Australiana

I'm in Australia. Most of you are on the other side of the world. You probably have no idea, and possibly no interest, about what's happening down here. If you have absolutely no interest, now is the time to change the channel, cause I'm going to drop a little Australiana on ya!



First up there's a company that you might, or might not know, called Tempered Bikes. They've got a small but perfectly formed product catalogue at the moment - frames, bars, forks, seats - but there's also a load of 2010 stuff about to turn up and I'll be posting it up when it does.

Then there's Focal Point which is a Melbourne based website, but pretty much covering the whole Australian scene. If you were a somewhat regular reader of TCU you'd probably have come across links to the Focal Point mag that they put out quaterly, as well as edits and trailers for their DVDs .

My mind is continually blown with the amount of work that the dude who runs it puts in. The mag, the site, videos, interviews, reviews - relentless. In the past it was pretty much just a zine that you could pick up for free in bike shops. You can still get it in hardcopy, and still reads like a no-bullshit zine, but the quality of the photos and layout just gets more and more pro all the time. These days they've even gone all Issuu on your ass:



Amongst the truck load of stuff on Focal Point there's a recent Top Fives type-thing with Jimmy Rostlund from who designs for Simple Bikes. It's at the bottom of the page here. If you missed the BMXtec interview that I did with Jimmy, you can check that here.

While we are talking flipbooks and work loads, James Wade out of Adelaide in South Australia is a busy man looking after a forum called Ugzine, a blog by the name of Stay Fresh Yo!, and clothing brand called Dishonour. And he puts out rad photo flips.


A little Dishonourable goodness

To round it off there is Nightfall Bike Co out of Northern Queensland - which if you don't know it, is just about the most Australian part of Australia. If you wanted proof of that you'd only have to check their blog to see them spinning the bars on some weird object that looks like it's in the middle of nowhere, or actually spinning them in the middle of nowhere. Or you could check this post. That's Australiana.


Nightfall's Level frame - hit up their eBay shop


Nightfall's Killuminati sprocket