Wheeling round with a swag of yarns

Colourful Brunswick St has a lively cafe culture.

David Crumpler is the bloke who got Australian men wearing manbags, so the story goes. A graphic design student from a small country town, Crumpler was working as a bicycle courier to pay his course fees. He knew how to sew and, to save money, made himself a distinctive, stylish courier bag.

Other couriers liked what they saw and asked him to make more, incorporating their own personalised designs. It was the start of an empire which now stretches to New York and Europe.

It's appropriate enough to be hearing the tale as we rest on our bikes outside Crumpler's shop, on the corner of Smith and Gertrude Sts in Fitzroy. We're on an escorted bike tour of Melbourne's highspots and hidden gems and our amiable guide Murray Johnson, has a swag of such yarns.

The City Tour starts by the Yarra River below Federation Square, where Real Melbourne Bike Tours operates from a hole-in-a-wall shop. After a gentle ride along the Yarra as far as the cluster of sports stadiums in East Melbourne, we head for the central city, meandering through narrow cobblestone alleyways and busy thoroughfares.

It's a great way to get our bearings and learn more about the sights we're seeing, from parks honouring the city's founders and the architects behind the latest office towers to the story of David Crumper.

We ride single-file down Smith St in the gap between parked cars and the tram lines, a gap that narrows when a tram rumbles past. Smith St is the dividing line between Fitzroy and Collingwood, suburbs with a heritage of Australian Rules rivalry. The shopping strip reflects the area's multiculturalism. Johnson points out unassuming pubs with great food; one offering Greek cuisine, another Spanish.

We turn left into Johnston St and pass century-old workers' cottages now worth half a million on our way to the Brunswick St cafe belt in Fitzroy.

On one corner is the Fitz, a cafe run by an Aussie Rules legend. Further up is Nino Brunetti's, with its landmark neon sign acknowledging Italy's Olympic gold winning cyclist of the 1930s. After emigrating from Italy before World War II, his status as an Olympic champion spared him incarceration on a farm when war broke out. Instead, he was allowed to stay in a former butcher's shop in Brunswick St from where he started selling bikes.

After the war, with Italian refugees flooding into Australia, he saw an opportunity to introduce Italian culture and imported the first espresso machine. Brunetti and his Italian wife became the King and Queen of Little Italy. Or so the story goes.

Our city circuit takes in Carlton's Lygon St restaurant belt, the Melbourne Museum and Exhibition Building and Queen Victoria Market before returning to the river via inner-city lanes and arcades. And despite our frequent use of footpaths, we attract no complaints from pedestrians. Try doing that in Queen St.