Laverton Cycling Project Update October 2024!

The October Update from the Laverton Cycling Project – Courtesy of Matthew Connan!

“In 8 years of racing under the Cycling Development Foundation program, I’ve learnt a thing or two about resilience and dealing with adversity that has prepared me for similar circumstances in the real world. This Laverton trip has been a little bit about that! Providing a service for the children and communities of Laverton, Mulga Queen and Cosmo Newberry means a great deal to us, so when the unexpected arises, we push on to continue to make any small difference we can.

On Tuesday, we traveled to Mulga Queen to visit the school and run a program to get the students to think critically about their surroundings, all whilst enjoying the fun of bike riding…except there was no one to run it with! After the recent Term 3 school holidays, none of our students had returned! Instead, we took this opportunity to liaise with the school staff and discuss our program going forward into 2025, and decided to return again on Wednesday.

Thankfully, we actually had some students on Wednesday! We ran our program with the children in Mulga Queen and observed the students consider the effects of different surfaces on the ease of steering and pedaling on bikes. We also delivered some fresh fruit to the kids to enjoy in the hot weather. On the way home from Mulga, our tyre blew up! After some time figuring out how to remove the spare tyre from the van and replacing the blown one, we raced back into Laverton to take the kids for a ride after school. It ended up being a rather long day, but we were thrilled to get back in time to see our kiddos and have some fun.

Thursday was an awesome day. We headed out to Cosmo Newberry first thing in the morning with a van full of bikes for the kids to ride. This was my (Matt) first time visiting Cosmo. We had a whole bunch of kids and ended up using all of our bikes! We ran our program, enjoyed morning tea with the students, then returned to Laverton to go for another bike ride with the kids after school. The kids are always so excited to come for a ride with us; as soon as one hears we’re around, they all come running!

Aside from running our cycling programs, we connected with the Laverton Shire and various other stakeholders to discuss some ideas and engaged with the wider community through social events and the like.”

A big thanks to Healthway for their ongoing support of the Laverton Cycling Project, and in particular for their support of last week’s visit!

Find out more about the Laverton Cycling Project.

View the full October photo album.