Visit to Ocean Mist Aged Care, Thursday 20 April, 2023

Report: Jules Pearce

The Geelong Branch was recently invited to visit the Ocean Mist Aged Care facility at Torquay on our motorcycles. The call went out via email for members to participate and more than a dozen members showed up to assist. My thanks to you all.  We met at Freshwater Creek and then just had a short ride down to Torquay.

The residents of Ocean Mist thoroughly enjoyed checking out our bikes, talking with with us and sharing their reminiscences of travelling on motorcycles and in sidecars in their childhood and youth. Phil Harvey's grandson came along for the ride (he loved being on the back of John's Goldwing) and happily interacted with many of the residents. Despite limited mobility, quite a few of the residents were very keen to climb aboard and sit on a motorcycle. The Gold Wing and Phil's Spyder were particularly popular, as was Jimmy's Indian outfit and Geoff's classic BSA Super Rocket. There was one particularly sprightly 99 year old lady who inspected each bike and was right in the thick of things. She told us how her Dad's motorcycle and sidecar was their only family transport when she was a child.

The visit was a great success and many of our team mentioned that is was quite a heartwarming thing to be involved with. We did the Ulysses Club proud. Thanks to you all for your time and participation!


Absent in the pic are John T and Russell R who rode directly to Ocean Mist.