs soaring—it’s about $15,000 to send one container—Africa is out of reach. Islands in the Torres Strait are being discussed as possible destinations for the current containers, along with the idea of training local mechanics and business managers as Michael Linke does in Namibia.

“Now we need help. If there are any shipping companies who would give us one free shipment a year it would be a huge help,” says Hans, whose group is aligned with Resource Recovery Australia after previously collaborating with Bikes4Life.

Volunteer Josh Truscott, 48, says it’s vital the containers get sent. “Bikes provide people in indigenous communities and poorer areas such a level of freedom to be able to get around that you don’t get with walking or if you don’t have a car.” A podiatrist, Josh has repaired about 50 bikes since joining 18 months ago: “I do a bit of riding so I was interested in learning the mechanical side, and also the charitable helping nature of the project appealed to me.”

Any bikes past repair are stripped for parts like seats and brakes. Volunteer Greg Olsen, a musician, is “not mechanical—I’m as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike”, but “I like to help,” he says. Greg is the unofficial quartermaster, in charge of rear and front reflectors and scouring for nuts and bolts: “Nothing is wasted. There’s real satisfaction in making a difference.”

For Hans, the incentive to help is simple. “Most people get a hand throughout life so when you can you pay it back,” he says. With his family, he migrated to Australia from Germany when he was seven, “and I remember the help we got from Australians was really valuable. It’s a cycle." For him, a bicycle cycle which is changing lives.