Cairns spirit heartening

THE story of young Micheal Cunningham having his bike stolen had a happy ending and continues to reveal a heartening dose of Christmas spirit.

The bike was found yesterday but Micheal had already received a replacement from an anonymous donor.

In true “pay it forward” style, Micheal now wants to give his original bike away to someone else who’s been a victim of theft.

The response to The Cairns Post’s first story on the theft after Micheal had saved up for months to afford his dream bike, was staggering.

This office received dozens of calls from people offering to help and one person even gave our front-counter staff $50 to pass on to Micheal.

Local radio stations that reported the story also had calls from people wanting to help.

But what made Micheal’s story stand out in a city that has bicycles stolen every day?

It appears the tale of a young boy doing chores for his neighbours to earn money for the bike really resonated with people. This is great but also troubling in a way. It wasn’t long ago that kids everywhere would hound their neighbours to do odd jobs for pocket money so they could buy the latest Transformer or Super Nintendo game.

Now it seems kids just hound their parents until they get whatever they want.

So seeing this kid Micheal Cunningham getting off his backside and helping himself is what rallied people to his cause.

Hopefully it also highlights the bike thieving problem in Cairns.

It is understood there is quite a thriving trade in stolen bikes but because it’s juveniles committing the crimes, there’s not much the coppers can do about it except issue repeated warnings. There’s something very wrong with that system and it needs to change.