MAKING CAIRNS AND FNQ ROADS SAFER FOR CYCLISTS – THE RIDE FOR TANYA

FLORAL TRIBUTES AT SCENE OF AN EARLIER BICYCLE FATALITY – COURTESY http://www.cairnsbug.org

Last Saturday morning, sports-loving legal secretary Tanya Roneberg was riding her bicycle on the Cook Highway at Thomatis Creek, on the north side of Cairns. Around 7 o’clock, she was hit by a car and died. She was 37.

Tanya is the sixth bicycle rider to be killed on far north Queensland roads in the past three years. That statistic tells a grim story, but regular riders will tell you many more – chilling accounts of near misses and aggressive driving. It seems our drivers are not all willing, or able, to share the roads safely with bicycles. This constitutes a very real danger to local cyclists, and to the ever increasing number of visitors who want to ride in FNQ.

We have new bike paths and established bicycle lanes in Cairns, but the cycling community identifies danger zones they say need urgent attention. Local police say driver behaviour has to change. “It’s not good enough to say ‘welI I’m a car driver, I own the road’. They don’t,” says Sergeant John Fischer, the officer in charge at the Cairns crash investigation unit.

Tanya Roneberg’s close friend, Emma Miller, believes the best way to bring about change is to encourage drivers to experience our roads the way cyclists do. Emma is organising the Ride for Tanya this Saturday morning – a memorial ride for her friend and a road safety campaign. Emma hopes Cairns and FNQ drivers will join the ride – get out of their cars and ride a bicycle from down-town Cairns to Trinity Beach. By experiencing a few hours or a day on a bike, Emma hopes drivers will understand what it’s like for cyclists. She’s not anti-car or anti-driver – Emma wants to get riders and drivers together to learn from each other, and to make the roads a safer place for all of us.

LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear my interview with Emma Miller.

The Ride for Tanya will start at the Cairns hockey grounds on Rutherford Street at 6:30am on Saturday, May 18 and finish at Trinity Beach. Riders will be accompanied by a police escort.

 

BERTHA CORTE – MEXICO’S CYCLING “AMBASSADOR” TO AUSTRALIA

BERTHA CORTE AND BICYCLE AT ABC FAR NORTH CAIRNS

MY 23 YEARS WITH THE ABC HAS TAKEN ME TO MANY PLACES. FOR SIX OF THOSE YEARS I REPRESENTED THE ABC OVERSEAS, AND EVERY DAY I’D BE ASKED “WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” AND PEOPLE REACT TO MY ANSWER, “AUSTRALIA”, BASED ON WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW ABOUT MY COUNTRY.

They might have met Australians before, and they may have seen Australians on TV or in films. Most of our knowledge of other countries is based on what we get from media and popular culture. So what do you know about Mexico?

Unless you’ve been there, you probably know Mexico and its people through US television or films, in which Mexicans are often portrayed in a poor light, as the “bad guys”. Bertha Corte was amazed to find that Australians and their Kiwi cousins reckon Mexico is a very dodgy place, full of corruption, criminals and druggies.

Bertha is very proud of her home-land, its people and culture. She’s riding her bicycle around Australia to give us all a chance to meet a real Mexican and learn about her country.So far she’s done Sydney to Cairns, and she heads on to Darwin on Sunday, then Broome, Perth and across the Nullarbor to Sydney.

Click on the audio player to hear my interview with Bertha.

You can follow Bertha’s journey around Australia on her blog http://tbomx.com

BERTHA'S ROUTE AROUND AUSTRALIA