Brad Dunn's essay on his slow journey to his current happy car free life, in part 2 Brad moves to Melbourne...

When I moved to Melbourne I brought my Suzuki GSXR 750 with me, and when looked at the roads, I was fucking terrified. Melbourne is not a place for motorcycles, at least, not for Perth motorcyclists. The tram tracks, when wet, seemed like a sadistic joke, and within days I decided to sell my motorcycle. I did it mainly to escape the torture of thinking about police officers coming to tell my wife that her husband had died in an accident, a fear I never thought could change my decisions about riding. Somehow, all the comments about motorcycles being dangerous, combined with a new and unfamiliar terrain, had finally worn me down.

We lived in Southbank at first, in one of the large filing cabinets of Little Singapore, and soon enough, I got used to the wonderful, comparably at least, transportation system of trams and trains that ran themselves through Melbourne. After a short amount of time, like most people from Perth, my wife and I became intoxicated with the northern suburbs of Fitzroy and Collingwood, a neighbourhood as different from Western Australia as possible. We moved there, and ironically, found ourselves living in a neighboured with countless West Australians.

With my motorcycle sold to a man from Frankston I bought a bicycle, the cheapest one I could find, at a bike store in South Yarra. It cost me $470 dollars, and saved me $2,800 a year in motorcycle insurance, $5,000 a year in repayments, plus the ten dollars a week in fuel, as well as $110 in Tram tickets I was paying to Connex each month, who frequently, told me to change platforms. Almost instantly, my bank account swelled.

My wife and I began to spend more on food, groceries of the highest quality, mostly organic, and we would often buy expensive clothes and eat at decent restaurants, something that we associated with living in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. And even still, there was plenty left over.

Soon my wife bought a German fold up a bike, a Birdy, which to this day, is my favourite thing to ride. After a few months of riding my bike to work I became slightly annoyed with it and went and bought something more permanent, and lighter. It cost me $900 and I sold my other one on eBay to reduce the buyer's remorse.

We now ride everywhere, and although we both work close to the city, we find living in a fairly dense neighbourhood, that provides everything we ever need, has certainly not reduced our ability to gain access to things like healthcare, furniture or toilet paper.

Now, we utilise with more gusto the delivery system network, and understand that paying for delivery, although it can seem expensive, far outweighs the cost we would pay should we own a car. Often, when something local seems more expensive than it would be if we lived in the suburbs, I’m reminded of my Honda civic, where things would break that I’m sure never really existed. I once got a bill for $3,500 to fix something in my gear box, which my mechanic told me, he wouldn’t know was broken until he got it all out and had a look. I found it interesting he could quote on something he couldn’t see, and wasn’t even sure was broken.

Life is beautiful now, and my wife and I are both fitter than ever. We ride to get groceries, and even grow a substantial amount of food under the Hoddle Street High-rise in one of the community gardens. On the whole, we live about as locally as you can get – more or less by force.