The original guide was published by Jim Smith himself in 1980 and its limited
print run sold well and quickly filled a need to provide a bicycle guide to this
popular, recreation area of NSW, Australia.
It then languished out of print, until Bicycle Australia, the national bicycle
touring association, approached Jim about republishing it. That idea languished for
a while as Bicycle Australia was a not-for-profit association that ran on the smell
of an oily rag, to borrow an inappropriate phrase for bicyclists, and did not have sufficent funds.
Eventually, during a period of dormancy of Bicycle Australia, Terry Collins,
one of the partners of Wombat Outdoor Adventures, having been
unsuccessful in seeing it reprinted by Bicycle Australia, decided that it would probably be
a good thing to see it back in print and managed to convince his other partner, that if not as a
money making exercise, it was a good idea for the common good.
Lida Szabunia was then reriding all the guide routes as part of the rides program
of the Blue Mountains Bicycle Group and updating the notes. So the role of co-author of
the revised edition fell onto her shoulders.
Phil Somerville was then a fresh, new and vitally important - virtually unknown cartoonist, who
also rode bicycles and knew all the other characters involved in this little story and
so willingly agreed to design the cover and provide a few of his cartoons so that if it
didn't sell as a bicycle touring book, it might someday achieve great worth as a collection of his
early cartoons. He also expressed dissatisfaction with the way the computer was laying out the
pages and promptly relaid everything and provided little fill in sketches. Unfortunately
he mucked up the index to his cartoons (page 85), so you sometimes have to fiddle around
to find them.
Finally, in 1991, the second edition was printed and distributed through out Sydney, the Blue Mountains
and further places afoot until it finally went out of print again in 1999. Work is slowly progressing
on the third edition.
If you would like to see a full size copy of the cover, we have provided two images that
you can download. The 256 colour image is 48K in size
and is good if you are in a hurry. 256 colours means that your require at least a 1Mb video card
to view it. The full colour image is 248K in size and may take some time.
