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Letter 351
The Harley Riders With a Taste for Tea and Apple Strudel
The Harley Owners Group in Alice Springs is what’s known as a social motorcycle club, with the emphasis on social.
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Harley-Davidson riders in North Queensland, Australia, in 2006.Credit...Steve Lunam/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images
By Julia Bergin
April 26, 2024, 1:18 a.m. ET
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The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week’s issue is written by Julia Bergin, a reporter based in the Northern Territory.
Ron Noll was known for riding his Harley-Davidson motorbike in flip-flops, or thongs as they are known here, preferring the ventilation and comfort of the hassle-free footwear in the Central Australian desert heat.
But on Sunday morning, he rolled into a gas station in Alice Springs dressed in heavy-duty boots. Mr. Noll reluctantly acknowledged to an amused circle of riders that he’d made a “necessary change” in the interest of safety.
The four riders — Mr. Noll, Richard Blom, Daniel Bowman and Marcia Fels — are part of the local Harley Owners Group, whose total membership runs to about 25. They were all wearing denim, leather and, yes, boots. This loose uniform was completed with an outer leather vest emblazoned with a Harley eagle-and-wheel insignia.
Their outfits may have suggested the stereotype of a menacing bike gang. But their preference of tea and apple strudel was a sign that this club had no appetite for flouting the law.
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The two patches on the back of their Harley vests confirmed this. One more patch would have signaled that they were in an outlaw gang, like the Hells Angels, Bandidos or Comancheros. In Australia, these are known as MCs, or motorcycle clubs. Mr. Noll and his fellow riders belong to a separate category: SMC, or social motorcycle club. In short, they’re simply motorcycle enthusiasts.
More on Australia China Lifts Tariffs: In a sign of easing tensions between Australia and China, China said that it would lift the tariffs it placed on Australian wine more than three years ago. Happy-Go-Lucky No More: After enjoying decades of prosperity, the country’s citizens are suffering from a high cost of living, a choppy labor market and rising inequality. Gender Discrimination?: An artwork at the Museum of New and Old Art in Hobart, Tasmania, is accessible to “any and all ladies,” according to the institution’s website — and precisely zero men. Does it break discrimination laws? Looking for Chinese Spies: Australia passed foreign interference laws in 2018 amid rising concerns over covert Chinese government meddling in Western democracies. The first case tried under the laws has raised questions about the breadth of the regulations.
After covering about 130 kilometers (80 miles) in an hour, the Alice Springs H.O.G. stopped at the Kata Anga Tea Rooms in the Indigenous community of Ntaria, also known as Hermannsburg, southwest of Alice Springs. There, over a cuppa, they talked about the perils lying in wait for social clubs that don’t stay in their lanes and respect the unspoken rules of local biker culture.
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