By August 1884 there were two active bicycle clubs in Launceston. Both conducted weekly night rides into the countryside.

They occasionally joined together for Saturday rides and race meetings.

The Daily Telegraph and Launceston Examiner both ran regular columns with cycling news.

As cycling became popular, businesses were established to sell, make and repair bicycles.

One of the earliest was the Crypto Cycle Depot of Maitland and Prestidge at 118 Charles Street, established by December 1892.

The first female cyclist in Launceston appears to have been Kate Fraser, the wife of a doctor based in St John Street.

She claimed to have learnt to ride while living in Evandale, when she rose at five in the morning, dressed in boy’s clothes and practiced on her husband’s bicycle.

Mrs Fraser was also reputed to be the first woman to join a cycling club in Australia.

In January 1894 a prize of a bracelet was offered for the first ladies’ bicycle race to be held at the Eight Hours Day sports meeting.

But even the secretary of the City Cycling Club stated that it would be the last, as he did not wish to bring the sport of cycling into disrepute.

Delivery bicycles were used to transport goods around the city.

An example of one used by McKinlay’s shop is in the Zion’s Hill Bike Museum at Ravenswood.

In the early 1900s firemen rode bikes too. When a telephone call came from Mrs Thomson’s home at Cormiston one evening in June 1911, the ‘long run [of five miles] was negotiated by the hose cart, engine, and a score of firemen on bicycles’.

The men managed to subdue the fire before returning to Launceston.

The hey-day for bicycles was from the 1920s to the late 1950s.

Petrol shortages during the Second World War saw the number of bicycle shops in Launceston reach eighteen.

In those times hundreds of people rode bikes to work.

At least 300 pushbikes would be lined up in a laneway to the railway workshops and bicycles were the preferred mode of transport for workers at the textile mills.

The first bikeway in Launceston, and indeed Tasmania, was completed in December 1979.

It ran from Royal Park to the bottom of Mowbray Hill.

Since then 89 kilometres of bike lanes, sealed off-road bike trails and multi-purpose recreational trails have made Launceston a more bicycle-friendly city. But there is still a long way to go.