Gary’s bikes keep rolling on

If you asked people around the Waitara district, and especially in Lepperton, if they knew Gary Sarten, you would probably get a few yes’s. If you asked them if they knew ‘the Bike Man of Lepperton’, you’d get a yes almost every time. A man whose generosity is as huge as his modesty, Gary has been bringing a bit of happiness into the lives of local kids for many years now.

Gary’s farm property near Lepperton Township contains a number of structures of varying sizes, and the ones smaller than house size can be counted on to contain one thing – bikes.

Bicycles, tricycles, scooters, and a host of other motorless vehicles (plus parts to make many, many more) crowd his shed and at least two other smaller garages.

And what Gary does with the bikes once they are refurbished is truly wonderful … he just gives them away. Some he donates to the Corso Shop in Waitara , many others he simply gives to kids in the area charity of a sort that’s rare in these cynical times.

What got him into this amazingly generous hobby? It goes back to his childhood. ‘‘As soon as we were allowed out on the roads on our old bikes as kids,’ says Gary, ‘‘we discovered the old Lepperton landfill dump. The place was full of smashed up and dumped bikes, so we used to drag the wrecks home and fix them up, or take good pieces from ones that were total losses and combine them to make a single ‘new’ working bike.’’

Gary moved on to doing up cars once he got older, but in 1980 when his son was a boy he got back into the bike hobby again. ‘‘A lot of my son’s mates had broken bikes, and they all tended to end up here to get repaired. I knew a lot of kids in Waitara had no bikes at all, so I would go round all the dumps in the area, find bike wrecks and do them up.’’

Times have changed, as have tastes, so Gary has moved into new areas. ‘‘I’ve been doing some drift trikes lately … very popular … as are bikes with wheel handbars. Even a few modern penny farthing types.’’

Gary has been given, or has been nominated for, a number of awards recoqnising his great contribution to the community, but a few minutes with the man makes one realise that his generosity and hard work for no financial reward is regarded by the man himself as nothing to get too fussed about.

It is nice to be nice, as the saying goes, and Gary Sarten is a living example of this, a credit to the Waitara district if ever there was one.