Bike Hire Antichrist

Posted on July 12, 2025 by freestateofjen

A while ago I decided to take a new direction in my life and not get another job after I finished up my last entomology contract. That approach sounds like fun, right? But, there are a couple of problems: I like money. I like doing something meaningful with my time. I like being around other people working towards an outcome and sharing in achievements. With this in mind I thought I could perhaps start a very small business. I live at the beach and love riding my fat bike on the beach and on the sand tracks. I’m sure other people would love this too, so the idea of starting up a fat bike hire business arose in my mind.

This is Chow. On an extremely hard ride through the sand to Bundaberg. The seven circles of pedalling hell.

I don’t have a massive amount of capital to invest, so I thought I’d probably start with two or three bikes. I reckon I can do this, I thought. I don’t know a great deal about how to do any of this, so like any other reasonable person I thought I’d start my market research to find out whatever I could. I put a post on the local community fakebook page. This is what I asked, “Do people think a fat bike (pushbike, not electric) hire would work here? They’re bikes for riding on the beach and on the sand tracks. The tyres are from 3.8″ to 5.5″ wide. You can still ride them like a normal bike on roads and gravel too. Thoughts?”

Holy shit balls! It went south pretty fast. The first six responses were level-headed responses with people giving honest and useful feedback about whether they thought it would work or not work, but it was all downhill after that. People started attacking each other’s characters, pasts and motivations. I didn’t get involved in any of the arguments because what’s the point? But I guess it was pretty entertaining if nothing else. It was also really amazing to see how total strangers could formulate opinions of me (and of each other) based on me asking about a bike hire business. Why do people even care about this stuff, I wondered outloud as I watched the comments roll in:

First it’s bikes then it’s scooters, then mini bikes dirt bikes [sic], quads and jeeps and full blown 4X4 The same contributor went on to write, Interpreting from your own words that you clearly don’t get enough of a high from just sitting and enjoying the beach you feel the need to add the “high” of riding a bike along it to make it a better experience for you and now you want to market that artificial high for others to also enjoy because you can make the experience “better” than what nature provides. This person seemed to think that somehow I was going to turn Woodgate into another Gold Coast. Man, I’d love to have that power (I probably would use it for something else other than making a second Gold Coast, maybe equality? Hmm?), but I just don’t, I really don’t have that power. I’m just one person who wants to live a meaningful life. Asking too much? Maybe in this town it is. I just don’t know.

See, the thing is, nature doesn’t belong to us, we belong to nature and we all like to experience our connection with the natural world in different ways. I don’t like to go fishing. Does that mean I’m a bad person or that I think people who fish are bad? No. It just means I don’t like to go fishing, so I don’t do it and then I get on with my life. Problem solved, if there even was a problem to begin with, which there wasn’t because I can’t see the point of catrastophising about unrealistic futures that will never eventuate, like theme parks in Woodgate. Although, I did wonder how the group might react if I put up a post asking their thoughts on a waterslide activity park. That was really tempting, but because I’m not an arsehole I didn’t do it.

There is an interesting peer reviewed article here about how tourism operators can create experiences that result in conservation outcomes. I have a Bachelor of Environmental Science majoring in Ecotourism and understand that if more people are given a way to interact with the natural world it improves outcomes for sustainability and conservation because the more people know about something, the more they can care about it.

I’m not a social researcher or anything, but it does seem to me that people who live here are in a constant state of fear. They all seem to hate anything new, any new business, any new building, any new people moving here. I think they don’t like this stuff because they’re worried that if stuff changes that means there will be less for them. It’s like the equality thing where people who are against equality freak out because they think it’s pie: more for other poeple means less for them, but the thing is, there is no pie. Having more equality and more non-destructive ways to experience nature will only ever mean we get to live better lives.

That is if we can get past this sort of shit:

Clearly nature is not enough for you. You have no foresight [sic] or business planning. Old pricks. Sad old people. Go to a nursing home. Get fixed wombat.

Adopting a more constructive way of seeing the world would help here. Getting out of the echo chambers would help because then everyone could embrace a larger life. Imagine a world where you aren’t held back by your beliefs or need to feel like you are the one who is right ALL the time. We live in reality, not inside fakebook and the internet. We only get one life and we should be living it, not worrying about stupid shit online.

I read a book recently called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. He said in the book somewhere that people have used up over 200 000 human lifetimes by spending time on mindless internet bullshit. Arguing about stupid shit online on inconsequential fakebook community groups is a waste of your life. I just can’t understand why people do it. People really need to read Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

As for me, I’m still not sure about the bike hire business and my role as the Bike Hire Antichrist. I’m tossing up a few other ideas as well. I certainly won’t bother putting any more posts on the local community fakebook group, that’s for sure. So, I’ll keep doing my thing (the artificial high stuff) and it’ll look like some of this:

Chow and cows on a rail trail loop near Toowoomba somewhere.

My original fat bike at Woodgate boatramp. This one was called Fatty.

Sign post from when I walked the 30km round trip to the lighthouse at Double Island Point

Me at Cooloola Great Walk trail head. Yeah, as you can see, I’m a real nature hater.

Last bikepacking trip I did. This bike is called The Can’t Bike because everyone told me, *you can’t!*. But I did, so sux to be them. The more people tell me I can’t do something, the more likely it is that I will do it.

From the last ento job I had: Soldier fly pupae.
I’m not doing this job anymore, but I still like flies, which occur in the natural world and are an important part of all ecosystems. This particular species is native to Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inopus

Hikes of Fire

Posted on June 19, 2020 by freestateofjen

Last year we had some really bad bushfires in this area. The national park was closed and there was no access to the two walking trails (The Melaleuca Circuit and the Banksia Track) until QPWS cleaned them up and deemed them safe. The fire fighting effort meant that the firebreaks in the park and on council bushland were widened and upgraded. Once everything was burnt to a total crisp, it was easy to see through what had once been inpenetrable, dense wallum scrub and Melaleuca swamp, and I took the opportunity to explore areas that I didn’t realise were accessible. I got a bit excited about this and thought it might be possible to work with QPWS to develop a hiking network in the Woodgate and Kinkuna sections of the national park to begin with. Delusions of grandeur have led me to believe that the entire park (taking in the Buxton, Burrum River sections and Bingera NP) can eventually be networked with hiking trails and walkers camps similar to those found on any of the awesome hiking trails we already have in Qld. Click here for a description of what I’m talking about.

After much frustration due to the images being updated on Google Earth last month, I was able to come up with three new loops and an overnight hike. The loops all utilise the caravan park at Woodgate as a campsite. The overnight hike utilises Burrum Point campsite. Speaking as a hiker, this kind of thing is more likely to attract hiking visitors to the area because hikers like hiking and presently there are only the two short walks in the park, which wouldn’t really attract visitors who are keen on covering long distances. Basically what I’m saying here is that people aren’t going to come here for hiking because there’s nowhere to hike. In fact, this whole region doesn’t have many opportunities for long distance hiking, which is kinda silly considering the Burrum Coast National Park covers 26 000 ha, which is quite a chunk of land and is considered an ‘outstanding example of Queensland’s natural environment and cultural heritage’ according to the Department of Environment and Resource Management.

So far this is what I’ve come up with. I’m not a cartographer and I don’t expect anyone else to understand these stupid maps, but I had to start somewhere, which is what you’ve got to do if you want to make change. I do not recommend that anyone attempt to follow these ridiculous maps! Don’t do it, just don’t! I’ve emailed QPWS and hopefully they’ll come through with the goods to improve on what I’ve got and we can eventually have lots of awesome trails in this area:

This is the map I started with. You can see why I wouldn’t recommend anyone attempt to follow this!

First loop: 17.73km

Second loop: 23.68km

Third loop 21.62km

Overnight hike: 34km

These pictures are crappy, I know that, but that’s OK because there’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there if you want to make change happen. If I waited until everything was perfect before I did anything, I’d never get to bloody well do a single thing!

So, it was shitty that we had the fires and some of our houses nearly burned down (mine included), but if that never happened I would never have come to find these new hikes that will not just benefit me, but others who are interested in living a life made of adventure.

Appreciating nature is what humans are made for and the more we can get out in it, the healthier we’ll be, the happier we’ll be and the more likely we’ll be to be able to overcome the crappy things that seek to tear us down, like fires, viruses and mean-spirited arseholes.

Flame a new path and fire up your mind

Sea sick

Posted on March 8, 2020 by freestateofjen

People probably think I’m a tough mofo, but I still get scared every now and then. It’s just that I don’t let my fear stop me. It’s not always easy.

I went fishing the other day with some awesome friends from Woodgate. A couple I lovingly refer to as The Tidies, which is an amalgamation of both their names, and another mate who could otherwise be known as Tytus Brosch (this in an in-joke that no one will understand, but I’m using here in the pursuit of anonymity and also because I wanted to draw a picture).

I really like boats and I like fishing, but it’s been many years since I was on a boat that wasn’t in command of the cool guy I’m married to and I was a bit worried about how my mate Tytus would behave on the water. What if he’s a total cowboy? I worried, and what if I need to pee out on the ocean when there’s three other poeple on a small boat? I wonder how long we’ll be out there. Will I get really hungry? What if the boat sinks? What if the waves are really big? On and on it went. None of that stuff was an issue. Tytus was great on the water, no hint of cowboy in him, but what I didn’t even consider for second was getting sea sick.

To my horror, I got sick! I was totally surprised because I’ve only ever been sea sick once when I was about eight years old, so I’ve been telling myself for years that don’t get sea sick and I’ve always felt a little bit self righteous about that.

One of us had already upchucked by the time we’d gotten to the first spot, and I said to myself, no way am I gonna let that happen to me, but as the morning wore on, I began to doubt my ability to follow through with that commitment. Even so, the remaining three of us didn’t say anything about feeling sick and we all kept fishing and joking around as though everything was perfectly normal, find and dandy.

After a while I felt I had to mention the situation and said, “Gees, I feel a bit sick.” Immediatley the other two people on the boat who didn’t appear sick at all yelled “Me too!” and we all started laughing. All of us had been staying stum in an effort to hide our apparent “weakness”.

In the end we caught a few fish between us and had a great time, even though all of us were crook as dogs! We laughed about it and I guess that’s what will make the trip a lasting memory.

It’s always interesting to me that the things that I might be concerned about are never the things that come up as challenges. I’m really glad I didn’t let my reservations about the fishing trip stop me. I would never have had the opportunity to see this because I usually avoid getting up at 4am: