SUNRAYSIA Daily will turn 100 later this year, but a quirky part of its history remains missing.
The old delivery bike made famous by Mildura’s celebrity cook Stefano de Pieri during his popular television series Gondola on the Murray has not been seen in decades.
And we want it back.
Sunraysia Daily has offered a reward of $250 for information that leads to the return of the Sunraysia Daily butcher’s delivery bike … with no questions asked.
The story goes that in the late 1990s Stefano, after signing a contract with the ABC to front a new Australian culinary show, put a “wanted” classified in Sunraysia Daily looking for a newspaper delivery bike to use as his major prop in the show.
Former Daily marketing manager Rob Duffield spotted the ad and decided that the newspaper’s own delivery bike (a Super Elliot bike) would fit the bill. He phoned Stefano and let him know the Daily would be happy to lend him our bike.
The only downside was the bike didn’t have a basket but, after the Daily placed another classified ad, a local woman sold the newspaper the perfect basket.
The bike then became a key feature of Gondola on the Murray.
“I loved the bike, I thought it was great,” Stefano recalled this week.
“We’d been looking for something to use on the show. We’d been looking at a motorcycle, an old car, but none of it made sense. The only one that made sense was the bike.
“It looked theatrical, quite funny, it just looked the part.
“I loved it, the producers loved it.”
Stefano was seen on the cooking show riding the butcher’s bike from place to place.
“But sometimes we would be in the Barossa Valley, so there was a bit of pretending,” he said with a laugh.
After being used on Stefano’s show, the bike was regularly displayed around Mildura.
It was last seen at The Alfred Deakin Centre. One theory is that someone simply walked in one day, took the bike and walked away with it.
“There were no cameras back then,” Stefano said.
While the old bike does not hold much street value, it holds plenty of sentimental value — and not just for Sunraysia Daily.
Stefano is also about to embark on a new television series highlighting the Sunraysia food bowl and said he would love to be able to feature the old bike again.
“The sentimental value is enormous,” he said.
“It would be great if someone would just do the right thing and return it.
“You’ve had your time with it, obviously you loved it, but it’s time to give it back to Sunraysia Daily.”
