The start of an obsession
Ron Murrell’s collection is spread between his house in inner Sydney (with six bikes) and his industrial unit in the northern suburbs. In the unit are around forty complete bikes, tons of components such as frames, wheels, engines, tanks and tinware, tyres, controls, handlebars and much more.
It is a long and tedious process restoring the bikes, particularly with the ever-tightening attitude to imports by the Australian government, and the fact that much of the work needs to be done in Italy. Ron also has quite a few classic cars to attend to. Nevertheless, he is determined to continue the work, and to gather components to assist in the task from far and wide.
Here he explains just how he became so fascinated by these tiny creations where everything except the handlebar controls are miniaturised, where weight is pared by fractions of a gram, but where beauty was never compromised – just look at the petrol tanks, the
